Deliver Us From Evil: Package Drop Drones Smack at Past Military Stigma
DHL’s 11-pound UAS can carry a 2.6-pound payload. Photo courtesy DHL.
The very idea that unmanned aircraft systems might someday deliver goods was unknown to many before last December, when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled his company’s prototype in a gee-whiz reveal on “60 Minutes,” staging a kind of reverse gotcha sure to bolster press coverage across the commercial drone industry.
While public reaction ran the gamut from the dubious, with some calling small UAS “vaporware,” to the outraged — The noise! The privacy violations! — to those enthusiastically embracing the next new technology, there was no denying the cool factor.
In Amazon’s demonstration video, the bumblebee yellow and black octocopter clips ahold of a container off a conveyor belt and buzzes out the warehouse door. It does so without a remote operator, buzzing over green fields before gently settling down in front of a suburban home. Amazon Prime Air promises to offer 30-minute delivery, available for more than 80 percent of its products.
“Before Amazon came out with this, all you heard about was military drones,” says Matt Scassero, director of the University of Maryland’s UAS test site. “As soon as Amazon came out with this, it changed the discussion to, ‘Hey, it can change my life.’”
Technology and delivery companies alike have been quietly developing small drones for just this type of commercial use for years but have become increasingly frustrated by government restrictions on outdoor testing, necessary to overcome navigation and avoidance capabilities.
This, of course, may be why the famously tight-lipped Bezos disclosed the details of a project that even he cautions remains several years out. As he told “60 Minutes,” “The hardest challenge in making this happen is going to be demonstrating to the standards of the FAA that this is a safe thing to do.”
Companies have been mounting similar pressure abroad. DHL received government approval to run a month-long trial this fall to deliver medicine and other urgent necessities to an island off the northern coast of Germany, marking the first authorized autonomous parcelcopter flights in Europe.
Under the deal, DHL had to monitor the flights and be prepared at all times to manually intervene if need be. Initial reports were positive. The 11-pound UAS, powered by four propellers and capable of carrying a 2.6-pound payload, flew a programmed 7.4-mile route in 15 to 30 minutes, depending on wind conditions, at an altitude of 50 meters.
“Having these companies push the regulatory boundaries is a good thing,” said Scassero. “It shows where the market interest is. It gets people excited.”
Commercial drone development will largely be driven by such small UAS, say experts. But how much can they add to the private delivery business? Surveying a crop or aiding a search-and-rescue team is one thing, but how efficient is it to navigate through populated areas to deliver a few jars of baby food or a couple of fresh batteries?
In fact, some of the most pressing concerns were articulated by someone with intimate knowledge of the delivery business on the ground: a Domino’s Pizza spokesman. Explaining that a video of a pizza-delivering drone in Britain was merely a publicity stunt, he said the company was certainly not testing UAS delivery. “Given the fact that these things have spinning blades, could be stolen, shot at or batted like piñatas, we didn’t think the idea would ‘fly’ here in the U.S,” the spokesman emailed a reporter.
Google is trying to tackle these dilemmas while also extending range. After two years of tinkering, Google X’s Project Wing tested a hybrid fixed-wing and helicopter drone in the Australian desert. The UAS lifted off vertically using the propellers, then flew horizontally. Scassero says he knows of automated electronic fixed wings that weigh under 100 pounds and can travel 40 miles.
Google’s test flight was apparently shorter. When the drone reached its destination, it tilted into a hovering position and winched down a 200-foot line, which slowed just before the package hit the ground.
The tech team told The Atlantic magazine that lowering the package seemed to be the only safe option. Hurling boxes from the sky was dangerous for obvious reasons. Parachutes too easily drifted off target in the wind. Landing and taking off, as Amazon’s prototype does, didn’t pass the field research.
“What they found was that individuals could not be stopped from trying to reach for their packages, even if they were told that the rotors on the vehicle were dangerous, which they are,” The Atlantic reported.
Google says it’s too early to say even if it will stick with a hybrid model. Like other companies, it’s releasing few technical specs at this stage of research and development.
Another option, one exemplified by the company Matternet, is to extend range via docking pods. Where one eight-propeller drone could carry a 4.4-pound payload six miles, a chain of 10 drones could travel 60 miles. As the company’s name implies, the system is akin to an Internet for matter, with a web of preset spokes. At each lily pad, a UAV can exchange its battery.
Greek entrepreneur Andreas Raptopoulos founded Matternet with an aim to deliver medicine to remote areas of the undeveloped world, much of which lacks passable roads for part or all of the year. Where truck transport is costly or impossible, small UAS could cost a dollar per package for each 25 miles. Establishing a network of five stations and 10 UAS would cost about $144,000, the company has estimated.
Unmanned vehicles for large cargo would likely operate in a similar fashion, following a set route between hub airports. Airplanes are already able to take off, fly and land via computer. Cut the costs of pressurized-cabin equipment, pilot salaries and extra fuel burned to make good time, and FedEx estimates air cargo would no longer cost 10 times as much as sea freight. It would only be double.
Getting from Point A to Point B is not a problem, though, for UAS both small or large. Reaching Point B without hitting something is. By 2018 — at which point the FAA expects to have small UAS rules in place — the agency estimates that as many as 7,500 commercial drones could be buzzing through U.S. air space.
Small drones typically operate below 500 feet. But even recreational drones have ventured far outside authorized zones. An investigation by The Washington Post found 23 reported crashes since 2009 and 15 close calls near airports in the past two years. In many cases, authorities were unable to identify or track the offending drones. NASA is currently researching the development of a separate air traffic control system for low-flying aircraft.
Commercial UAS will be subject to regulations that don’t yet exist for hobbyists, and they’ll presumably use far more advanced navigational tools. But while UAS sensors can now detect fixed objects at close range, they’ll be subject to far more variability in the real world: other moving drones, birds, power lines, people.
Speaking at a tech conference last year, Chris Anderson, CEO of the drone company 3D Robotics, called home delivery by UAS an “incredibly stupid” idea, due to safety issues.
“We love drones for agriculture because there are no people there, but using drones for delivery in built-up areas around people might not be the best idea,” he said, according to Fast Company magazine.
And once the avoidance technology is perfected, how is the system protected against hackers? In 2012, a University of Texas professor and his students demonstrated for the Department of Homeland Security how to hack — or spoof
— a drone flying one kilometer away.
“If you can convincingly fake a GPS signal, you can convince a UAV into tracking your signal instead of the authentic one, and at that point you can control the UAV,” said Prof. Todd Humphreys. He later told The Washington Post if the FAA permits widespread commercial drone traffic before effective solutions are in place, “the hackers will come out of the woodwork.”
Michael Drobac, executive director of the Small UAV Coalition, an industry lobbying group launched in October, is not alone, though, when he expresses confidence in a near future that includes delivery drones.
“Technology always wins,” he said. “It wins because it makes consumers’ lives easier, and on the commercial level the potential for use of UAVs in a myriad of industries is going to be breathtaking.”
Ultimately, say experts, where automated drones deliver packages will, as always, be reduced to cost considerations. When is it worth the price for half-hour delivery?
“As a consumer, then, I want that,” said Drobac. “I want to be able to receive the diapers for my children in 30 minutes at my house, and I don’t have to leave.”
