A2Z Drone Delivery “Granted U.S Patent Covering Portfolio of Drone Docks”

Cal­i­for­nia-based A2Z Drone Deliv­ery, a com­mer­cial unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles (UAS) com­pa­ny, has announced this week it has been grant­ed U.S. Patent No. 12,258,153 B2 for its port­fo­lio of A2Z Air Docks, reports a press release. Award­ed on March 25th, the patent cov­ers an inno­v­a­tive method for auto­mat­i­cal­ly recharg­ing com­mer­cial drone sys­tems from an ele­vat­ed drone dock­ing sta­tion. 

The release says, “Com­bined with the company’s com­pan­ion Long­tail Air­Dock Edi­tion UAVs, the A2Z Air­Dock offers the unique abil­i­ty for unmanned aer­i­al sys­tems to move from dock-to-dock to auto­mat­i­cal­ly top off bat­ter­ies and pick up or deliv­er pack­ages, infi­nite­ly expand­ing the drone’s ser­vice area.” 

It goes on, “The Long­tail Air­Dock Edition’s cus­tomis­able pay­load bay can be con­fig­ured for almost any drone ser­vice mis­sion from autonomous patrol and data col­lec­tion, to last-mile deliv­ery and pay­load retrieval, to non­stop ground inspec­tions, med­ical deliv­er­ies, and more. Fea­tur­ing inde­pen­dent pilot and end-user inter­faces, the Air­Dock oper­a­tions cen­tre ensures all team mem­bers can access and lever­age the drone dock net­work and its mis­sion capa­bil­i­ties.” 

For more infor­ma­tion

http://www.a2zdronedelivery.com/airdock

Aaron Zhang, CEO and Co-Founder of A2Z Drone Deliv­ery, com­ment­ed, “Our A2Z Air­Dock sys­tem for­goes the com­plex­i­ties seen in most drone dock­ing sys­tems, instead mov­ing all the mov­ing parts, auto­mat­ic bat­tery charg­ing, and quadru­ple redun­dant pre­ci­sion land­ing capa­bil­i­ties to the air­borne UAV sys­tem.”

Aaron Zhang

Found­ed in 2016, the company’s lat­est patent, sup­ports mul­ti­ple rep­e­ti­tions of the sol­id-state Air­Dock which fea­tures no mov­ing parts to ensure min­i­mal main­te­nance demands and max­i­mum dura­bil­i­ty in diverse out­door envi­ron­ments. 

The release adds, “The Air­Dock Portable is a sin­gle-UAV ver­sion of the Air­Dock that eas­i­ly packs small for rapid relo­ca­tion, and the Air­Dock Shel­ter fea­tures a durable clam-shell enclo­sure for the weath­er-proof Long­tail Air­Dock Edi­tion to be stored in extreme weath­er.”

Addi­tion­al­ly, the ele­vat­ed Air­Dock Dual and Air­Dock Quad sup­port two and four drone dock­ing posi­tions. These vari­ants can be com­bined with a fleet of cus­tom Long­tail UAVs to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deliv­er mul­ti­ple drone ser­vices across a shared Air­Dock net­work.

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Zhang con­tin­ued, “Unmanned aer­i­al drones offer sig­nif­i­cant effi­cien­cy, emis­sions reduc­tion, and cost-sav­ings to many use cas­es, and our A2Z Air­Docks mit­i­gate much of the finan­cial bar­ri­er to entry asso­ci­at­ed with get­ting these ser­vices off the ground.”

Adding, “We’ve designed the entire Air­Dock and com­pan­ion drone ecosys­tem to max­imise safe­ty and ease-of-use for the pilots over­see­ing a fleet of drones, as well as the end-users of those cus­tomer enter­pris­es or gov­ern­ment agen­cies.”

Com­mer­cial deliv­ery drones oper­at­ing on the dock net­work also lever­age the company’s grow­ing num­ber of patent­ed designs includ­ing its RDS2 com­mer­cial drone winch (US Patent No. 11,155,449 B2) and quick-release mech­a­nism (US Patent No 20,230,303,249 A1), that eas­i­ly deliv­er pay­loads, from alti­tude where spin­ning pro­pellers are kept far from peo­ple, prop­er­ty or poten­tial ground obstruc­tions and with­out human inter­ac­tion.

The release con­tin­ues, “This sim­pli­fi­ca­tion in design allows mul­ti­ple A2Z Air­Docks to be posi­tioned across wide regions while min­imis­ing their need for main­te­nance. As the demand for drone ser­vices con­tin­ues to push beyond the reach of cur­rent-day bat­tery life, the Air­Dock offers a back­bone upon which to build the drone infra­struc­ture nec­es­sary for reli­able drone ser­vice mis­sions to reach beyond-visu­al-line-of-sight (BVLOS).”

Mean­while, mul­ti­ple users can share the Air­Dock sys­tem to deploy drone-borne ser­vices across munic­i­pal­i­ties, coun­ties, or oth­er large region under a ‘drone-net­work-as-a-ser­vice (DNaaS) busi­ness mod­el.’ These can include drone ser­vice providers, enter­prise-lev­el oper­a­tors and gov­ern­ment agen­cies, who may choose to own and oper­ate the net­work as a part­ner­ship between mul­ti­ple pub­lic depart­ments or public/private enti­ties. 

A2Z has also cre­at­ed two soft­ware plat­forms for trained pilots to man­age, oper­ate and mon­i­tor a net­work of Air­Docks and its asso­ci­at­ed UAV plat­forms for over­lap­ping drone fleets and re-occur­ring drone mis­sion routes. 

While, an inde­pen­dent end-user inter­face, allows non-pilots to inter­act with the sys­tem, request­ing patrol mis­sions, review­ing patrol footage, analysing data reports, order­ing drone deliv­ery or pick­ups.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.a2zdronedelivery.com

(Images: A2Z Drone Deliv­ery)

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