Drone Delivery of Medicine on River Route Demonstrated in Hamamatsu

The Yomiuri Shimbun

14:45 JST, February 26, 2025

HAMAMATSU — The shipment of medicine arrived at the elderly woman’s home about 10 kilometers from the pharmacy, just as planned. But this package was delivered from the sky by a drone in an automated system launched by the city of Hamamatsu in January.

A demonstration of the drone delivery service was held on Tuesday for the media, which saw a 76-year-old woman in Hamamatsu’s Tenryu Ward receive a parcel of eye drops from a drone that flew on a route over the Tenryu River.

The system aims to provide access to health supplies for a fee to areas without a pharmacy. Expectations are high that routes will be developed for drones to fly over rivers for the delivery of goods, as they present fewer obstacles than routes in urban areas.

The municipal government has been a pioneer in the development of such routes, and the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry plans to set up routes over designated first-class rivers — which have a total length of 10,000 kilometers — throughout Japan by fiscal 2033.

“In times of disaster, supplies can be transported smoothly if river routes have been established in advance,” said Takahiro Uchida, president of HMK Nexus, a Hamamatsu-based company that provides the service. “By making drones that can carry heavier items, we foresee using them in primary industries such as transporting seedlings and compost.”

“Drone shipping routes are like railroad tracks,” said Kenji Koseki, CEO of Trajectory, Ltd., a Tokyo-based company that designs shipping routes. “Having tracks that can be jointly used would enable us to vastly increase the services that can be provided.”