Hong Kong Rescuers to Pilot Defibrillator Drones

Hong Kong’s Civil Aid Service (CAS), the government’s auxiliary rescue force, plans to pilot drones that carry automated external defibrillators and other emergency kit to people in trouble on the city’s hills. The CAS chief staff officer, Leung Kwun-hong, set out the plan on 25 October at a mountain safety event in Tsuen Wan, according to a government press release.

“Under the Low-altitude Economy Regulatory Sandbox projects, the CAS will pilot the use of drones for patrols, hill fire detection, and the delivery of mountain-area equipment or emergency supplies such as automated external defibrillators,” Leung said, adding that this “will enable rescuers to seize the golden hour more effectively.” No start date, number of drones, locations or operator were given.

In brief

Hong Kong’s Civil Aid Service says it will pilot drones for patrols, hill fire detection and delivering kit such as defibrillators to mountain rescues.
The pilot sits under the government’s Low-altitude Economy Regulatory Sandbox, a scheme for supervised drone trials.
The CAS already uses drones in daily work and is part of an existing sandbox project at one of its camps.
No timetable, fleet size or results have been published.

The plan was announced at a hiking-safety day

The CAS held its Mountaineering Safety Promotion Day at Sha Tsui Road Playground in Tsuen Wan with other government departments and mountaineering groups, the release says. Guests included the Commissioner of Police, Chow Yat-ming, and the Controller of the Government Flying Service, Eddie Liu.

Leung said the CAS “has been actively employing drones in daily tasks and operations” to improve the efficiency of its mountain rescue work. He pointed to a joint operation in August with the police, the Fire Services Department and the Government Flying Service that found a woman “who had been missing for more than a week at Lei Yue Mun” and took her to hospital.

Public broadcaster RTHK reported the same plan in Chinese that evening, saying the CAS would trial drones for patrols and spotting hill fires, and test using them to carry mountain equipment or first-aid kit such as defibrillators.

What the sandbox lists already show

The Low-altitude Economy Regulatory Sandbox is run by a government working group under the Transport and Logistics Bureau (TLB). The bureau says it received 72 applications for the first batch and selected 38 projects, covering uses from emergency rescue to drone delivery and inspection, and launched a more advanced “Sandbox X” in November 2025.

The CAS is already involved in one project. A TLB list of projects implemented by the end of March 2026 shows Esri China (Hong Kong) as applicant, working with the CAS, the Greater Bay Area Low Altitude Economy Alliance, China Mobile Hong Kong and Town Formation, on “Emergency / search and rescue / facilities surveillance” at the CAS’s Tai Tan Camp. The CAS website describes that work as drone patrols, hazard detection and real-time monitoring at its Tai Tan and Yuen Tun camps, and says its drones carry thermal imaging cameras and speakers to search for injured and missing hikers.

Neither the TLB lists nor the CAS site mention defibrillator delivery. The release does not say whether that part of the pilot is a new sandbox application or an extension of the existing project.

Drones carrying medical cargo are being tested elsewhere. Uganda’s health ministry has test-flown drones carrying lab samples from Lake Victoria islands, and in Guangzhou a rescue robot contest this week included drone supply drops in mountain terrain. In the UK, a trial over Chorley has begun testing how drone traffic systems can give safety-of-life flights priority alongside commercial operators.

Minutes matter more than kilometres on a hillside

The case for this kind of pilot is straightforward. A cardiac arrest on a trail is a race against time, and the hard part of a mountain rescue is often the last stretch from the nearest road to the casualty. A drone that can fly that stretch with a defibrillator while a team is still climbing is the clearest version of the “golden hour” argument Leung made. Combining it with patrols and fire spotting also gives one fleet several jobs, which matters for an auxiliary service.

Hong Kong has an advantage in that the scheme to approve such flights already exists. The sandbox gives a public body a defined route to test low-altitude flights under supervision rather than negotiating each case from scratch, and the CAS already flies drones and is in one project.

The pilot is a statement of intent with no published detail

What has been announced is a sentence in a speech, not a programme. There is no start date, no fleet size, no named site and no measure of success, and the defibrillator element does not yet appear in any published sandbox list. That makes it hard to judge how soon a hiker might see one arrive. How rescue drones will share low airspace with other flights is also unanswered.

The useful marker will be when the TLB adds a CAS defibrillator-delivery entry to its project lists, with a route, a time window and a named operator.