Pfizer contracts WeRobotics to repurpose DJI’s M300 into cargo drone

• As part of this earlier project, WeRobotics’ partners at Dominican Republic Flying Labs used the repurposed M600 drone to deliver essential medicines.
  
• The M300’s payload capacity will be around 1.5 kilogrammes.
  

February 09, 2021: Pfizer has contracted WeRobotics to lead a new cargo drone project. The project comes at a time when vaccines for Covid-19 need to be distributed at scale. The new cargo drone add-on is specifically for the M300.

Their previous partnership focused on engineering a cargo drone add-on to convert DJI’s highly reliable M600 industrial data collection drone into a cargo drone. The M600 cargo drone has been engineered, tested, and deployed on three continents.

While the M600 will continue to serve Flying Labs’ needs, the M300 comes with additional advantages. DJI’s newest industrial drone can handle even the harshest weather conditions. The platform also has multiple dedicated sensors for collision avoidance, making it extremely safe for both ground and air risks. The M300’s payload capacity will be around 1.5 kilogrammes.

“Despite the challenges that do come with repurposing, doing so still goes a long way to keeping complexity and costs low while also enabling operators to use the same easy-to-use drone for data collection and delivery, thus increasing the services they can offer with the same drone. As such, instead of trying to build the full drone stack for delivery, we’ve decided to focus on building one layer, a versatile cargo drone add-on designed to work with existing industrial drones. And while the M300 costs more than the M600’s, the M300 remains more affordable than most commercially available cargo drones. And the M300 is backed by a $15 billion-dollar company, which means we can expect the M300 to still be around in 5 years, just like the M600,” said WeRobotics in the company blog.

As part of this earlier project, WeRobotics’ partners at Dominican Republic Flying Labs used the repurposed M600 drone to deliver essential medicines to remote health facilities. The purpose of these deliveries was to demonstrate the value-add of locally-led delivery drone projects that use affordable and locally repairable cargo drones. The M600 cargo drone add-on has since been used very successfully by Nepal Flying Labs to collect patient samples. It has also been sent to Philippines Flying Labs and is looking forward to seeing first cargo drone projects.