One morning, while visiting home in Switzerland from my job in the US in March 2017, I woke up to a surprising sight out of my bedroom window: a drone delivering a package on the roof of the hospital in front of my building. I did not know it at the time, but I was witnessing one of the early test flights one of the world’s first automated blood sample delivery operations in an urban environment, taking place in the skies above my hometown of Lugano. These tests would shortly develop into a full-blown network of autonomous drone deliveries for diagnostic samples – which since has been replicated also by others in a number of cities in Switzerland, the United States, and Rwanda.
Image: A 'drone marshal' in action during a race by Lake Zurich in October 2018 (Keystone)
