We have recently reported about DHL’s plans on integrating multirotors in the delivery chain of some mission critical goods such as medicines, see the original post here.
The multirotors selected for the mission are the Microdrones md4-1000. Not so “micro” for the standards of this blog.
After the news about books and pizza drone delivery services, and the recent announcement of the launch of “Amazon Prime Air”, now also the German express courier delivery service DHL wants to enter the game of quadcopter deliveries.
For the test drive, or maiden flight, the selection of what to carry and deliver was highly significant and probably want to send a message: a packet with a medicine was delivered from a Bonn pharmacy to the DHL headquarters, a two minutes journey.
This screenshot from the DHL web site indeed is indicative of an attention of DHL to the logistics of deliveries for Life Sciences and Health Care:
The quadcopter weights about 3Kg and was called the “Paketkopter”.
The test flights required permission from local aviation authorities.
Check out this video by a DHL fan who built a supposedly unofficial DHL helicopter before the official quadcopter was released :
So in one way or another, we’ll probably see DHL in the air soon.
We have recently reported about new possibly upcoming drone/multirotor based delivery services for books and pizza.
How about extending multirotor deliveries to the full amazon catalogue (limited to small sized items)? Direct delivery from Amazon to your doorstep in under 30 minutes from the moment you place the order online with the new Amazon Prime Air service.
Here’s the Amazon YouTube video that totalized slightly less than 12 million visits since december 1 2013. In just 5 days this is an amazing page views score. This shows a huge interest from the public that will possibly support the development of the project.
Amazon is realistic and acknowledges that actual implementation of the project could well take a few years. This is a statement on the Amazon page:
“Putting Prime Air into commercial use will take some number of years as we advance the technology and wait for the necessary FAA rules and regulations.”
However right below, in the same page FAQ section, we read:
“Q: When will I be able to choose Prime Air as a delivery option?
A: We hope the FAA’s rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time.”
Indeed, the development of such a multirotor based service will have to deal closely with FAA and it’s regulations. Current rules allow flying any RC model, with a number of restrains, but commercial services require an explicit permit from FAA to be carried out. This is the base for the well know story of Raphael Pirker and the FAA commercial flying ban, where Raphael Pirker aka “Trappy”, funder of Team Black Sheep, was issued a 10.000$ fine by FAA for taking some aerial footage, for money, of the University of Virginia. We covered the story here.
Would FAA allow Amazon to launch such a service, as described in the promotional video above, tomorrow? Likely not for a number of very good reasons in my opinion.
A number of safety concerns are involved in such a project. The machine itself must be full proof with redundant control and power systems. Research required in this field as the technology is still relatively new. What kind of avoidance systems will be in place? Camera/video based? Sonar based? Both? Research required. How do you deal with the dogs welcome committee at landing? (see here). How do you ensure reliable and secure delivery, after all a packet is just left on a front yard, a number of things could happen before the customer actually get it in his hands.
Here’s a video that discusses a number of potential issues:
Despite all these problems to be solved, some kind of minor issues, other more serious, It looks to me that it’s just a matter of time before we get to see drones delivering items to our doorstep. The questions is not really if we are going to see this, but when.
An aerial, unmanned books delivery service might soon start in Australia. Flirtey, a tech statup born in Sidney University might well extend the plan to delivery of other good such as food and drink in the future.
The Flirtey website states that they are building an industry, not a company. At such an early stage of this technology, with so many still unexplored potential applications this might well be true.
Read the story here and here and watch the video:
Similar services are also under experimentation in the US, where Dominos plans to deliver pizza by a special multirotor called, you guessed it, the domicopter. However this one might be more an advertisement move that something that will really happen (in a near future). Here you go with unmanned pizza delivery from Dominos: