COVID-19 has created a need to better connect locations of care provision (e.g. hospitals, doctors surgeries, pharmacies and nursing homes), in order to improve the speed of delivery for time critical medication, to reduce transmissibility of COVID-19 to vulnerable patients and to help move care provision and testing closer to the patient via better distribution. We propose to solve this problem using a network of small (micro) drones which follow pre-planned paths between medical facilities, and act as a high-speed shuttle for small medical packages. The solution is backed by a comprehensive drone safety case strategy which effectively mitigates ground and air risk in order to meet safety requirements and obtain approval from the CAA. Most drone delivery solutions have focused on large, high risk drones, which present significant challenges when attempting to obtain approval from the regulator, and therefore normally require airspace segregation. This means that those operations are never able to scale effectively. Neuron has approached this problem top down, by starting with an operational safety case strategy and complimentary matching medical need, and designing a solution using readily available off-the-shelf technology which can be scaled nationwide. Using this approach Neuron is able to ensure that a solution is provided which not only solves a key medical problem, but which is feasibly able to provide value to its users beyond the limited time frame of a trial.

As drones are new and fast-growing market, insurers lack the historical data that would allow them actuarially quantify the possible losses, and therefore they are forced to guess the claims they will incur. This has a negative impact on the final users- the price is over inflated and simply based on market dynamics. In order for drones to fly safely, with minimal disruption and invasion of privacy, a technology is necessary that can identify, quantify and minimise risks and feedback this data to the user. Flock solves this by meaningfully quantifying risk, and pricing per-flight policies accordingly. The riskier the flight, the more expensive it is, saving money for the safest users. This creates an incentive for safety, that brings wider benefits in the form of increased safety**.** ?Flock's? ??app? ?provides? ?drone operators? with ?a? ?map? ?of? ?their? ?local? ?environment;? ?drone? ?operators? ?can? ?use? ?the? ?app? ?to? ?identify the? ?potential? ?risks? ?around? ?them,? ?receive? ?real-time? ?weather? ?and? ?air traffic updates,? ?to better? ?understand? ?their? ?airspace? ?and? ?the? ?risks? ?their? ?drone? flight? ?poses to itself, the public (third parties) and property/infrastructure By using data from constantly updating global APIs (satellite/weather/GPS/regulatory) and databases to accurately model the risk of each specific journey, Flock's real-time, high-fidelity risk mapping solution aggregates relevant environmental data at the point of take-off, combining this with drone specs and pilot information in order to accurately quantify the risk of any given drone flight. The result is the world's most advanced drone insurance platform, capable of distributing fully customised insurance policies to pilots in a matter of seconds, and for a small fraction of the cost of traditional annual policies. Pilots flying with Flock avoid prohibitively large up-front insurance costs, instead incurring costs only when they fly and easily transferring these costs to their customers if required.

The drone industry is growing rapidly; there are an increasing number of use cases for drones, from hobbyists flying in the park, to commercial operations such surveillance, data gathering and parcel delivery. Drones will be a $127 billion industry by 2020. However, drones bring with them a degree of risk; falling out of the sky into congested areas, environmental disturbance and privacy concerns in public spaces, to name a few. There is a growing need for technologies that can identify, quantify and minimise the risk of drone flights. That's exactly what we're building at Flock, and it is the project that this Innovate UK grant will support. Flock is the first software of its kind anywhere in the world: our Artificial Intelligence platform tracks in real time the position of people, vehicles, structures, weather systems and more, calculating the safest possible flight-paths for drones to fly through congested urban environments. Our software is essential for insurers, operators, policy-makers, and UTMs, as it helps to keep the public safe from overhead drones, whilst allowing operators to intelligently schedule and route their flights to minimise risk. Our unique approach is to aggregate multiple data sources and use machine learning and path optimisation algorithms to generate optimal flight paths in real time, allowing operators to quantify and minimise flight risks on the spot. This project brings together world-leading experts to design and build a technology that will become the de-facto standard of drone safety globally, and make the UK a pioneer in drone safety standards.

Drones will soon make our cities more efficient, but in order make them fly in urbanised areas we need to address the issues around this technology, such as privacy, noise pollution or accident and collision risks. The algorithm the Flock has already prototyped uses big data and the IoT sensing network to quantify and minimise the risks of drones flying over citizens real time. The technology can be useful for operators, citizens, regulatory bodies, insurance companies, etc and offer many tangential benefits to the overall urban infrastructure. This technology will make drones empathetic. Flock will make drones understand humans, making machines more respectful towards the ones that matter the most, us.

"We will soon be surrounded by drones. The FAA (The Federal Aviation Agency of the US) forecasts that there will be 30000 drones in the american sky by 2020. Engineers are rushing to have the technology ready. They are developing systems that will be able to fly without any need of supervision. Unfortunately, drones are not able to understand the impact they can have on the people on the ground. They are noisy, unpredictable and could be scary. By the time an autonomous drone reacts to a person is too late avoid the impact. There is a need to make drones notice and respect citizens. Drones should understand the impact they have on the population, and plan accordingly. Flock is a ProSocial dynamic urban flight planner for drones. Powered by the citizens location data, is able to understand and define the disruption each flight path will have. This way, flights can be planned to reduce their impact, and change them even before the drone started flying. n the era of information we should get advantage of the data we are generating, and use it to create a more pleasant environment for all, humans and machines. That’s what flock does. Building the future infrastructure for humans to coexist with drones. "