Drones are rapidly becoming an affordable and often faster solution for parcel delivery than terrestrial vehicles. Existing transportation drones and software infrastructures are mostly designed by logistics companies for trained users and dedicated infrastructure, and are to be used for either long range (<150 km) or last-mile delivery (<20 km). This letter presents Dronistics, an integrated software and hardware system for last-centimeter (<5 km) person-to-person delivery using cargo drones. The system is conceived to be intuitive and intrinsically safe to enable short-distance deliveries between inexperienced users. Dronistics is composed of a safe foldable drone (PackDrone) and a web application software to intuitively control and track the drone in real time. In order to assess Dronistics' user acceptance, we conducted 150 deliveries over one month on the EPFL campus in Switzerland. Here we describe the results of these tests by analyzing flight statistics, environmental conditions, and user reactions. Moreover, we also describe technical problems that occurred during flight tests and solutions that could prevent them. Index Terms-Aerial systems, applications, intelligent transportation systems, unmanned aerial vehicles. I. INTRODUCTION R ECENT years have witnessed an exponential rise in interest in delivery drones, and mainly multicopters, due to their capability to effectively overcome obstacles or traffic jams, to rapidly reach remote locations, and to take off and land in cluttered environments. Therefore, logistics companies have started to explore the possibility of using aerial delivery as a faster and more cost-effective alternative to terrestrial transportation [1], [2]. Examples include Amazon.com's tests of product deliveries to homes directly from warehouses in the United Kingdom [3], DHL's deliveries of emergency medical supplies using its Parcelcopter [4], Alphabet's burrito deliveries to Australian homes with its Project Wing drones [5], Swiss Post's experiments with transportation of lab samples between hospitals in Lugano, Switzerland [6], and Zipline's transportation of blood from central storehouses to remote hospitals in Africa [7]. All these aerial delivery services are developed for operation by trained employees of logistics companies for
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.