Germany: Wingcopter Begins Delivering Groceries for First Time by Drone

Wing­copter and the Frank­furt Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ences (Frank­furt UAS) launched recent­ly its Drone-Car­go Bike Express Deliv­ery project, reports a press release. Under the name ‘Liefer­Michel’, the tri­al offers res­i­dents of remote dis­tricts in Michel­stadt, Hesse, an oppor­tu­ni­ty for gro­ceries and con­sumer goods deliv­ered to their homes via drone and then bike express. Part­ners include REWE, Voda­fone, the car­go bike man­u­fac­tur­er, Riese & Müller, and the city of Michel­stadt.

The project is being fund­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for Dig­i­tal and Trans­port (BMDV) as part of the Inno­v­a­tive Air Mobil­i­ty fund­ing direc­tive with a total of around EUR430,000. Ini­tial­ly, the two dis­tricts of Rehbach and Würzberg will be served.

The inhab­i­tants can order every­day goods such as milk, eggs, fruit and veg­eta­bles, canned food and many oth­er non-refrig­er­at­ed prod­ucts via the web­site www.liefermichel.de and have them deliv­ered to their homes at an appoint­ed time. 

The release explains, “The orders are flown by Wing­copter to set land­ing points just out­side of the vil­lages, from where they are trans­port­ed to the end cus­tomer by elec­tric car­go bike. To start with, a wide range of prod­ucts from the local REWE store will be avail­able for selec­tion. Oth­er local retail­ers will be added to the plat­form as the project pro­gress­es.”

Tom Plüm­mer, CEO of Wing­copter, com­ment­ed, “Our main goal is to gain expe­ri­ence and eval­u­ate, togeth­er with the res­i­dents, an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly and effi­cient ser­vice that cre­ates real added val­ue for the pop­u­la­tion in rur­al areas.”

Prof. Dr. Kai-Oliv­er Schocke, Direc­tor of the Research Lab for Urban Trans­port (ReLUT) at Frank­furt UAS, added, “We believe that a drone-based deliv­ery ser­vice in rur­al areas can be a win-win sit­u­a­tion: Res­i­dents ben­e­fit from bet­ter sup­ply options, retail­ers can increase their cus­tomer catch­ment area with­out hav­ing to set up deliv­ery ser­vices them­selves. We also expect eco­log­i­cal ben­e­fits, as trips for small­er errands in par­tic­u­lar can be sub­sti­tut­ed in this way.”

The project is being eval­u­at­ed by Frank­furt UAS from an eco­nom­ic and eco­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, as well as over­see­ing the bike express. Voda­fone pro­vides the nec­es­sary mobile com­mu­ni­ca­tions infra­struc­ture so as the drones have a secure and sta­ble con­nec­tion to the ground sta­tion through­out the flight.

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In some remote Ger­man vil­lages, local retail­ers have closed their stores in recent years, forc­ing res­i­dents to dri­ve to Michel­stadt or oth­er towns, in some cas­es over 10 kms away, to car­ry out their shop­ping. Liefer­Michel users can now leave their cars behind.

Dr. Robert Zores, Chief Dig­i­tal Inno­va­tion Offi­cer (CDIO) at REWE dig­i­tal, remarked, “We have been work­ing on autonomous mobil­i­ty for many years and have one goal in mind. To offer our cus­tomers new shop­ping expe­ri­ences and to make it as con­ve­nient and easy as pos­si­ble.”

Based on the expe­ri­ences in Michel­stadt, a sus­tain­able and scal­able busi­ness mod­el will be devel­oped to improve local sup­ply in oth­er Ger­man rur­al regions. Food ser­vices that deliv­er orders with­in a few min­utes have so far been lim­it­ed to urban areas. The project part­ners see enor­mous poten­tial. The project will be ini­tial­ly run until the end of this year and then, if suc­cess­ful, con­tin­ued on in 2024.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion

www.wingcopter.com 

www.frankfurt-university.de/relut

(Images: Wing­copter)