Matternet M2 Delivery Drone: World’s first to be issued FAA Type Certification — design deemed safe for commercial use

The drone deliv­ery indus­try reached a major and key reg­u­la­to­ry mile­stone last week when Mat­ter­net announced its M2 had been issued with an FAA Type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, allow­ing its quad­copter to be deployed for com­mer­cial use, reports a press release. The U.S reg­u­la­tor has approved designs for the drone to specif­i­cal­ly fly pack­ages. This is the first non-mil­i­tary unpilot­ed craft in the world to be giv­en such an acco­lade.

There­fore, the Mat­ter­net M2, a four-rotor copter capa­ble of car­ry­ing a 4 lb pack­age, is con­sid­ered safe and reli­able by the FAA. Win­ning reg­u­la­to­ry per­mis­sion for aero­nau­ti­cal-relat­ed designs is one of the major hur­dles to over­come before the craft can oper­ate rou­tine­ly for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions. “This is an impor­tant mile­stone in the FAA’s sup­port for the devel­op­ment of inno­v­a­tive drone tech­nol­o­gy,” said the regulator’s release.

M2 Deliv­er­ing Med­ical Sam­ples to Drone Sta­tion

While oth­er restric­tions remain before pack­age deliv­ery by drone becomes wide­spread, includ­ing the need for a low-alti­tude air-traf­fic sys­tem and rules to allow auto­mat­ed flights, this FAA approval shows the tech­nol­o­gy is advanc­ing and the reg­u­la­tor con­sid­ers it to have the equiv­a­lent reli­a­bil­i­ty of tra­di­tion­al air­craft. 

This is the first grant­ed for a non-mil­i­tary unpilot­ed craft since drones began to be more wide­ly used almost a decade ago. The M2 drone can only have a top speed of 45 mph and can­not fly high­er than 400 ft off the ground, stip­u­lates the FAA.

Mat­ter­net part­nered with UPS in 2019 to deliv­er med­ical sup­plies in North Car­oli­na and lat­er start­ed deliv­er­ing pre­scrip­tions in Flori­da. The com­pa­ny also car­ried out tri­als in Switzer­land, where it col­lab­o­rat­ed with Swiss Post to deliv­er lab sam­ples and blood tests. Mat­ter­net has since announced it is tak­ing over the Swiss Post’s drone deliv­ery pro­gram start­ing next year.

Oth­er sim­i­lar com­pa­nies are in hot pur­suit. In May, major super­mar­ket chain, Wal­mart, announced plans to expand its drone deliv­ery net­work in part­ner­ship with Drone­Up to cov­er the States of Ari­zona, Arkansas, Flori­da, Texas, Utah and Vir­ginia by the end of this year. Ama­zon Prime has also stat­ed it is to revi­talise its 2013 dream by start­ing tri­als in Lock­e­ford, Cal­i­for­nia and Col­lege Sta­tion, Texas. While Wing, the drone com­pa­ny owned by Google par­ent Alpha­bet, recent­ly launched tri­als in parts of Texas with craft capa­ble of car­ry­ing larg­er pay­loads.

UPS Tri­al

Mean­while, the drone deliv­ery indus­try should achieve a major break­through in 2023 when some com­pa­nies are expect­ed to be grant­ed Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS). For exam­ple, Bob­by Healy, Founder and CEO of Man­na Aero, told evtolinsights.com in a recent inter­view that mid-next year, the com­pa­ny plans to oper­ate com­mer­cial­ly in four dif­fer­ent Euro­pean coun­tries with anoth­er two in the pipeline. Short to medi­um term, once com­mer­cial cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and BVLOS is grant­ed, this poten­tial­ly mas­sive drone deliv­ery mar­ket, could dwarf the eVTOL indus­try.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://mttr.net

(Pics: Mat­ter­net)