Drone Delivery Service – Feasible, But Is It a Good Idea?

Will Amazon’s drone delivery service goal every become a reality? Will the day come, when we look above and see thousands of drones busily zipping along carrying mail, parcels, medicine, pizza and any other small to medium sized item?

What will happen when we want an extra fast delivery? Will a Ferrari Red drone thunder across the sky and deliver us a nice hot pizza?

It is probably only a matter of a few years before we have our skies full of drones delivering parcels. There certainly are many technical challenges to overcome. We also have many widespread privacy concerns. Or perhaps a drone delivery service will be limited to hard to reach places.

Now, it’s not just Amazon which have big active projects in place for drones in deliver goods. Some really big players are all in. So if they want thousands of drones delivering parcels across the globe, then it will probably happen. Let’s see.

Germany’s Post Office in fact beat Amazon and Google with it’s launch of the first drone delivery service. France’s La Poste launched a program in December 2014 to use drones to deliver parcels in all weathers up to 12 miles away. Both Switzerland and Finland Postal Services already have drone parcel delivery test projects in place. China’s is moving fast with drone delivery services. Their largest mail carrier firm SF Express is already using drones and deliver 500 parcels per day to remote areas.

That’s just a few mentioned. There are many more mail and courier companies with active programs. This article looks at the pros and cons or the good and not so good reasons for deliveries by drone. We also look at some of the technical challenges which need to be overcome.

Drone Delivery Service – Is It The Future?

By Liz Greene

A little over two years ago, Amazon announced that their smile emblazoned packages would soon be making their way to our homes via drone. At the time, most of us considered the idea either a publicity stunt or pure science fiction.

But lo and behold, the future of drone delivery is creeping nearer and nearer, as Amazon has already begun testing the Prime Air Delivery Service in “multiple international locations”.

While delivery by way of drone has numerous benefits, there are also some serious drawbacks that will need to be addressed before the system will ever meet with any major success.

Drones Delivering Packages: The Good

When you break it down, UAV delivery is far better for the environment than traditional methods. Compare the impact of an airborne, battery-powered drone delivering your order versus a large truck traveling over the road. There’s obviously an enormous gain when it comes to emissions and drones are energy efficient. This also applies when comparing it to you driving your car to the store for the same purchase. Furthermore, the more people that take advantage of drone delivery, the less weight trucks will be carrying — which means there will be a far smaller impact on our infrastructure.

Using UAVs as delivery vehicles has another interesting side effect — innovation. The list of the FAA’s current commercial exemptions shows a surprisingly high number of businesses are utilizing popular mainstream drones with professional capabilities, such as DJI’s Phantom 3 model.

While these drone cameras do the handiwork for many industries, they lack the capability to carry packages and that’s where innovation comes in. The ubiquitous quadcopter configuration didn’t seem to work for Amazon’s purposes, so their research and development team created an new drone prototype to fit the bill.

Drone Parcel Delivery – The Bad

One major flaw in the concept is the lack of designated delivery zones. Packages delivered by hand to residences and businesses are deposited in mailboxes, placed on porches or left with doormen — options that simply don’t work for drone deliveries. Creating an infrastructure of convenient and secure areas for packages to be dropped will take both ingenuity and a heap of money.

UAVs are incredibly vulnerable pieces of equipment, particularly so during landings. If drones are landing in unprotected areas near residences, they will be subject to potential damage by pets, children, and the odd shotgun. In such cases, not only would the expensive UAV be a loss, but so might be the package it was carrying. This could translate to millions of dollars in lost revenue per year, as well as some angry customers.

Last, but certainly not least, is the possibility of personal injury. UAVs are not a perfected piece of technology just yet and while they have safety features such as prop guards and ‘return to home’ systems, drone fails can and do arise arise. If a delivery drone were to harm an individual (or damage personal property), the drone courier would be liable — leading to costly lawsuits and settlements. For drones to deliver mail, parcels, pizza, beer and groceries etc, they will have to be 110% safe.

If Amazon and other companies are able to work out the kinks associated with drone package delivery, then this could be just the beginning of an exciting future of commercial UAV use. Let’s cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Drone Delivery Service – Technical Challenges

There are so many technical innovations still required for drones to be used in their thousands, possibly even millions worldwide as a delivery service. Some of these technical challenges are;

Longer flight times – drone flight time average about 20 to 25 minutes presently.
Quieter drones – drone are quite noisy. With thousands flying over us, we could be pretty loud.
Collision avoidance systems and ultra safe drones with no crashes are a must. Safety must come first.
Possible flight paths

There are many privacy concerns regarding drones. It is no doubt that these the technical challenges will be found. The other questions is – Do we really want thousands or even hundreds of thousands of drones flying about delivering all types of parcels.

Perhaps, a drone delivery service will just be used in far out areas where it is not cost efficient to drive into the country side to deliver 1 item. Perhaps drones will be used widely to deliver parcels where there is very little road or rail infrastructure. Time will tell.

The below video shows of the new Yuneec Typhoon H which has real collision avoidance sensors which is a big challenge to overcome for drones delivery parcels. The Typhoon H should be released fairly soon and will retail under USD 2000.00 I believe.