Package Delivery Drone Facts

Drone technology is not new to the world but with the advancement in technology, drones are now generally used for delivering goods and parcels with small investments but resulting in massive income gross.

The whole day, in the markets, you can see thousands of drones busy zipping the packages for delivery whether they are concerned with the mails, parcels, pizzas, medicine, or any other small-sized product.

Package drones for delivery have not only relieved the companies but also, have become a technical challenge people are complying with right now. Companies are also worried about the privacy policies around the globe.

In this article, we are going to explore the facts about drones that what projects are designated to the drones, what are their benefits and what challenges they are facing nowadays for wide spreading the drone delivery project.

What are the Top Package Delivery Drones?

Following are some of the major drones that famous brands use all over the world for parcel delivery:

• Wing Delivery Drone
• Flirtey Delivery Drone
• Zipline Autonomous Delivery Drone
• Rakuten Condor Delivery Drone
• Matternet M2 Parcel Delivery Drone
• Tenku Delivery Drone
• Wingcopter 178 Heavy Lift Delivery Drone

What Companies are Using Drone for Delivery?

Many renowned companies are offering the services of drone delivery including Zipline, Flytrex, Matternet, Antworks, Wing, Flirtey and Volansi. Amazon, JD.com, Walmart, SF Express, DHL and Zomato rank among the most prominent companies that are operating with drone delivery services for business.

1.    UPS Drone Delivery Services

UPS Flight Forward Inc is one of those early companies that come up with the Standard certification for operating an airline drone. With complete strategy, they decided to expand their drone delivery service to various parts of the world including hospitals, healthcare centers, and other campuses.

2.    Swiss Post Drone Delivery Service

Another brand in the frontline of drone development for logistics is Swiss Post that is mainly famous for special healthcare consignments with a goal of special investigation and cost-effectiveness examination of logistic drones.

They not only use drones for delivering high priority consignments and emergency relief supplies but also for supplying the laboratory samples.

3.    Matternet M2 Parcel Delivery Drone

Matternet ranks among the leading technology platforms for drone delivery in urban areas of the world. Due to their promising and predictable deliveries of medical items, they are maintaining their position in the market.

The time delivery of medical items of Matternet M2 Parcel Delivery Drone is in between 30 minutes with the capability of lifting weight up to 4.4 lbs. and covering the distance up to 12.5 miles.

Matternet M2 has also established a parcel drone station where the users can easily not only send but also receive their parcels.

4.    Wingcopter Delivery Drone

There is another delivery drone company named VTOL Wingcopter delivery drone famous for its flying speed similar to that of a plane. It is one of the most lightweight and fast drones with additional features like rainproof and flying speed of 93 mph in fixed-wing mode. It can easily cover a distance of 53 miles while lifting 13.2 lbs. weight.

What Countries are Using Drone Package Delivery Services?

The pioneering nations around the globe that are most prominent for the parcel deliveries using drones include China, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Switzerland, Canada, Finland, Iceland and USA. These countries rank among the leading countries that are far more progressively approaching drone delivery operations on a commercial level.

ü Does Amazon Use Drones to Deliver Packages?

Amazon is the first that filed an application in the federal government to operate the Prime Air delivery drones. The Federal Aviation Administration allows the company to expand their drone package delivery in various parts of the country.

With this approval, Amazon made sure to offer safety and efficient delivery packages to the customers. It also allowed the drones to take small weights to carry the property under the certification. With the allowance certification, Amazon decided to test their technologies with the detailed training evidence.

ü What Delivery Service China’s JD.com Parcel Drone Offers?

Chinese e-commerce giant JD. Com is China’s first company with a certified license of operating logistics drones on a provincial level. It is actually one of the astounding steps for exploration in the logistics sector. Over time, they are elevating the development standards and scale in the industry.

Many provinces including Fujian, Jiangsu, Hainan, Guangxi, Qinghai, Guangdong Shaanxi are using these delivery drones for setting up the logistics operations like date and names for helping in the distribution challenges across the rural areas of the country for increasing the people reach.

ü What Delivery Services Drones Offer in Japan?

Today Japanese drone from Rakuten is offering various projects and delivery services with fast progress proceeding. Some of the common Rakuten drone deliveries are:

• Flower delivery for Mother’s Day.
• Store deliveries in Fukushima.
• Flying soy sauce deliveries to private residences
• Traffic management services

Rakuten produces drones in a massive quantity with about 70 business companies for e-commerce spanning, fintech, digital content, and communications. There is a staff of around 13,000 staff employees that are generating a turnover of 20 billion USD per year.  The top sponsor of Rakuten is the Barcelona Football Club company.

ü Indonesia Drone Package Delivery Service

One of the most astonishing drone companies is JD.com that truly breakthrough Southeast Asian drone delivery. Indonesian parcel delivery proves to be the door opening towards the glassy future commercial drone usage in the Southeast Asia region for regulatory approvals.

ü Canada Parcel Drone Delivery Service

Drone Delivery Canada recently launched its cargo drone refereed as Condor that can easily cover a distance of 125 miles while lifting the 400 lbs. payload. Condor comes with a 20-feet wingspan and uses a gas propulsion engine for working.

ü France Drone Parcel Delivery Projects

Le Groupe La Poste is the national postal service of France which have recently initiated a delivery testing program to bring some payload with an autonomous drone to the state.

ü Ireland Drone Parcel Delivery Projects

Ireland’s Postal Service delivered their first parcel overseas in April 2019 using a drone. They also delivered a parcel from Roonagh Pier to Clare Island with an autonomous drone.

How Drones Help in Delivering Medical Supplies and Medicine?

Drones proved to be the most beneficial inventions in medical field as they offer quick help, reduces the time of medicine supply, and also reduce delivery shortening of medicine. The health care workers can offer services with more fast support and basic means of medical transport using drones.

ü Rwanda Healthcare Drone Delivery Service

The world’s first commercial drone delivery service was from Rwanda which supplies blood and blood products. It was launched in May 2016. Zipline is a US robotics drone firm that is responsible for these operations.

These drones are capable of supplying the drop blood parcels outside the remote health centers. Zipline has decided to deliver blood supplies to more than 20 healthcare centers by signing up an agreement with the Rwanda Government. It is an initiative to improve the healthcare facilities for millions of Rwandans.

The government is happily paying the cost of the motorbike deliveries to Zipline. Any health worker can ask for a blood drop request by simply texting a message and it is a guarantee that the drone will arrive within 30 minutes.

Most women suffer from blood loss after birth and this is the topmost common reason the mortality rate is higher in under-developed countries including Rwanda’s women. Therefore, the attendants can easily store the blood that matches the recipients.

About two billion people are facing a shortage of medical products as these courtiers are unable to maintain their challenging infrastructure gaps. About 2.9 million children under age 5 die every year. Women with pregnancy die due to the blood shortage and the ratio is about 150,000 pregnancy-related deaths.

ü Ghana Healthcare Drone Delivery Service

There is a San Francisco-based UAV company that is offering which has recently initiated a drone healthcare program for delivering medical supplies in Ghana.

Zipline is currently operating 30 drones for distributing the vaccines and different life-saving medications in the healthcare centers in the West African nation daily. This drone delivery project is offering 600 flights per day and serving 12 million people in the country.

ü What was the World’s First Drone Delivery?

There is a group of Irish researchers identified the first delivery of medicine effective against diabetes with drone technology from the Co Galway coast. NUI Galway researchers achieved great success by flying a drone from Connemara airport to the Inis Mór airstrip on the Aran Islands.

The main aim of this drone was to distribute insulin and glucagon. After this, when returning it also took a patient’s blood sample from the island to Connemara airport. Within 32 minutes, it completed its flight for the delivery package. This was considered as the first visible line sight drone distribution.

The Irish Aviation Authority funded for covering the distance of 21 km between commercial airlines. This was the first step to initiate further deliveries between the designated corridors. There was an installed camera on the top of the aircraft for having a clear view once the drone has started flying.

What is the Future of Drone Delivery Service?

Amazon, Alphabet, and many other technology brands are enhancing the e-commerce future with drone delivery services. Around the globe, there are many retailers and companies that are testing drone delivery services. The reason behind this testing experience is to solve the late delivery issues.

Amazon introduced their emblazoned packages 3 years ago. The purpose behind this was to transfer their packages to home using drones. According to some people, it was a publicity stunt to introduce this idea.

But future of drones in the world seems quite astounding as Amazon has already started testing the Prime Air Delivery Service in various locations around the globe. The drone parcel delivery not only eased up the work with huge benefits but also come up with some flaws that are not ignorable.

What are the Possible Benefits of Drone Parcel Delivery?

The benefits of drone delivery range to a wide variety of services including the cheaper and faster package deliveries as compared to other shipping methods. This method not only improves the time and delivery cost but also in weather conditions, you do not have to worry about the package.

• It has reduced road congestion as most of the companies use drone technology for delivering tasks. If there are fewer delivery vans and trucks on the road, there will be reduced congestion issues.
• This time, the world is suffering from massive pollution issues and drones prove to be most convenient as they effectively reduce carbon emissions and it is the plus point in the case of their efficiency. They impart a role in protecting the environment from pollution.
• The delivery time of packages is reduced to some extent as the drones come up with the capability to deliver the packages to their destination without being affected by the traffic and the hustle bustle on the road with a planned route in less than 30 minutes.
• There are countless benefits of drone shipping both for the customers and businesses. The delivery time that takes about two to three days previously has now reduced to hours and also there is no package damaging threat as the drone flies smoothly.

What are the Drawbacks of Drone Parcel Delivery?

With those countless benefits, drone deliveries also face some of the issues due to which people think before using this drone package technology. Sometimes, the battery runs down fastly and as it is a costly device, this down battery results in not only the theft issues bit also the drone damage.

• Usually, the packages are delivered to the mailboxes in case of businesses and by hand to residences that are present on the left side of the porches but in the case of drones, there is no designated delivery zone.
• For a secure and convenient infrastructure area creation for drones require both handsome amounts of money and ingenuity.
• The landings of UAVs are incredibly vulnerable and if the drone is landing in an unprotected area, there are threats that it might get damaged by children or pets.
• There are also chances of personal injury as UAVs are not a perfect piece of technology. Also, they lack technology like ‘return to home’ systems and prop guard safety features.
• In case, if the delivery drone harmed any individual, the couriers lead to costly settlements and lawsuits.  But in the case of pizza delivery drones, or mail or grocery drones, they are 110% safer to have.

What Challenges Drone Deliveries are Facing Today?

Drones require many technical innovations for being used in the delivery worldwide. Currently, the usual challenges are people usually steal the parcels at the drone mailbox. Also, there is a major role of weather in the parcel delivery. People usually shoot down the drones and many more.

• There must be a longer flight time as the average flight time of drones is roundabout 20 to 25 minutes.
• They are too noisy. If there is a large number of drones flying in the sky it could be irritating, so, drones should be quiet.
• There must be collision avoidance systems installed in the drones for the safety from crashes.

Conclusion

The drone is expected to be the most used product in the future due to its higher convenience, reduced cost, and lesser delivery time. Most of the online retailers including Amazon have already started offering deliveries using drones.

With the same continual, in the next 4 to 5 years, these projects will lead to the progressive success of a future generation of drones and you will be able to view more complex delivery drone systems in use.