A delivery drone, is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) utilized to transport packages, food or other goods.
UAVs can transport medicines and vaccines, and retrieve medical samples, into and out of remote or otherwise inaccessible regions. “Ambulance drones” rapidly deliver defibrillators in the crucial few minutes after cardiac arrests, and include livestream communication capability allowing paramedics to remotely observe and instruct on-scene individuals in how to use the defibrillators.
In July 2015, the FAA approved the first such use of a drone within the United States, to deliver medicine to a rural Virginia medical clinic in a program called “Let’s Fly Wisely”.
In Rwanda and Tanzania “zipline” drones are used to deliver blood and pharmaceutical products.
With the rapid demise of snail mail and the explosive double digit growth of e-commerce, postal companies have been forced to seek new ways to yond their traditional letter delivery business models. Different postal companies from Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Singapore and Ukraine have undertaken various drone trials as they test the feasibility and profitability of unmanned delivery drone services.
In China, JD.com has been aggressively developing its drone capabilities. As of June 2017, JD.com had seven different types of delivery drones in testing or operation across four provinces in China (Beijing, Sichuan, Shaanxi and Jiangsu). The drones are capable of delivering packages weighing between 5 and 30 kg (11 to 66 lbs) while flying up to 100 km/hr (62 mph). The drones do not deliver goods directly to people’s homes. Rather, they automatically fly along fixed routes from warehouses to special landing pads where one of JD.com’s 300,000 local contractors then delivers the packages to the customers’ doorsteps in the rural villages. The e-commerce giant is now working on a 1 metric ton (1,000 kg) delivery drone which will be tested in Shaanxi.
Flytrex, an Israeli startup which specializes in developing drone delivery solutions, partnered with AHA in 2015, Iceland’s largest eCommerce website, and together they initiated a drone delivery route which would shorten AHA’s delivery times from 30 minutes, to less than 5. The system was deployed On 25 August 2017 and is now delivering food and small electronics via drones.
In January 2018, Boeing unveiled a prototype of a cargo drone for up to 500lb (227kg) payloads, an electric flying testbed debuted flight tests at Boeing Research and Technology’s Collaborative Autonomous Systems Laboratory in Missouri.