How can a drone deliver goods?
Most of the proposed solutions currently use copters with
Amazon was one of the first to trydeliver your packages by drones. In 2013, the company announced plans to use multicopters to deliver cargo within 30 minutes. On December 7, 2016, Amazon Prime Air successfully delivered a package to Cambridge, England. Amazon posted a video about this event on its official YouTube channel.
How Amazon Delivered Packages By Drone
In December 2013, Amazon, the largest online retailer, announced its fastest way to deliver purchases – Amazon Prime Air.With the help of the service, purchases made in the Amazon online store will be delivered to customers within 30 minutes, which is 4 times faster than the current fastest delivery method of Amazon Prime Now.
Everything is supposed to work pretty wellsimply. The customer places an online order and specifies Prime Air as the delivery method. At the company's logistics center, the product selected by the customer is loaded onto the drone. Then the UAV flies to the specified address, lands, unloads the goods and departs. After that, the client picks up the packaging with the goods from the ground.
Where are the goods going to be stored?
In a project from Amazon, the idea was voiced that warehouses for goods will be located on balloons, as logistics centers for storing goods and launching drones.
In addition to delivery of warehouse goods, there will also be urgentdelivery, for example, of groceries and prepared meals. Speed is also important when delivering medicines and blood samples. In 2016, the Californian company Zipline, in agreement with the government of the African state of Rwanda, began delivering donated blood and medicines using UAVs.
The process is organized as follows:a doctor in a clinic that needs an urgent blood supply sends a request via SMS to a special logistics center. After receiving the application, the center workers load supplies into the drone and launch it. The project uses aircraft-type UAVs, and takeoff is carried out using a catapult.
Is it safe?
In addition to developing drones, the company formulated the concept of dividing airspace between manned aircraft and drones.
For security, Amazon offersLimit the maximum altitude for drones to 400 feet (~ 122 m), which is 100 feet (~ 30 m) less than the minimum permitted altitude for civil aviation.
However, none of the major playerscame up with the perfect way to get my package. Planting cargo in backyards and driveways raises safety concerns for both people and cargo.
How will the space around us change?
A future where hordes of drones buzz around yoursat home, sitting down, picking up groceries, delivering parcels, all this awaits us in the near future. Architects and builders may have to rethink the overall design of a home to accommodate remote delivery. This could result in drone landing pads being installed on mailboxes or on roofs or on windowsills.
The new architecture could transform entire neighborhoods to include unmanned airspace, as well as traffic patterns designed to keep residents safe.
Valqari, a Chicago based company founded in 2017year, is developing drone delivery mailboxes that can accept all types of shipments, from retail parcels to restaurant meals. The top of the mailbox acts as a landing pad and the drone activates a sliding door into the space where packages can be put, explains Valqari founder and CEO Ryan Walsh.
Paramount condominium building in South FloridaMiami Worldcenter was designed to include a similar skyport. This is a rooftop platform that a drone can land on or take off from.
Another concept based on which you canto launch unmanned delivery in residential areas was proposed by Walmart Inc. The retailer has applied for a patent for a delivery chute installed in an apartment building. The drones will drop packages into a chute onto a conveyor belt that will transport the packages to the building's post office for distribution.
Solar-powered mailboxescould provide their own electricity and even generate enough electricity to feed back into the grid. If there are a lot of drones, then you can place transport sensors on them, for example, in order to learn about accidents and road conditions in real time earlier.
And what about Russia?
In June 2014, in the city of Syktyvkar, DoDo Pizza, together with the Russian startup Copter Express, carried out pizza delivery by drones.
The clients were ordinary residentscities walking in crowded places. A company representative (an active seller) approached them and offered to place an order for pizza, which a drone would deliver by air. People were interested, they made orders, after which a drone flew to them within 15 minutes and launched the pizza on a cable. The representative removed the pizza from the cable, handed it over to the buyer and made a cash settlement with him.
In September 2015, the mobile operator Yota, in partnership with Copter-Express, delivered its SIM cards using drones.
For this purpose, promotional stands were installed in four Moscow parks, to which the drone flew. The sales girl took off the SIM card from the drone and gave it to the client.
In Russia, the regulation of UAV flights and the possibility of delivering cargo by them is also in the field of forming a legal framework. This process is carried out by NTI Aeronet.
At the beginning of November 2020, we discussed in Moscow onwhat territories the drones will be tested in. For this, it is planned to create from 2 to 5 test zones throughout Russia. The first to consider are the districts of Moscow and the Moscow Ring Road without dense development, as well as the territory of the Skolkovo innovation center. The department has special plans for it: here they can test the delivery of urgent and non-standard cargo, as well as practice "rescue" operations.
The first flights are not expected until the end of 2021 -early 2022. The test regime is introduced for up to three years. Its goal is not only to see the drones "in action", but also to help make relevant changes to the legislation.
Test results, or rather attenuationmany participants of the drone market are waiting for the formal part. In their opinion, the current requirements impede the development of the industry due to many restrictions and difficulties.
What's the bottom line?
The FAA is currently working toLink the registration of unmanned aerial vehicles to uniform tracking requirements. This will allow the agency to identify drone operators and digitally track their vehicles from takeoff to landing.
One of the important innovations that should appear is collision avoidance technology.
From a consumer perspective, the public willneed guarantees of privacy. For example, in Australia, testing of Wing drones led to complaints from residents of suburban Canberra that the drones were noisy and intrusive. Based on this feedback, Wing has developed new propellers that produce a quieter, lower sound, says an Alphabet spokesman. As for privacy, she added, drone cameras capture low-resolution still images that are used solely for navigation.
Overall, the main concern is safety,says German scientist Mario Schaarschmidt, who specializes in logistics, technology and innovation management in the service sector. This year, Dr. Schaarschmidt and his colleagues at Koblenz-Landau University published a paper that tried to assess whether consumers were willing to use drone delivery. People surveyed in the study most often reported fears about their personal safety, as well as the risk of the drone breaking down.
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