[Photo Credit: A2Z Drone Delivery]
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04 January
By Aaron Zhang, Founder and CEO of A2Z Drone Delivery, Inc.
Ask the average consumer to conjure an image of drone delivery and their most-likely image is of parcels being deposited on their front step or burritos and pizzas flying through their neighborhood. This misconception is likely born out of the earliest conceptualization of making deliveries with UAVs. While residential drone delivery continues to expand around the world, and the US market sees new regulatory allowances almost monthly, delivery drones are actually hard at work in a litany of applications.
It has now been 10 years since drone delivery entered the consumer lexicon largely from the lips of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. In recent days, some of the early pioneers of drone delivery have made massive strides in bringing Bezos’ vision to reality with the FAA granting waivers for Zipline and Alphabet’s Wing to conduct Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) deliveries without visual observers. This effectively boosts the range of these residential deliveries in the cities and towns where drone trials have been rapidly expanding over recent years.
Leveraging UAVs to support logistics operations certainly offers several advantages over traditional last-mile ground transportation. Battery-powered drones significantly slash emissions for delivery vehicles, and their autonomous capability reduces operational costs and fuel consumption. Commercial delivery drones can quickly reach remote areas and traverse these distances much faster than ground vehicles. Of course, transferring payloads from the UAV to the ground, safely and accurately is the key to the effectiveness of drone delivery.
Some drone delivery outfits have elected to dead drop parcels, bringing the delivery drone to a low hover before the package is simply dropped on location. Parachute delivery has also been in use by the likes of Zipline, especially in remote locations, and guided parachutes were introduced in recent months that allow pilots to drop a parcel from altitude and effectively steer the package to its destination. More common though, drone deliveries culminate with a parcel being deposited to the ground at the end of a drone delivery winch. A winch delivery strikes the ideal balance of safety and efficiency in delivery methods. It allows the drone to maintain altitude where spinning propellers are far from people and property, and minimizes the UAV’s time-on-station.
A2Z Drone Delivery developed the industry’s first purpose-built commercial drone delivery winch in . Its innovative design quickly became the preferred drone winch for commercial deliveries and logistics operators. Companies like DroneUp adopted the winch as it rapidly scaled its residential delivery trials for partners like Walmart. While early adopters like DroneUp, Zipline and Wing have continued to expand these trials in the US, drone winches have proliferated commercial logistics operations in a wide array of commercial sectors where regulatory allowances make drone delivery a smart choice for expediting payloads delivery, often to hard-to-reach destinations.
The use cases for commercial drone delivery winches are truly diverse.
Operations interruptions on offshore oil platforms can be extremely costly. Currently, most operators rely on slow-moving, logistically-complicated ship deliveries to bring replacement parts to their platforms. Winch-equipped drones have enabled these operators to streamline deliveries of spare parts and tools, even medicines and mail for crew serving on the ocean platforms.
[Photo Credit: Nordic Unmanned]
Leveraging delivery drones enables shore-to-platform and inter-platform delivery of mission critical spare parts in a fraction of the time as traditional ship-born deliveries. Leveraging the latest drone delivery solutions, operators at Norway’s Nordic Unmanned worked with energy giant Equinor to conduct offshore logistics using drones. The first-of-its-kind mission saw cargo flights between offshore installations at the Gullfaks Field in the North Sea as well as between offshore installations and vessels. These drone deliveries not only mitigated operational downtime, but limited the manpower needed for offshore logistics, and enabled operators to reduce carbon emissions for these smaller parts deliveries.
With the drone winch’s tethered delivery system, delivery drones are able to steer well clear of the antennas and towers on an offshore energy platform. Leveraging an auto-release system, the drone can deposit payloads without personnel waiting to receive them as well. The A2Z Drone Delivery RDS2 drone winch can autodetect a tether that is fouled on a ship railing or other obstruction and release the tether to protect the drone. When retrieving payloads from the ground, it also automatically weighs payloads before reeling up the package to prevent overweight payloads from risking the drone.
Rapidly deploying life-saving medical equipment to first responders in the field is another application for which drone winches are ideally suited. One piece of equipment that is routinely being delivered by drone is portable Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). In fact, last year a drone-born defibrillator helped save a man’s life when he experienced cardiac issues while shoveling his driveway in Sweden!
[Photo Credit: Antwork Technology]
Delivering life-saving technology like AEDs requires some finesse. Simply dropping a unit from the sky would likely damage the equipment, rendering it useless. Leveraging the drone winch, the AEDs can be lowered to the ground gently, and accurately, right to the waiting hands of first responders assisting a victim.
Proactive efforts to expand the rapid-deployment of AEDs is even becoming part of large event planning. During the recent Asian Games in China, drone service provider, Antwork Technology, deployed its drone-in-a-box solution equipped with a winch to safely and quickly lower AEDs to awaiting first responders. By delivering from altitude, the drone winch ensured spinning drone propellers would be kept far from the massive crowd attending the games. The winch’s quick-release mechanism also ensured responders on the ground did not have to take their attention from their patient to remove the payload.
Search and rescue applications are another arena where drones equipped with delivery winches can have life-saving appeal. Researchers at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) have demonstrated the value of drone delivery platforms to assist in search and rescue operations, by providing remote guided medical triage for simulated injured hikers. Leveraging remote medical triage helps buy rescuers invaluable time to reach victims and extract them to a trauma center.
For more information, please visit NEW WING Drone Winch.
[Photo Credit: Southern Alberta Institute of Technology]
In this testing, researchers deposited a remote medical kit and communications device to simulated injured hikers using a drone winch, then connected them directly to a trauma specialist who was able to successfully walk them through applying several trauma treatments, including gauze packing, tourniquet and clamp, etc.
SAIT researchers, in partnership with the University of Calgary, one of Canada’s largest health facilities, employed drones outfitted with a drone winch, to conduct its proof-of-concept tests. The winch drone allowed medical kits and communications devices to be lowered with precision to simulated downed hikers from altitude, which ensured spinning propellers were kept far from the “hiker” and surrounding trees, and enabled the drone to maintain its guided telemetry connection amongst undulating terrain.
Alongside the rapid development of the commercial delivery drone platforms and other drone delivery solutions, the commercial UAV industry has also been improving autonomous capabilities for drone delivery. Platforms like A2Z Drone Delivery’s Pelican long-range, heavy-lift airframe allow pilots to simply tap waypoints into a touch screen ground control station and monitor the drone as it performs deliveries entirely autonomously. Other industry leaders continue to refine detect-and-avoid technology, air traffic control systems for drones, and other solutions that will come together to form the drone delivery ecosystem of the future. The next frontier for drone delivery to truly scale will be the development of dedicated infrastructure to support that growth. While trained pilots will always be necessary to oversee commercial drone deliveries, laying a user-friendly shared infrastructure for UAV payload delivery will drastically expand access to this game-changing logistics paradigm for businesses and individuals making drone delivery a tool for everyone to put to work.
About Aaron Zhang
Aaron Zhang is the Founder and CEO of A2Z Drone Delivery, Inc., which is developing innovative solutions to enable safe, accurate and low-noise drone deliveries. Focused on last-mile UAV delivery systems, A2Z Drone Delivery is creating UAV delivery platforms capable of pushing drone delivery into the mainstream of logistics operations. Based in Torrance, C.A., A2Z Drone Delivery originated as a drone delivery project at Brown University in and now services customers around the world which are leveraging its technology for a diverse array of applications.
From Cookie Trials to Commercial Operation
While the latest model of the Rapid Delivery System, the RDS2, has now completed thousands of deliveries in a myriad of use cases, back in it was still an extremely innovative concept for company CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Zhang. In , as an undergraduate at Brown University, he and a small team were imagining ways to make the nascent drone delivery industry safer and more efficient. He developed the first working prototype of the drone winch and early trials were conducted in delivering concert tickets around the university campus. The following spring an even more robust version of the RDS system took flight for a more delicious mission demonstrating food deliveries with a locally-loved cookie shop.
As commercial drone delivery trials began to spread around the world, A2Z Drone Delivery released its first market-ready drone winch, the RDS1, in . This first generation was designed to be integrated with the then-popular DJI Matrice 600 or DJI Matrice 600 Pro, or it could be purchased as a ready-to-fly system mounted on the Matrice 600 Pro. From its most early stages, the Rapid Delivery System’s design placed a premium on safe, energy-efficient flight operations. Like its follow up generations, the RDS1 featured automated payload monitoring throughout the flight, pre-flight weigh checks to ensure the airframe would not be overloaded, intelligent onboard systems to manage payload delivery while ensuring pilots could manually control the deliveries, an emergency tether abandonment feature allowing the tether to be release should it become entangled, as well as a passive payload lock to safeguard against tether slippage in case of an unforeseen power loss.
By commercial customers were leveraging the A2Z Drone Delivery winch across numerous industry sectors. The winch served customers conducting missions that captured the nation’s attention like introducing a new flavor of Coca-Cola in Georgia, but was also hard at work delivering tools and spare parts to offshore energy platforms in the North Sea, and enabling innovative search and rescue trials in Canada.
As with any aerospace component, the first-generation Rapid Delivery System struck a balance between overall system weight and performance. The RDS1 was designed to deliver payloads up to 2 kg (4.4 lbs.) and leveraged a freefall delivery approach with the winch intelligently slowing the payload for a gentle touchdown. This made the most of every drop of battery power by reducing time-on-station for each delivery. While it was a hallmark of the early version of the industry’s first purpose-built commercial drone winch, this freefall delivery approach would be phased out for a controlled descent of the tether. As testing hours piled up, the engineering team and early adopters of the RDS1 learned that transitioning to a controlled descent only cost a fraction of a second per delivery, but allowed the winch to operate more efficiently and ensured a longer life cycle for its onboard winch motor.
As we continued to refine the Rapid Delivery System, the second-generation winch rolled out in with a new form factor and a litany of improved capabilities. Like the adoption of the tether’s controlled descent, the RDS2 integrated several new elements based on hours of customer feedback. The RDS2 offered a slimmer form factor profile than the original allowing more space in the cargo bay to accommodate larger payloads and enable logistics providers to work with any off-the-shelf boxes. An upgraded drive motor meant the new winch could now deliver payloads up to 10 kg (22 lbs.) making it the highest payload capacity delivery winch on the market. The RDS2 was also the first drone winch to offer our patented payload auto-release so boxes could be deposited without a recipient needing to await the delivery. The second-generation winch could also now pickup payloads up to 5 kg.
New Safety Features for The BVLOS Age
Drone delivery has taken massive leaps since the original Rapid Delivery System was launched. Recent years have seen trials demonstrate the unique advantages of the technology. Extending logistics operations into hard-to-reach rural areas, speeding deployment of life-saving medical tools, etc., all while helping to minimize harmful emissions from traditional terrestrial delivery methods. Regulatory changes have also sped the rollout of new drone delivery operations. In the US more and more providers are securing BVLOS approvals from the FAA, and countries around the world have relaxed regulations to streamline integration of delivery drones into their logistics networks. As more of our customers have been seeking to navigate these regulatory processes, new customer feedback has prompted us to continue to revise the safety features built into the RDS2.
Earlier this week we rolled out a new firmware update that brings several new safety features to the winch that provide added peace-of-mind these regulators need to grant the necessary waivers for BVLOS operations. Thos new safety features include:
Entanglement Auto-Detection: In the event the winch’s tether becomes entangled, the RDS2 is able to auto-detect and abandon its tether to safeguard the airframe. With this new update, customers can now customize the winch’s entanglement detection parameters. This allows the smart winch to detect whether the entanglement is an obstruction on the ground, if the hook or tether is entangled at altitude as with a tree or wires, or at the top of its reel-up sequence for a situation where the tether has entangled the UAV’s landing gear. These parameters can be fully customized to fit the unique demands of any customer use case.
Overweight Payload Rejection: The RDS2 now automatically confirms payload weights are within its 5 kg payload pickup allowance to prevent overweight loads from causing unsafe flying conditions. While operators are able to easily confirm payload weights when they personally load the winch, when making pickups from third parties, this safety check becomes less reliable. With the winch automatically confirming payload weights at pickup, operators can confidently proceed with a mission following payload retrieval.
Tether Lifecycle Alerts: Operators can now customize alert messages to remind them when to replace the winch’s braided Kevlar tether. Rated for up to 800 deliveries between replacement, the RDS2 now monitors the total length of spooled out tether and notifies operators when it is time to replace the mission critical component.
Gentle Payload Touchdown: The RDS2 now automatically slows the tether deployment as the payloads approach the ground to minimize time on station and ensure the softest possible landing for mission critical deliveries.