Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 2 No. 4 Winter 2017 | Page 9

successfully recreated; and seeing the local
students’ excitement in their work only adds to
my own enthusiasm for the project,” Standridge
said.
The UNICEF drone testing corridor opened
in July, 2017 in partnership with the Malawian
government to explore drone applications in
emergency medical supply delivery, vaccines
and sample delivery for diagnosis, and remote
sensing for environmental assessment and will
remain open for one to two years.
“It was truly inspiring to see a Malawi-man-
ufactured drone only built by students under
Virginia Tech guidance,” said Michael Scheiben-
reif, drone corridor lead with UNICEF, who was
on-hand to witness and take part in the training
opportunity.
“This could have the potential to deliver med-
icine to remote and hard to access communities
and is a great example of how important it is
to build local capacity in the drone sector. If we
can build an ecosystem of drone experts locally,
we can ensure these solutions are sustainable
and embedded within the communities they
service,” Scheibenreif said.
The UNICEF drone coordinator said that after
witnessing the manufacture and flight of the
EcoSoar, he sees great opportunity for drones to
leapfrog over broken infrastructure to carry life-
saving materials
to places where
developed
transportation
networks do not
exist.
Kochersberger
said he plans to
return to Malawi
with a produc-
tion-ready ver-
sion of EcoSoar
in 2018 and see
its adoption by
the innovators
who attended
the workshop.
MOMENTUM
WINTER'17

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