Zipline Unveils NextGen Autonomous Drone Platform, “Very Quiet, Very Precise”

Zipline has unveiled its NextGen Autonomous Drone Plat­form that, the com­pa­ny claims, “pro­vides qui­et, fast and pre­cise deliv­ery direct­ly to homes in cities and sub­urbs.” Zipline also says the plat­form “is prac­ti­cal­ly silent (designed to sound like wind rustling leaves), and is expect­ed to deliv­er up to 7 times as fast as tra­di­tion­al auto­mo­bile deliv­ery, com­plet­ing 10-mile deliv­er­ies in about 10 min­utes,” reports a press release.

The drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny has spent the last sev­er­al years build­ing and fine-tun­ing its next-gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy, Plat­form 2 (P2), to pro­vide “an opti­mal cus­tomer expe­ri­ence at scale.”

Unlike oth­er drone ser­vices, Zipline’s (Zips) fly “more than 300 ft above the ground and are near­ly inaudi­ble.” When the Zip arrives at its des­ti­na­tion, “it hov­ers safe­ly and qui­et­ly at that alti­tude, while its ful­ly autonomous deliv­ery droid manoeu­vres down a teth­er, steers to the cor­rect loca­tion, and gen­tly drops off its pack­age to areas as small as a patio table or the front steps of a home.” This is made pos­si­ble through major inno­va­tions in air­craft and pro­peller design.

Var­i­ous busi­ness­es across the health­care and restau­rant sec­tors have signed on to use Zipline’s new home deliv­ery ser­vice. For exam­ple, Sweet­green is col­lab­o­rat­ing to devel­op its mis­sion “of con­nect­ing peo­ple to real food in the U.S”, while mov­ing clos­er to a pledge of being car­bon-neu­tral by 2027. Sweet­green cus­tomers are able to gain orders using 97 per­cent less ener­gy than tra­di­tion­al trans­porta­tion meth­ods.

Jonathan Neman, Co-Founder and CEO of Sweet­green, com­ment­ed, “The future of deliv­ery is faster, more sus­tain­able and cre­ates broad­er access, all of which pro­vides improved val­ue for our cus­tomers.” He con­tin­ued, “Zipline’s sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy and abil­i­ty to reach cus­tomers quick­ly, with a great deliv­ery expe­ri­ence, will help us give our cus­tomers what they want, when they want it.”

Anoth­er com­pa­ny primed to employ the ser­vice is Michi­gan Med­i­cine. The pharmacy’s aim is to dou­ble the num­ber of pre­scrip­tions it fills each year through Zipline. Oth­er health­care relat­ed com­pa­nies on-board include Inter­moun­tain Health and Mul­ti­Care Health Sys­tems who plan to deliv­er pre­scrip­tions and med­ical devices through a net­work of facil­i­ties includ­ing hos­pi­tals, lab­o­ra­to­ries and doc­tors’ offices.

NextGen ‘Zip’ Deliv­ery Droid

Mean­while, Zipline’s first cus­tomer, the Gov­ern­ment of Rwan­da, is to use the company’s new deliv­ery ser­vice to enable urban aer­i­al last-mile deliv­ery to homes, hotels and health facil­i­ties in Kigali and else­where in the coun­try.

Zipline’s plat­form includes dual-use dock­ing and charg­ing hard­ware; soft­ware that eas­i­ly works with third-par­ty inven­to­ry man­age­ment and order­ing sys­tems; an intu­itive app that allows order track­ing down to the sec­ond; and an auton­o­my sys­tem that has already guid­ed the flight paths of 40 mil­lion com­mer­cial miles.

Zipline ’s light dock­ing and charg­ing hard­ware can be attached to any build­ing or set up as a free­stand­ing struc­ture. A Zip is loaded by a busi­ness’ employ­ee who can send off orders in sec­onds, right from their loca­tion, with­out even hav­ing to leave the kitchen, phar­ma­cy or doc­tors’ office.

The release explains, “Busi­ness­es can offer Zipline’s home deliv­ery ser­vice in a vari­ety of ways, includ­ing native inte­gra­tions into apps and web­sites, white labeled oppor­tu­ni­ties, and by join­ing Zipline’s mar­ket­place. Cus­tomers can make on-demand orders, or sched­ule the exact time they’d like their pack­age to arrive, down to the sec­ond.”

Each P2 Zip has a 10-mile ser­vice radius while car­ry­ing a 6–8 lb pay­load for out-and-back deliv­er­ies from a sin­gle dock. Alter­na­tive­ly, it can also fly up to 24 miles one way from dock to dock, charg­ing at each one, before pick­ing up its next deliv­ery. Because Zips can move from dock to dock, the drones are able to respond to peak order times, ensur­ing there’s enough capac­i­ty for an urgent pre­scrip­tion deliv­ery, a week­day lunch rush, or a busy Fri­day piz­za night.

Keller Rin­au­do Cliffton, co-Founder and CEO of Zipline, com­ment­ed, “Over the last decade, glob­al demand for instant deliv­ery has sky­rock­et­ed, but the tech­nol­o­gy we’re using to deliv­er is 100 years old. We’re still using the same 3,000-pound, gas com­bus­tion vehi­cles, dri­ven by humans, to make bil­lions of deliv­er­ies that usu­al­ly weigh less than 5 pounds. It’s slow, it’s expen­sive and it’s ter­ri­ble for the plan­et.”

He con­tin­ued, “Our new ser­vice is chang­ing that and will final­ly make deliv­er­ies work for you and around your sched­ule. We have built the clos­est thing to tele­por­ta­tion ever cre­at­ed – a smooth, ultra­fast, con­ve­nient, and tru­ly mag­i­cal autonomous logis­tics sys­tem — that serves all peo­ple equal­ly, wher­ev­er they are.”

Ini­tial­ly, Zipline is to con­duct a series of tri­als this year involv­ing more than 10,000 test flights using around 100 air­craft. The first actu­al cus­tomer deploy­ment of P2 will fol­low short­ly after­wards.

Zipline’s safe­ty record has been proven over the past sev­en years of oper­a­tions with more than 500,000 com­mer­cial flights. The com­pa­ny aims to com­plete 1 mil­lion deliv­er­ies by the end of 2023 and by 2025 expects to oper­ate more flights annu­al­ly than most air­lines.

Its long-range plat­form, P1, has autonomous­ly already flown 40 mil­lion miles worth of com­mer­cial deliv­er­ies through all kinds of weath­er with­out a safe­ty inci­dent, the vast major­i­ty of which were BVLOS flights.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.flyzipline.com/