Walmart Joins the Delivery Drone Race!

Walmart Joins the Delivery Drone Race!

by | Nov 16, 2015 | Air | 0 comments

Walmart is the latest retail giant to consider package delivery via drone Unmanned Cargo Delivery Concept – Chronicle 21 Walmart seeks to test drones for home delivery, pickup  (October 26, 2015) (Editor’s Note: Amazon assures US$1 drone deliveries in 30 minutes. Google promises to cover 5 miles in 5 minutes. What can Walmart offer that is different?) What the Article Chronicles:  The physical retail giant Walmart has applied with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to test drones for several purposes such as home delivery, grocery pickup and warehouse inventory management. The goal? To complement their “vast network of stores, distribution & fulfillment centers and transportation fleet” with a drone flotilla to better expand their commercial reach. After all, “there is a Walmart within five miles of 70 percent of the U.S. population, which creates some unique and interesting possibilities for serving customers with drones”. Taking into consideration current drone technology limitations, it is most likely Walmart will begin by using their drones for inventory management outdoors. These drones (likely based on the DJI Phantom 3 Professional series) would fly around Walmart’s distribution center parking lots and take stock of trailers via electronic tagging (to detect inventory still packed inside their containers). Alternatively, the drones could make visual scans of the inventory inside a typical Walmart million square foot (92,900 square meter) distribution center. The technology employed in this case would likely be similar to the tech employed by South African inventory management startup – DroneScan – which uses UAVs to scan barcodes that would normally be too difficult to reach for humans in a typical warehouse environment. However, Walmart does seem...
Disruptive and Innovative Parcel Drone Deliveries Down Under

Disruptive and Innovative Parcel Drone Deliveries Down Under

by | Nov 6, 2015 | Air | 0 comments

Australia Post is the latest postal service to kick-off its own parcel drone delivery trials Unmanned Cargo Delivery Concept – Chronicle 20 Drone Delivery Down Under  (November 02, 2015) (Editor’s Note: First unmanned mining trucks delivering ore and now UAVs delivering the post, what delivery vehicle will Australia automate next?) Following up on the postal drone delivery trials of SwissPost, Posti and SingPost, Australia Post’s CEO, Ahmed Fahour, confirmed that they are aiming for a 2016 parcel delivery drone trial with a major e-tailer (electronic retailer) who would like to deliver to regional and rural communities in Australia. According to Mr. Fahour, their test drone meets all regulatory flying requirements, has backup engines, and GPS coordination capabilities to deliver packages “right to the customer’s patios”. Each drone would be able to carry a 2 kg (4.4 lb) payload and would cost around AU$10,000 (US$ 7,200). With their potential plans to have 3D printers at their post office locations and the expansion of their parcel pick-up lockers services in addition to the establishment of regular delivery drone services, Australia Post hopes to expand its horizons as a response to the ever growing decline of the letter delivery business which was highlighted by the 207 year old postal delivery service’s first financial loss in 30 years. Personal Take From a personal perspective, one could imagine ordering a product online, having it 3D printed at the local post office and then having it loaded onto a delivery drone for either home or parcel locker delivery. Hopefully, the entrepreneurs selected to participate in the AU$20 million (US$ 14 million) innovation capital fund recently launched by Australia...
Driverless Mining Trucks in the Australian Outback – The Truck of the Future?

Driverless Mining Trucks in the Australian Outback – The Truck of the Future?

by | Oct 27, 2015 | Land | 0 comments

Will driverless truck become the norm? Unmanned Cargo Delivery Concept – Chronicle 19 Rio Tinto shifts to driverless trucks in Australia  (October 19, 2015) (Editor’s Note: Rio Tinto’s Komatsu Autonomous Haulage System trucks in action can be found here. A similar video created by Hitachi trucks can be found here.) The Rio Tinto mining company certainly thinks so. Similar in scope (but not necessarily in size) to the Daimler Freightliner and Mercedes-Benz Actros autonomous truck concepts, the British-Australian mining group currently operates a fleet of 69 automated trucks collectively moving approximately 20 million tons of iron ore per month at the Yandicoogina and Nammuldi mine sites in Pilbara, Western Australia. By eliminating breaks, shift changes and absenteeism, their “autonomous fleet outperforms its manned fleet by an average of 12 percent”, states their iron ore chief executive, Andrew Harding. Automatization improves utilization efficiency and thus reduces haulage costs and capital expenditure costs. Industry insiders estimate each autonomous mining truck can save 500 work hours per year. Official Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) / Drone Name: Autonomous Haulage System (AHS), part of the Rio Tinto “Mine of the Future” program launched back in 2008. Operation Specifics: In operation, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Remotely supervised by a control center 1,200 km (750 miles) away in Perth, Australia. The autonomous trucks depend on GPS directions, Lidar and millimeter wave radar to deliver their loads. Future Applications: Autonomous Haulage Systems are here to stay as the world’s biggest miners turn to technology to cut costs and increase profits. These unmanned trucks will be used in cooperation with Rio Tinto’s “AutoHaul”, their fully-autonomous heavy haul, long distance railway...
Dynamic Drone Duo – Parcel Delivery Edition

Dynamic Drone Duo – Parcel Delivery Edition

by | Oct 21, 2015 | Air | 0 comments

Dynamic Drone Duo – Parcel Delivery Edition When two unmanned delivery drones are better than one Unmanned Cargo Delivery Concept – Chronicle 18   Drones by themselves are wonderful things. Pair them up however, and there is no limit to what they can achieve. Whether they are disposing of nuclear waste or performing firefighting duty aboard U.S. Navy ships, dynamic drone duos are proving that sometimes two drones are better than one. So why not apply the same concept to drone delivery operations? Is a one-two drone punch what commercial drone delivery operations need?  No single parcel delivery drone can do it all. If it flies, its effectiveness is limited by payload capacity. If it rolls or walks, it is limited by restricted pathfinding capabilities given its low vantage point. So why not combine the best of both worlds by creating a Cooperative Robotic System (CRS) that pairs up land- and air-based delivery drones to better map and navigate the challenging urban and suburban environments they operate in? Well, that is exactly what researchers at ETH Zurich’s Autonomous Systems Labs have done. They have partnered their walking robot with a sidekick UAV that is capable of scouting the terrain ahead. Collating the data from its hexacopter buddy and combining it with its embedded laser rangefinder allows the walking robot (with a theoretically bigger payload capacity) to overcome its limited ground vantage point of view and thus better calculate an optimized route to its destination over unknown terrain. How does it work? Summarized in one sentence,  “prior knowledge from the initial exploration [of the flying UAV] enables the walking robot to...
Singapore Post (SingPost) Delivers Mail by Drone

Singapore Post (SingPost) Delivers Mail by Drone

by | Oct 9, 2015 | Air | 0 comments

Singapore Post (SingPost) Delivers Mail by Drone Last mile mail and packet drone delivery successfully completed in Singapore Unmanned Cargo Delivery Concept – Chronicle 17   SingPost Collaborates with IDA to Develop First Drone For Mail Delivery  (08 October 2015) (Editor’s Note: A nice video of the SingPost Alpha Drone Trial can be found here) What the Article Chronicles:  There seems to be an emerging trend for testing mail delivery drones. Following in the footsteps of SwissPost and Posti, SingPost announced today that they had successfully completed a last mile mail and packet drone delivery trial between Lorong Halus and Pulau Ubin. The customized quadcopter flew a distance of 2.3 km (1.4 mi) over Serangoon Harbour in Singapore. Its payload? A letter and a T-shirt. Although this might seem mild in comparison to SwissPost’s 1 kg (2.2 lb) or Posti’s 3 kg (6.6 lb) payload capacities, what really sets SingPost’s trial apart is the fact that it also tested a prototype app designed with very specific security and verification features in mind.  As SignPost highlights, none of the other mail delivery drone trials from this year featured “point-to-point, recipient-authenticated” deliveries or an app that will allow customers to select their preferred time and date for delivery. No specific date has been given as to when the service will be commercially available. However, the testing does underscore SignPost’s aim to become a leading e-commerce logistics provider in the region. Establishment of a wide-ranging commercial drone delivery network would help the company not only compensate for the global decline of mail volume but also improve mail delivery in the heavily congested urban environment...
How much weight can delivery drones carry?

How much weight can delivery drones carry?

by | Sep 29, 2015 | Air | 4 comments

New delivery drone database is up! http://unmannedcargo.org/drone-delivery-system-drones-delivering-packages/ A closer look at the payload limitation of the top drones delivering packages in the U.S. and abroad   Unmanned Cargo Drone Delivery Concept – Chronicle 16  Payload capacity is one of the major obstacles to full-fledged and profitable commercial drone delivery networks. The average weight unmanned aerial vehicles roughly classified as commercial delivery drones can carry is approximately 4.8 lbs (2.2 kg). Below you will find a table/graphic comparing the payload capacity of some of the top delivery drone concepts vying to become the first commercial drone delivery network either in the US or abroad. Amazon Prime Air The Heavy Hitter 5 lbs (2.3 kg) Article Link Flirtey 1st Official US Delivery 5.5 lbs (2.5 kg) Article Link DHL Parcelcopter The Pioneer 2.6 lbs (1.2 kg) Article Link Posti The Finnish Experiment 6.6 lbs (3 kg) Article Link Swisspost The Swiss Experiment 2.2 lbs (1 kg) Article Link Alibaba/Taobao The Chinese Experiment 2.2 lbs (1 kg) Article Link Horsefly The Heavy Lifter 10 lbs (4.5 kg) Article Link S.F. Express The Ambitious Plan 2.2 lbs (1 kg) Article Link CJ Sky Door Korean Disaster Relief 6.6 lbs (3 kg) Article Link Weight Limit as an Obstacle to Parcel Delivery Systems via Drones You might be wondering why the package delivery drones we see in the news can only lift a limited amount weight. Why is there a restriction in the size of the items that can be delivered? Doesn’t a small payload mean an order would have to be split into multiple shipments thereby increasing overall delivery costs which will be passed...