Flying toy or a courier’s best friend? As an increasing figure of people take advantage of online shopping the duties of couriers rises. Google introduced on the flying courier through their “Project Wing” on YouTube but since fell silent about progress and realistic timeframes but now Google have released details on “mobile delivery receptacles” that synchronises with their delivery drones.
Back in December Amazon had proposed drone usage with its “Amazon prime air” initiative however this only rendered the service vulnerable to media scepticism with plans that wont be enacted until 2018, even this doesn’t inspire promise. The logistics company DHL has since piped them to the post; to reduce the volume on their rounds Germanys Deutsche post is testing the effectiveness of using autonomous robots to assist distribution. DHL’s scheme follows encompasses similar aspirations whilst being all the more promising Just nine months after they launched their “parcelcopter” research and maiden flight in December 2013 as their plans diverge away from the stringent the colossuses of the tech industry path have set. Manufacturing one of the best paradigms as of yet foreseeably perfected with just a few further tweaks.
A quad copter will be used to deliver small parcels on the German Island of Juist, inhibited by approximately 2,000 people. Deliveries included medical supplies and other parcels that are classified as urgently needed. Flying at a maximum altitude of 50 meters, travelling up to 18 meters per second (dependant on wind speed) evade regulated air traffic corridors, the automated drone is dedicated its objective with a carbon fibre frame capable of fending off weather foes.
The opposite of Google’s fixed wing configuration that delivers but seizes to land, DHL and Amazon drones bear a similar archetypal design, a lightweight rotary blade copter the difference is the how they have conducted the tests. The Federal Ministry of Transport and digital infrastructure, in cooperation with German Air traffic Control (DFS) has set restricted flight areas specifically with the parcelcopter in mind.
Despite being a notable advance, practicality and general faults were bound to be in the pipeline from the get-go. Considerations have to be made as to how to people feel about entrusting their goods with a machine rather friendly face at your front door. For the time being guidelines cannot fly above pedestrians or be out of view of the person operating with the reason until technology becomes less at risk of privacy implications such as hacking. There’s also the problem of overcrowding airspace, all of these companies are extremely popular hence imagine the crowding of simultaneous international delivery.
