Drone Delivery

Drones are without a doubt the future of delivery with faster and more efficient transit times. The problem with current ideas is that all of them are the same, they carry light payloads over short distances. Dronamics looks to separate themselves from the pack with a cargo drone called Black Swan that can carry payloads weighing up to 800 pounds over a range of 1,550 miles.

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AN Post made the first successful delivery of a package by drone in Ireland. The unmanned aerial system (UAS), nicknamed “Postman Padraig” delivered the small parcel from Roonagh pier in Mayo to a postal operative on Clare Island, around 3:30 pm, last Thursday.

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Amazon’s vision of delivering packages to customers via drones is still in progress a new patent was filed by the e-commerce giant based out of Seattle. The biggest challenge they face is safety. With drones flying throughout the sky, autonomously, they need to prove that they are a safe means of delivering items to get the approval from the government and Federal Aviation Association (FAA).

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The race to who can make the best delivery drone system is in full effect as Matternet raises $16 million with the help of Boeing HorizonX Ventures. There are so many different ways drones can be used to deliver things like packages ordered from online retailers or medicine from a doctor, but Matternet plans to use its drones to deliver items from peer to peer.

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Last year the Workhorse Group demonstrated their HorseFly drone delivery system for the first time. In April of this year, we reported that workhorse received a patent for their HorseFly truck-launched, drone delivery system. Now the company announces that their trail program will start in Loveland, Ohio. Packages delivered by drone, a scenario that once seemed like a long way off, is now rapidly becoming a reality.

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Two Spanish YouTubers, called deDrones did just that. They set out to see if they could actually build a drone made of pizza and fly it. Without giving away the plot, you can imagine that it takes a special kind of pizza to be able to carry the weight of the battery, flight controller, camera, etc and deal with the forces that are created by the propellers during flight. Watch the short video below to see if the pizza-drone actually flies. Come to think of it, this is not the first time we covered an edible drone.

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After Republicans gave up on a plan to privatize air traffic control yesterday, the House of Representatives approved a five-year Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill featuring among other things, support from both parties to expand commercial drone operations in the US.

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After the recent patents that were granted to Amazon, the latest drone-related patent has been awarded by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to the HorseFly Truck Launched Drone Package Delivery System from the Workhorse Group.

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A few years ago, the California-based startup company, Zipline started a nationwide drone blood delivery system in Rwanda. Since then they have flown some 187,500 miles, delivering over 7,000 units of blood in more than 4,000 flights. The company is now introducing a new fixed wing drone, which they claim is the world’s fastest delivery drone with a top speed of almost 80 mph. Zipline has also re-designed their distribution centers and logistical operations to bring the time it takes to get a drone ready from 10 minutes to only one.

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The largest courier company in China, SF Holding Co. was granted a government license to operate drones, opening up the possibility for parcel deliveries by drone. More than 40 billion packages were shipped around China in 2017 and that number is expected to rise to 49 billion in 2018 according to the State Post Bureau, China’s delivery-industry watchdog.

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Earlier this month Drone Delivery Canada conducted its first drone test flights in the US. The company made the news back in February when it received a compliance certificate from Transport Canada that allows them to fly beyond line-of-sight. the test flights took place at one of the seven FAA-designated UAS Test Sites, Grifiss International Airport.

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One of the best examples of drone deliveries must be Zipline’s blood and medical supply delivery system in Rwanda. The San Francisco-based company has successfully used drones to fly “more than 187,500 miles, delivering 7,000 units of blood over 7,500 flights” since they launched their service in Africa. Could medical cargo benefitting from using a drone to deliver supplies open up the skies for more routine drone deliveries?

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New research shows that delivery drones can lessen the burden on the environment and deliver certain packages faster than trucks, which are responsible for about 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. As you’d expect, there are a few caveats though.
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Drone deliveries may become a reality sooner than expected now that Drone Delivery Canada Corp. received a compliance certificate from the federal government last week.

The Compliant UAV Operator Special Flight Operations Certificate (SFOC) that the Vaughan-based company received from Transport Canada, allows for beyond “line-of-sight” drone operations, which is crucial in commercial drone deliveries.

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Europe’s largest city, London is not ready for drone deliveries, autonomous vehicles or car sharing apps, like Uber, the transport committee of the London Assembly said in a report on Tuesday.

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Singapore wants in on the rapidly developing drone industry. The areas of interest are the driverless cars, delivery drone, and drone-taxis. Like Dubai, Singapore is interested in transforming the way good and products are moving around the city. Airbus is also testing drone-taxis, as we reported on before.

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Boeing unveiled an “unmanned electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) cargo air vehicle (CAV) prototype”, which boils down to a giant cargo carrying drone, capable of airlifting 500 pounds of payload. The aerospace company said it is a prototype for future cargo-carrying unmanned aircraft.

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Silicon Valley drone company, Zipline has teamed up with the Rwandan health ministry to deliver blood and other urgently needed medical supplies to hospitals around the country much faster than before. Blood deliveries by drone have reduced the time it takes to get blood to where it is needed, from four hours on average to half an hour. The Zipline delivery drones can fly up to 65 mph and have a 47-mile service radius. Over the last year, the drones have completed over 5,500 units of blood, often in life-saving situations to 12 regional hospitals. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles has helped to reduce maternal deaths, a quarter of which are the result of blood loss during childbirth.

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Blood delivered by drone may soon be a reality in Palo Alto, California as the Palo Alto and Stanford Blood Center is making a pitch to the Federal Aviation Administration. Blood-carrying drones may start making their first deliveries early 2018.

For this project, the city has partnered with Stanford Blood Center and drone manufacturer Matternet on a proposal to the Federal Aviation Administration. If the name Matternet sounds familiar, that would be correct. That is the same company that is currently testing drone deliveries with Mercedes-Benz in Zurich, Switzerland.

Under the FAA pilot program, the proposal is seeking an “approved flight path” between the Stanford Blood Center and Stanford Hospital, west of Junipero Serra Boulevard.

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Elroy Air, a San Francisco, California-based cargo drone start-up company announced that is has raised $4.6 million in funding. The cargo drones, Elroy Air is planning to produce, will be capable of transporting up to 150 pounds of cargo for up to 300 miles. Most of the funding came from Levitate Capital, Homebrew, Shasta Ventures, and Lemnos, according to Quartz.

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On Tuesday, a Southern California man and woman got busted by the police for delivering drugs by drone to their customers in a nearby parking lot. The couple, Benjamin Paul Baldassarre, 39, and Ashley Lauren Carroll, 31, lived with a 9-year-old girl in their drug littered home. They were charged with possession of controlled substances for sale, possession of drug paraphernalia and child endangerment, City News Service reported.

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