Welcome to the age of the drone delivery

Thanks to advances in tech such as machine learn­ing, cloud com­put­ing, GPS and Lidar, the use of unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAVs) in retail ful­fil­ment is becom­ing a real­i­ty. 

There have been more than 660,000 com­mer­cial deliv­er­ies by par­cel drone (exclud­ing tri­al flights) world­wide over the past three years, accord­ing to McK­in­sey & Co. A fore­cast last year by Metic­u­lous Research esti­mat­ed that this mar­ket would grow by an aver­age of 40% a year to 2028, by which time it could be val­ued at $1.29bn (£1.07bn).  

Par­cel drones offer more than a way to leapfrog grid­locked streets. Their car­bon foot­print can be sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er than that of their earth­bound coun­ter­parts, accord­ing to a study pub­lished last Octo­ber by satel­lite tel­co Inmarsat and Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty. The research indi­cates that a UAV deliv­er­ing 10 pack­ages with­in a 5km radius would emit 47% less CO₂ on aver­age than a small van with the same work­load. 

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the giants of retail are becom­ing increas­ing­ly inter­est­ed in aer­i­al ful­fil­ment. Last month, for instance, Ama­zon revealed plans to start deliv­er­ies in Lock­e­ford, a small town in California’s San Joaquin Coun­ty, using Prime Air drones. It’s already liais­ing with local offi­cials and the US Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion to obtain autho­ri­sa­tion.  

Heath Flo­ra, the state assem­bly­man whose dis­trict includes Lock­e­ford, respond­ed pos­i­tive­ly when the news broke. “Res­i­dents will soon have access to one of the world’s lead­ing deliv­ery inno­va­tions,” he said. “It’s excit­ing that Ama­zon will be lis­ten­ing to the feed­back of the San Joaquin Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ty to inform the future devel­op­ment of this tech­nol­o­gy.”

The Lock­e­ford scheme is the cul­mi­na­tion of an exten­sive R&D pro­gramme in which Prime Air has devel­oped a sophis­ti­cat­ed sense-and-avoid sys­tem that enables drones to autonomous­ly spot and dodge dan­gers such as pow­er lines and birds in flight.

This project could shape the extent of Amazon’s drone ambi­tions, which will be influ­enced by the avi­a­tion rules of dif­fer­ent juris­dic­tions, the lev­el of pub­lic accep­tance and the ever-impor­tant con­sumer demand for rapid ful­fil­ment. 

But how quick­ly do cus­tomers real­ly need their stuff? Smar­ty, an e‑shopping por­tal that applies coupons on pur­chas­es from US retail­ers includ­ing Tar­get, Wal­mart and Best Buy, recent­ly asked its cus­tomers to iden­ti­fy which goods they would pay more for if these could be deliv­ered by drone with­in an hour. Their top choice for a rapid UAV drop was food (cit­ed by 40% of respon­dents), fol­lowed by med­i­cines (38%), bat­ter­ies (30%), an emer­gency replace­ment smart­phone (30%) and cloth­ing (28%).

One of the main com­pa­nies jostling for a slice of the aer­i­al ful­fil­ment econ­o­my, Wing, has pio­neered a mall-based store-to-door ser­vice. Deliv­er­ies are dis­patched from the roof of the Colum­bus Shop­ping Cen­tre in east­ern Helsin­ki. With just a few taps on Wing’s mobile app, cus­tomers can have food drone-deliv­ered to homes in the city’s Vuosaari, Mar­janie­mi and Puoti­la neigh­bour­hoods, as well as to des­ig­nat­ed pic­nic spots. The Helsin­ki deploy­ment fol­lows a pilot in Aus­tralia where, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ken­tucky Fried Chick­en, Wing’s drones dis­trib­uted hot food in the sub­urbs of Logan City, Queens­land.

Anoth­er key play­er in this mar­ket is Sky­Drop (for­mer­ly known as Flirtey). It inked a deal in Jan­u­ary with Domino’s Piz­za to ful­fil UAV deliv­er­ies in New Zealand – the next step from the 2016 col­lab­o­ra­tion that pio­neered drone food drops from a Domino’s fran­chise in the North Island town of Whanga­paraoa. Since then, Sky­Drop has upped its drones’ pay­load to 3.5kg and qual­i­fied for an unmanned air­craft oper­a­tor cer­tifi­cate.

In May, Wal­mart announced plans to expand its Drone­Up deliv­ery net­work to 34 sites, with a poten­tial cov­er­age of 4 mil­lion house­holds in Ari­zona, Arkansas, Flori­da, Texas, Utah and Vir­ginia. This will enable the super­mar­ket giant to dis­trib­ute more than 1 mil­lion pack­ages by drone annu­al­ly. It plans to charge a deliv­ery fee of $3.99 for a 4.5kg pay­load. 

The com­pa­ny says that “cus­tomers will be able to order from thou­sands of items, such as Tylenol, dia­pers and hot­dog buns, for deliv­ery by air in as lit­tle as 30 min­utes”. 

Beyond food, UAVs could also help to shift shiny gad­gets. In March, smart­phone giant Sam­sung announced a part­ner­ship with Irish firm Man­na Drone Deliv­ery to give cus­tomers in Oran­more, Gal­way, the option to receive the lat­est devices via an air drop.

In the UK, the Depart­ment for Transport’s new­ly pub­lished Flight­path to the Future strat­e­gy sets out a plan for inte­grat­ing deliv­ery drones into shared air­space with oth­er UAVs (for deliv­er­ing med­i­cines or help­ing the emer­gency ser­vices) as well as with the wider com­mer­cial air traf­fic infra­struc­ture.

“This is an excit­ing time for the UK’s drone sec­tor, as new tech­nolo­gies are solv­ing real com­mer­cial prob­lems and help­ing to save lives,” says Pro­fes­sor Iain Gray, direc­tor of aero­space at Cran­field Uni­ver­si­ty and chair of the Drone Indus­try Action Group. 

Gray notes that the gov­ern­ment is mak­ing “game-chang­ing invest­ments” through the Future Flight Chal­lenge – a £300m pro­gramme designed to sup­port tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion in the UK avi­a­tion sec­tor. But he adds that “inno­va­tors need clear, for­ward-think­ing and respon­sive reg­u­la­to­ry regimes to oper­ate with­in if they are to reap the full ben­e­fits”.

While the reg­u­la­tors and oth­er stake­hold­ers work to inte­grate drones with the nation’s broad­er avi­a­tion net­works, Roy­al Mail has been tri­alling UAVs to assess their capac­i­ty to serve remote com­mu­ni­ties. In May 2021, it used a drone to deliv­er Covid test­ing kits and per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment from Corn­wall to the Isles of Scil­ly. In April this year, it con­duct­ed tri­als on the Shet­land Islands in part­ner­ship with Win­drac­ers, putting on flights between Tingwall Air­port near the cap­i­tal, Ler­wick, and the north­ern­most inhab­it­ed island, Unst, 50 miles away. Roy­al Mail is plan­ning to estab­lish more than 50 drone postal routes over the next three years, sub­ject to approval from the Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty. Its longer-term aim is to oper­ate a fleet of 500 UAVs nation­wide. It’s just the type of ful­fil­ment capa­bil­i­ty that retail­ers will have on their radars as the com­mer­cial poten­tial of drone deliv­ery real­ly takes off.