UPS's drone delivery layout: treating drones as a kind of "infrastructure"

At the end of 2013, Amazon made big news when it announced that it would launch a delivery service using drones.

As soon as the news came out, it was immediately reported by major media. However, the actual situation was not particularly optimistic. After many twists and turns, Amazon's delivery drone did not successfully fly for the first time in the UK until three years later. During these three years, domestic and foreign e-commerce giants, startups, and logistics companies have announced the development and experimentation of drone delivery. Drones have also become the "new technology spokesperson" in the logistics field.

After three years of work, Amazon has finally handed in its homework. However, there are still a large number of manufacturers who have made big promises but have not yet delivered, and are still rushing on the road of drone logistics. Compared with these, the internationally renowned logistics company UPS (United Parcel Service) appears to be more pragmatic.

In addition to logistics and supply chain management, we are also a high-tech enterprise.

Last week, UPS, Business Review and Guangdong High-Tech Industry Chamber of Commerce jointly hosted a small forum. Before the forum, Leifeng.com and a number of media had a brief chat with UPS, during which they mentioned two drone delivery projects that UPS had previously cooperated on. In fact, in the past few years, UPS has also been exploring the possibility of drone delivery, but it was not so high-profile.

Starting with humanitarian aid

Last May, UPS announced a partnership with California robotics company Zipline and the Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) to use drones to deliver life-saving medicines such as blood and vaccines around the world. This new method of delivery can greatly improve medical efficiency in poor mountainous areas.

The UPS Foundation has allocated $800,000 when announcing the partnership, and has chosen Rwanda as the first trial site.

Rwanda is a country in the central and eastern part of Africa. It is located on the south side of the equator in the central and eastern part of Africa. It is mountainous and is known as the "Land of a Thousand Hills". Due to economic scarcity, the country's medical conditions are extremely low. In addition to the lack of medical facilities and medicines, the continuous hills and rugged dirt roads have become a huge obstacle to Rwanda's medical level. In the absence of railways and water transportation, if you want to transport medicines, not only the transportation cost is high, but the time cost is also a problem. Many Rwandan residents cannot get timely medical treatment and medicine supply when they are sick.

These problems are not unique to Rwanda. Many regions in the world suffer from such troubles to varying degrees. The cooperation between UPS, Zipline and GAVI is aimed at solving this problem.

Leifeng.com has previously reported on Zipline's drones. They use a fixed-wing drone in Rwanda that weighs about 22 pounds and can carry about 3 pounds of medicine. The drone can fly at a speed of nearly 100 kilometers per hour, with a maximum range of 115 kilometers per flight. Rwanda has a land area of ​​only 26,338 square kilometers and is a country with no depth and a normal shape, so this range is sufficient for transporting medicines within the country. Due to inconvenient transportation, the transportation work that originally took several hours by car can be completed in just 30 minutes with the use of drones.

In addition, the UAV's researchers have also developed a medical service system specifically for the drone. When the medical staff at the medical station have certain drug needs, they can send corresponding text messages to the drone administrator. After receiving the text message, the drone administrator will find the required medicines in the medicine warehouse and pack them and put them into the drone's cabin. The drone's operating system has automatic fixed-point flight. The operator only needs to select the location to be delivered on the control interface, and the drone will fly to the corresponding place by itself.

In this humanitarian aid collaboration, UPS's global logistics expertise, cold chain technology and medical product delivery services are perfectly combined with Zipline's drone delivery network. Combined with GAVI's rescue experience in remote areas of developing countries, it has greatly improved medical efficiency in remote mountainous areas. This is also UPS's first exploration of drone logistics.

Delivery in remote mountainous areas

Different regions have different needs. In poor areas such as Rwanda, they urgently need to improve medical efficiency, while in developed countries, the efficiency of express delivery in remote mountainous areas is also a problem to be solved.

For the express delivery industry, the "last mile" is the least efficient part of the entire transportation process, and also the most costly part. It is for this reason that logistics companies and e-commerce companies are studying how to use drones to solve this problem.

At the end of February this year, UPS announced the completion of a test of drone package delivery. The drone took off from the top of a UPS truck in Tampa, Florida, USA, automatically delivered the package to the recipient's home, and then returned to the truck. This experiment was also reported by Leifeng.com at the time.

According to information reported by foreign media at the time, drones will operate automatically throughout the delivery mission and do not require human operation. The most important point is that after the staff releases the drone, there is no need to wait for the drone to return, but only need to go to the next delivery location. After the drone delivers the goods, it will find the location of the truck and return on its own.