Swedish company Everdrone has completed the first autonomous drone delivery between two hospitals in Gothenburg, Sweden. The delivery drone transported a medical payload a distance of 4.4 km using onboard sensors and limited GPS.
Uber Air has completed its first high-density urban food delivery by drone in partnership with ModalAI. The collaboration saw Uber Air’s drone successfully fly food from a pick-up location to a pre-determined drop-off location where a courier would be waiting in the case of a real delivery.
Google’s Wing Aviation already has Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval. Amazon is seeking it. And, now UPS Flight Forward, a subsidiary of the delivery giant is also seeking government approval to start an advanced drone delivery service. The delivery company plans to use an extensive network of commercial drones to fly over crowded areas, at night, and beyond-line-of-sight (BVLOS). UPS created the new subsidiary, UPS Flight Forward to oversee the drone delivery operations.
Drones have been flying for the last century, but delivery drones from Amazon have recently come to life. Amazon wants to deliver your packages by drone, lowering costs, and speeding up deliveries. Amazon continues to invest heavily in its delivery drone project, creating prototypes and testing deliveries in multiple locations.
Drones aren’t new, but delivery drones are, like the one created by Google’s Wing Aviation. Wing Aviation is taking drone deliveries head-on in Australia, Finland, and the US and is delivering goods right now by drone. As Wing Aviation and similar companies continue to invest in drones, drone delivery will become the next big thing for the commercial drone world.
A Canadian drone company just finished testing if it was possible to deliver an AED (Automated External Defibrillator) faster by drone than by ambulance. And the answer is, yes. Drone Delivery Canada showed that a drone can deliver an AED faster than traditional transportation can. Every time they simulated an emergency situation, the drone arrived on site ahead of the response team in the ambulance.
Amazon delivery drones might be used to spy on your home. An Amazon patent filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office on June 12, 2015, and granted June 4 of this year, indicates that the e-commerce giant is planning to use its network of drones to form a neighborhood watch system and keep an eye on your home. The company calls it “surveillance as a service” and it would have its delivery drones record footage of your home when they are out delivering packages.
With their ride-sharing service, Uber has transformed the way people get from one place to another. Now the company is hoping to revolutionize the way people get their food as well. Last week the company announced plans to start testing the first ever commercial application of food delivery by drone in high-density urban areas in the US. As readers of DroneDJ will know Uber is far from the only company looking to commercialize deliveries by drone. Other competitors in the drone delivery space, of course, are Amazon, Google’s Wing Aviation, UPS, Matternet, and Zipline to name a few.
In partnership with UPS, a hospital in North Carolina is pioneering a drone delivery program to speed up the delivery of critical medical samples across the WakeMed hospital campus. Medical samples are put in a small cooler that is carried by the drone to a lab roughly 3/4 of a mile away. It takes the unmanned aircraft less than four minutes to make the delivery. On foot, the trip takes about 45 minutes.
Today, Zipline the San Francisco based drone manufacturer and the logistical services company, launched a program in Ghana to deliver medical supplies by drone. In partnership with the government of the West African country, Zipline will fly 30 drones from four distribution centers to deliver medical supplies, such as vaccines, blood, and medication to 2,000 healthcare facilities across the country on a daily basis. Zipline also confirmed that it is looking to expand their services to other countries and to take their delivery service by drone from testing-phase to live-deliveries in the U.S., sometime this summer.
Google’s Wing Aviation receives the first FAA approval for a drone delivery service in the US. We already reported on this two weeks ago, saying that it would likely be Wing Aviation that would receive the first approval for a delivery service by drone. Today, the commercial drone operator received important government approval to operate as an airline, which gives it the legal authority to deliver products by drone to real customers. The company plans to start routine deliveries by drone in two rural communities in Virginia within the next few months.
Today, Google parent Alphabet Inc’s, Wing made its first delivery by drone in Cranberry, Australia after receiving approval from the country’s Civil Aviation Authority. Initially, the drone delivery service will only be available to 100 eligible homes in Grace, Palmerston, and Franklin. Later it will be slowly expanded to other customers in Harrison and Gungahlin.
Back in December 2013, Jeff Bezos famously announced on ’60 Minutes’ that deliveries by drone would be routine by 2018. And, even though that scenario hasn’t quite panned out a lot of progress has been made in the drone industry, including deliveries by drone. Just see what there are doing in North Carolina if you want any proof. Amazon, however, has been one of the most active companies to file for drone-related patents. One of which includes an “airborne fulfillment center” (AFC) such as an airship or blimp that would float around and from which drones would complete the last mile delivery. Well, a computer-generated video was circulated online that shows just what such a drone future according to Amazon might look like. It includes a massive Amazon blimp. Check this out.
As you probably know, Amazon already has a fairly large number of drone delivery patents. However, earlier this month the e-commerce giant received their latest patent. This one is designed to guide drones to their destinations and to verify that the delivery by drone has been made at the correct address. Amazon filed for the patent back in 2016 and was awarded the patent “Drone Marker and Landing Zone Verification” on February 5th, 2019.
Drones might transport medicines to hospitals in the Scottish Highlands, according to BBC News. NHS Highland, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the University of the Highlands and Islands are currently researching the potential of using drones to deliver medical supplies to hospitals and care homes in the Scottish Highlands.
Can you imagine, your mail delivered by drone over 60 miles? This is what happened the last month in Switzerland when a Swiss-built fixed-wing twin-engine drone delivered mail from Centovalli to Wolfenschiessen over a distance of about 60.8 miles in 1 hour and 15 minutes. This story comes with a breathtaking video that shows you how the drone used its anti-collision systems (FLARM, a Swiss anti-collision system) and GPS tracking to navigate its way over the mountain passes, reaching a maximum altitude of 10,656 feet. After flying for more than one hour at an average speed of 48 mph the fixed-wing drone had about 45% battery left. Visual line of sight was maintained with the use of a spotter airplane that followed the drone for the entire journey.
Fyi – we have seen more tests in the past that took place in Switzerland, for instance, this one where 100 deliveries were made by drone in Zurich.
Deliveries by drone are making progress around the world. More so than here in the US for now, but hopefully, that will change soon. In the island-nation of Vanuatu, vaccines were delivered by drone this week. Many of the villages spread out over the various islands are so hard to reach that about 20% of the children miss their shots. Drones have shown to be a viable solution to this problem, making Vanuatu the first nation in the world with a childhood vaccine program that is officially drone-dependent.
Google parent Alphabet Inc’s Wing will launch drone deliveries in Finland in the Spring of 2019, according to a statement. The company announced that it will start to deliver goods and packages up to 3.3 pounds in a range of 6.2 miles in Helsinki. Last July, Wing recently became an independent company as it was spun out of Alphabet’s X research division. The company is led by James Ryan Burgess and has been actively testing with drone deliveries in Australia, delivering burritos among other things.
The Denver Post had an interesting article yesterday. The newspaper wondered: “Where are the drones? Amazon’s customers are still waiting.” Five years ago, the CEO of the retail giant, Jeff Bezos predicted that drones would be delivering packages to customers’ doorsteps by now. As we all know that hasn’t quite happened yet. Even though delivery by drone is being tested extensively around the world, practical limitations, such as limited battery life, legal restrictions, like not being allowed to fly-beyond-line-of-sight without a waiver, as well as other hurdles, such as the need for Remote ID, large-scale implementation seems to be years away. In a recent NY Times article, I was quoted as saying it will be 2025 before “companies like Amazon will make routine drone deliveries to consumers.” What do you think? Let us know in the poll below.
Organ deliveries must be among the most time-sensitive deliveries known to man. The more time it takes to get an organ from its donor to a patient, the greater the risk of a failed transplantation. Dr. Joseph Scalea had been looking for a better and more importantly, faster way of getting life-saving organs to his patients. This first test in which a DJI Matric 600 Pro drone successfully delivered a kidney, may be an indication that he has found one.
Last Wednesday the Japan Post Co. started transporting documents by drone in Fukushima, Japan. it was a first in the history of the country, following an easing of regulations to deal with labor shortages in the transportation industry. The drone document delivery service will run six days a month and will complete two round trips on those selected days. The intention is to expand the service to rural areas and islands in the future.
Drone deliveries are taking off around the world. We already reported on companies like Drone Delivery Canada, Zipline, DHL, Amazon, Google, Airbus, Matternet, and others. Yesterday The Economist had an article about deliveries by drone. The story focusses on fast food via drone in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Uber is looking to hire an operations executive to start delivering food by drone as early as next year according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. According to the since-deleted job listing, the drone executive will “enable safe, legal, efficient and scalable flight operations.” A spokesperson for the San Francisco company said that the posting did “not fully reflect our program, which is still in very early days.” It does indeed seem to be very early as the FAA first has to develop the rules that will allow commercial drone operators to fly beyond visual-line-of-sight and over crowds of people. But, like Amazon, Uber is not afraid to show its ambition.
They have been at it for a few years now but earlier this month, DHL, GIZ on behalf of BMZ and Wingcopter, flew the DHL Parcelcopter 4.0 over 37 miles in about 40 minutes to a remote island in Lake Victoria as part of the project ‘Deliver Future’. The tilt-rotor drone can perform vertical take-offs and landings. However, once in the air it can transition to a more energy-efficient fixed-wing done that flies a lot faster.
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