As a consumer electronics product, or smart hardware, the drone seems to have passed. But big companies such as Google, Amazon, express delivery companies DHL, and SF are desperately developing "drone delivery."
In the past few days, Google and Virginia Tech have collaborated to recommend a new drone delivery service on campus: the lunch burritos you bought may be sent by Google Project Wing drones, and then descend from the sky, the aircraft will automatically Fly near you, then hover in the air, slowly drop the cargo with a winch and rope.
The short-term project with the Mexican fast food company Chipotle Mexican Grill looks like a marketing project and actually only lasts for a few weeks.
In fact, the Google Project Wing drone, which is a delivery service, has been experimenting for a long time. In 2014, it carried out the experiment of airborne rope drop and applied for a patent. Google envisaged that this drone can call quickly and give A heart attacker sends a defibrillator or medication.
In fact, besides Google, other big companies are actively preparing for drone delivery. We have sorted out:
• Amazon: This company, which sincerely hopes to send goods directly into the hands of users, has been experimenting with drone delivery for a long time. The drones they use are not much different from the multi-axis drones that everyone often plays. They are also vertical takeoff and landing, charging and delivery. Amazon has released several videos to showcase the prototypes. According to their assumptions, the "PrimeAir" drone program hopes to deliver the products to customers within 30 minutes, and will automatically fly in the airspace below 120 meters, mainly responsible for shipping. Small parcels under 5 pounds.
• DHL: Deutsche Post DHL and Amazon have business cooperation, and also hope to use drones to solve the "last mile" courier delivery problem, using drones to solve the manpower gap. DHL and the German government have cooperated in 2014 and have been allowed to conduct drone express tests in rural and remote areas of Germany to deliver medicines to the island. DHL's Paketkopter four-axis drone has a load capacity of 1.2kg and a maximum flight time of approximately 45 minutes, fully automatic flight.
• SF: SF's drone delivery plan was exposed in 2013, but more details appeared in 2015. SF's partner is a domestic drone company flying very far. Their four-axis drone has a maximum load of 1kg and a full flight time of about 16 minutes. It is also fully automatic. In particular, SF's drones have been designed with a black scorpion subsystem that can be retrieved following a crash.
• GeoPost: Also known as French Post, it is the express delivery department of the French state-owned postal company. GeoPost 2014 unveiled test videos. Their drones were built in collaboration with Ateshsys, a six-axle rotorless drone with a maximum load of 4 kg and a delivery capacity of 20 km.
It can be seen that almost all companies' drone delivery is basically a mode: vertical take-off, automatically set the path, landing at the destination to drop the package and return.
This idea looks beautiful, but there are several issues to be resolved.
The first is the battery problem. Commercial drones perform much better than consumer-grade drone toys, but 45-minute, 20-kilometer life is already at its limit. Bring the parcel, you can only fly 10 kilometers back and forth, you must come back and re-exchange the battery or charge, think about it, this efficiency must be surprisingly slow.
Google's Project Wing fixed-wing drones have a much longer battery life, but it can't land and take off quickly. It can only be sent in open areas, and its use is somewhat limited. The size of the drone is limited. It is impossible to bring one or two parcels at a time. Every time it is sent to the point and then back, the efficiency is far from that of the courier, and then the decentralized delivery can be compared.
Followed by the problem of automatic flight control.
There are several key factors that must be met when the drone automatically finds the customer. One is the automatic avoidance obstacle. This technology can now avoid the wall, but the wire is still powerless, but the low-altitude wire is the most; the second is the precise positioning. Now even military technology can't accurately locate your home in the city instead of sending it to the next door. The big house in the European and American residential areas may be better, but this data changes too much. The neighbors planted a tree yesterday. It is difficult to update and avoid in time; the third is to avoid other drones. Even if all commercial drones have the function of communicating with each other, it can ensure that the overall cooperation does not collide. What kind of consumer-grade drones are people playing? What about toys? There is no way to supervise it.
Finally, there is a security issue. Users who bought a toothpaste on Amazon may have only 15 pieces, but they sent a drone with a value of 20,000 to deliver. In the process of landing the cargo on the drone, how do you ensure that it is not being exchanged by other people for money? Even with reasonable loss management and traceability, plus accidents that have fallen from their own faults, the cost of drone loss, or the cost of getting to the ground without a passerby, can be prohibitively high.
In general, drone delivery now looks like a new project that looks good and saves both manpower and cool.
At this stage, the delivery service that officially launches the service, such as Google's Mexican burritos and Domino's pizza, can basically be considered as a hot spot.
If we really want to deliver drones, we need too many technological breakthroughs: battery life, safety, cost, legislation... In the short term, real drones can't be realized, just like driverless.
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