On May 22, the port of Rotterdam was able to celebrate a Dutch premier: the aerial delivery by drone of a parts consignment to Allseas’ Pioneering Spirit, the biggest vessel in the world. Pioneering Spirit is currently moored at Alexiahaven in preparation of upcoming offshore activities. This is actually the first drone delivery ever made in the Netherlands to a vessel. This pilot project, which was set up by Dutch Drone Delta, Allseas and the Port of Rotterdam Authority, is intended to determine whether and how drone deliveries could increase transport efficiency in the port of Rotterdam. The airspace over the port area will be safely managed under the slogan ‘Rotterdam, the safest port to fly’, allowing parties to take optimal advantage of new technologies to make the port safer, smarter and more efficient.
On this debut flight the drone delivered a printed circuit board.
According to Allseas PR manager Jeroen Hagelstein, the offshore industry could also benefit from this new delivery option: “As a provider of technical services to the offshore industry, we are continuously pushing the existing technical boundaries. Pioneering Spirit is the example. With this pilot, we want to test whether drones could be an effective means to quickly and efficiently deliver materials to our vessels. Helicopter, for example, are not always available on every location. Drone delivery can be of added value when we are in urgent need of parts which we can’t repair ourselves – for example network switches or computer chips.”
Stephan van Vuren, one of the people behind the Dutch Drone Delta initiative: “The sky’s the limit when it comes to using drones in the port area. Incident prevention and control, for instance; or water pollution; firefighting; monitoring port operations or damage. Other examples include everything from systems and bridge inspections, construction and maintenance of infrastructure, and deliveries to ships and oil rigs, to the rapid medical transport of blood and human organs. And in the longer term, we may even be seeing heavy freight deliveries and passenger transport! This pilot project in the port of Rotterdam has allowed us to directly demonstrate the added value of drone technology in a complex environment.”
Source Port of Rotterdam
Media gallery: Allseas’ record-breaking heavy lift vessel “Pioneering Spirit” has successfully executed the single-lift installation of the processing platform.
