It is a busy day at the offices in Sluppen. The previous appointment had to be cancelled due to an urgent trip to a NATO conference in Riga. He himself has only a week in Trondheim before heading on to Sweden.
“It’s all happening at once right now. We’re in the middle of a process of hiring six new employees,” says Aviant’s CEO, Lars Erik Fagernæs.
It is far from the first hectic period he has had in recent years, when free time and sleep have almost felt like luxuries.
“There hasn’t been a single day in the past two months when we haven’t worked until one in the morning. So much is happening – in a positive way, though.”
There was little to suggest that Aviant would be valued at close to 100 million NOK when the company was first founded in 2020.
“There was practically no market for drone delivery when we started.”
“They said we were completely mad”
NTNU students Lars Erik Fagernæs, Herman Øie Kolden and Bernhard Paus Græsdal met while on exchange at MIT.
Their exchange year took a sudden turn when the pandemic struck. But it proved to be the perfect opportunity for the trio to test a new idea. From across the Atlantic, they read in an NRK article that people in rural areas were unable to get tested for coronavirus because they lived too far from testing stations.
“I had worked with drone technology before. If you’re not transporting from Røros to Trondheim because of a lack of logistics, why not use a drone?”
The idea that would shape the coming years: to fly coronavirus tests and blood samples out to rural communities using drones.
“At first, people said we were completely mad. The average age of the team was 24. We were going to fly 120 kilometres in civilian European airspace with blood samples that no one had flown before, and we had no money. So we got a lot of noes at the start,” says Fagernæs.
The Silicon Valley mentality
Tech giant Amazon has been trying since 2013 to launch home delivery by drone. It has invested two billion dollars in its Octocopter project without much success.
How were a group of Norwegian students in their mid‑twenties supposed to compete with Goliath?
“I think it was mostly a question of ‘why not?’”
Much of the drive came from earlier projects. After his first year, Fagernæs took leave from his engineering studies to focus on another start-up. Trondheim was swapped for Silicon Valley.
“There I was hit in the face by this hopeless optimism that anything is possible. In Norway there’s often an exaggerated negativity or pessimism that sets limits.”
“Cynics may be right, optimists get rich”
Amazon’s costly drone venture did not discourage the group, who decided to give it an honest try.
“There was also this ‘how hard can it be?’ optimism.”
In 2020 they received funding from NTNU Discovery and TrønderEnergi to develop a home delivery prototype – a total of NOK 125,000. The rest they financed themselves.
At the time, the company had a completely different name: Norwegian Robotics, a name Lars Erik still cannot say without laughing.
At the start of 2021 the company finally had the chance to test their original idea. The first flight from Røros to Trondheim was completed.
Lars Erik’s master’s supervisor, Frank Lindseth and Driv NTNU, became important supporters of the project.
“Frank put us in touch with Jan Gunnar Skogås, head of department at Røros Hospital. He was very positive about the project and agreed to take part in the tests.”
“In my mind, those three are heroes. If I ever write a book, they’ll be the superheroes – the ones who dare to give people a chance and believe in them,” says Lars Erik, adding:
“Try being 25 and persuading a hospital, in the middle of a pandemic, to test drones. Ninety‑nine out of a hundred doctors wouldn’t even have bothered to pick up the phone.”
The first flights delivering coronavirus tests, medicines and blood samples were a success. Drone delivery to rural areas was not only possible – it was highly efficient.
Shortly afterwards, the company gained national attention in the news, appearing on the front page of Dagens Næringsliv and on NRK’s evening news.
National drone initiative in healthcare
Fast forward four years.
After a long application process, Aviant has finally received funding from the Norwegian Research Council. The funded project focuses on a broader national initiative to use drones in the healthcare system.
The funding has also enabled Aviant to hire six new employees. The project, Pilot Helse, aims to unite Norway’s healthcare sector in the field of drones.
“There have been separate drone projects in Northern, Central, Western and South‑Eastern Norway. But people in the north don’t have different health problems from those on the west coast. The idea is that we can finally implement drones nationally across the Norwegian healthcare system.”
In the coming period they aim to solve two things: logistics and planning.
“If you’re at a hospital in Brønnøysund, you have to send lab samples to get results. Cars go once a day. If you arrive after the car has left, you have to wait 24 hours to send the biological sample, and then maybe another 24 hours for the result. And if you’re short of a biologist, all patients might have to be driven three to five hours to another hospital.”
He says the first test rounds will likely take place this autumn. The second issue Fagernæs hopes to address concerns emergency situations.
“If an accident happens, the emergency medical centre gets the call. They may be unsure whether to send one, two or five ambulances. The crews are often uncertain: is it life‑threatening? How serious is it? You sit tense for half an hour before you arrive.”
“If a drone is sent out in advance and streams live video from the scene, you can start planning and coordinating before you get there,” Fagernæs concludes.
The project could likely also be used by other emergency services, such as the police and fire brigade. This is possible because it uses Norwegian technology rather than Chinese components.
NTNU provides access to talent
Aviant currently has 22 employees and operates both home delivery services and partnerships with the Norwegian healthcare sector. They have recently secured an agreement with food delivery giant Foodora in Sweden. Asked why the company is still based in Trondheim, Lars Erik replies:
“It’s probably 90 per cent because of NTNU, because it’s about access to talent. A company is the sum of the people who work there, and the best students are at NTNU.”
