Using drones to deliver food to students in remote areas

In a UK first, Argyll and Bute County Council has partnered with drone manufacturer Skyports to trial the use of UAVs to deliver food to school children.

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Skyports drone. (Source: Aerospace)

The Argyll and Bute County Government (UK) is running a pilot project using Skyports UAVs to serve rural and remote schools, which currently rely on traditional transport methods including taxis, ferries and trucks to deliver food to students.

This pilot project to deliver food to school children by UAV has just won the UK's COSLA 2023 Excellence Award, in the Service, Innovation and Improvement category.

The UAVs took off from Oban Airport, transporting meals prepared at Park Primary School in Oban to Lochnell Primary School, 1.5km away.

Following the success of the pilot project, further trials aimed at helping establish the use of UAVs in rural and remote areas in the region will take place later this year.

UAVs are an environmentally efficient means of transport as they do not burn fossil fuels. In some rural or coastal schools in the UK, recruiting staff to deliver food is often difficult, so the use of UAVs is seen as a step forward.

Argyll and Bute County Council has ambitious plans to create the UK’s first UAV training and logistics centre at Oban Airport through a Rural Growth Deal. Phase 1 of the scheme has been approved.

Councillor Robin Currie said he was proud that Argyll and Bute was the first to deliver school meals by drone and said the province’s ambitions did not stop there. “We look forward to exploring the use of UAV technology further in our future plans for a training and logistics centre,” he said.

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