Drone deliveries were meant to revolutionize logistics when they first made their debut. But despite being around for almost a decade, the drone delivery ecosystem is still not living up to expectations.

Over the past decade, there have been many use cases for drone deliveries developed. In the US, several companies have been using drones for deliveries. Last year, Amazon announced that its newest Prime Air drones will deliver to customers in cities in the UK and Italy, as well as three US locations by the end of 2024. In India, there have been plans for drone deliveries in rural areas to supply medication and essentials.

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While there remain plans to develop a drone delivery ecosystem, there are still several challenges and limitations to be overcome. These include:

• Regulations: Drone delivery must comply with various rules and regulations regarding airspace, safety, privacy, and noise. Different countries and regions may have different standards and requirements, which can affect the feasibility and scalability of drone delivery operations.
• Infrastructure: Drone delivery requires adequate infrastructure to support the launch, landing, charging, and maintenance of drones. This may include dedicated drone ports, docking stations, or landing pads, which can be costly and complex to install and operate. Additionally, drone delivery must deal with the “last-meter” challenge of getting the package from the drone to the customer’s doorstep, which may require different methods depending on the environment and customer preference.
• Security: Drone delivery must ensure the security of the packages and the drones themselves. Packages must be protected from theft, damage, or tampering during transit and delivery. Drones must be protected from hacking, interference, and physical attacks that could compromise their functionality or safety.
• Weather: Drone delivery is susceptible to weather conditions, such as wind, rain, snow, fog, or extreme temperatures. These can affect the performance, reliability, and safety of drones, as well as the quality of the packages. Drone delivery may need to adjust or cancel operations depending on the weather forecast and real-time conditions.
• Customer acceptance: Drone delivery must overcome the potential barriers to customer acceptance and satisfaction. Customers may have concerns or preferences about the cost, speed, convenience, privacy, and environmental impact of drone delivery. Customers may also have different expectations and experiences depending on the type of goods they order, such as food, medicine, or clothing. Drone delivery must address these issues and provide a positive and consistent customer experience.

These are some of the biggest challenges that drone delivery faces today and in the future. But they’re not insurmountable problems, and many companies and organizations are working to overcome them and improve the technology and service of drone delivery.

While there are plans to develop a drone delivery ecosystem, there are still several challenges and limitations faced. (Image generated by AI).

Drone deliveries in Malaysia and Singapore

The drone delivery ecosystem in Malaysia and Singapore has been around for some time. In fact, both countries have already been experimenting with drone use cases, even before the Covid-19 pandemic.

While the trial sessions were successful, most of the drone projects announced so far have failed to live up to expectations. For example, in Malaysia, there was a huge interest in drones being used for food deliveries, with Cyberjaya being selected as the initial testing area. However, the project never got going, and the idea of using drones for food deliveries in the area eventually faded out.

In Singapore, foodpanda conducted trials on a drone delivery service for food, too. But even that project has since been shelved.

Part of the reason for these ideas not taking off successfully could be the lack of drone ecosystem and infrastructure in place. The costs involved in such operations would also need to be minimal and based on consumer interest.

Drone deliveries may have a totally different use case when it comes to logistics, though. Using drones for the delivery of parcels, rather than food, is a lot more feasible, and makes a lot more sense given the nature of the products being delivered.

Drone delivery services between Malaysia and Singapore use the specialized technologies of both entities.

Cross-border drone delivery

Aerodyne Group, a global leader in drone-based enterprise solutions provider headquartered in Malaysia has inked an agreement with DroneDash Technologies, a leading air mobility company headquartered in Singapore to introduce cross-border drone delivery services. The drone delivery services between Malaysia and Singapore use the specialized technologies of both entities to boost logistics efficiency across the two countries and advance the region’s delivery and supply chain capabilities.

Both Aerodyne and DroneDash will navigate the regulatory framework, securing all necessary permits to pioneer shore-to-shore drone operations along the Malaysia-Singapore corridor. This venture is supported by the latest in unmanned sea and air technologies, heralding a new era of logistical efficiency.

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Central to the operation is a cutting-edge navigation system, crafted from satellite communications with expansive dual-city 5G roaming, to ensure drones safely navigate through congested maritime and aerial paths, significantly boosting operational safety and reliability.

The initiative will initially focus on establishing delivery routes to Johor Bahru and Iskandar Malaysia, strategically chosen for their proximity to Singapore. This phase sets the foundation for future expansion throughout Malaysia, with commercial operations anticipated to start in the third quarter of 2024.

The deployment of drones, capable of carrying up to 30 kilograms and achieving speeds of 150 km/h within a four-hour flight span, promises secure and efficient deliveries.

The partnership enables cargo delivery across national boundaries at any moment, five times faster than sea freight. (Source – DroneDash).

“Organizations in the logistics, cargo delivery and freight services sector stand to gain a double-digit percentage improvement in overall productivity and cost. Drone deliveries are also beneficial for the environment with emissions and carbon footprint being reduced by up to 100% and 80% respectively,” said Paul Yam, CEO of DroneDash.

“Drone deliveries are transforming the speed and reach of logistics operations, and they can help reach remote areas where traditional air and sea freight are unable to access. They also add to the creation of a revitalized and vibrant logistic sector through job creation in operating and maintaining the drones.”

“With the formation of the recent Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ), we are proud to play a part in strengthening economic connectivity between the two regions,” said Mudzakkir Hatta, CEO of Aerodyne (Malaysia’s operation).

“We look forward to venturing beyond the state of Johor with increased shipments to other parts of Malaysia, forging a longstanding trade cooperation with the two partnering nations.”

Designed for critical deliveries such as urgent documents, high-value electronics, medical supplies, and perishable foods, this service promises to redefine logistics between Malaysia and Singapore.

With real-time tracking, advanced security protocols including 256-bit encryption, and blockchain technology for logistical oversight, this initiative establishes a new benchmark for secure, efficient cross-border logistics.

The post Can cross-border drone deliveries between Malaysia and Singapore work? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Drone technology is being adapted for delivery services, agriculture, telco maintenance, and even as the basis for flying vehicles. Some of these use cases have been successful around the world and in Asia as well.

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With the global market for drone technology projected to reach US$ 21.9 billion by 2026, China and the US represented a big chunk of it followed by Japan, Canada, and Germany. In fact, China continues to bring in innovations and use cases with the drone in verticals that were once thought never possible.

For example, China unveiled Robo-Shark, a military drone capable of operating at high speeds with a low sound for deep-sea exploration and anti-submarine warfare.

In healthcare, drone technology is creating endless possibilities as well. According to a UNICEF report, drones in healthcare can be used for transportation of medical equipment and vaccines, aerial spraying as well as public space monitoring.

As such, countries like India, Indonesia, and Malaysia have been using drones to help deal with the COVID-19 pandemic for different reasons. In Malaysia, drones are being used for the surveillance of large gatherings in specific areas. If an area has too many people, the drone will sound an alarm and request the crowd to disperse.

In Indonesia, a group of drone enthusiasts is using their aerial skills to provide contactless medicine and food delivery to COVID-19 patients isolating at home. As Indonesia is geographically spread out across thousands of islands, the ‘Makassar Recover Drone Medic’ team is working with the local coronavirus task force to deliver medicine at least five times a day.

Mobility restrictions remain in place in many Indonesian cities, including Makassar, in a bid to contain a devastating wave of COVID-19 infections driven by the Delta variant. It was reported that during the peak of the latest outbreak in July, they made up to 25 rounds of deliveries in one day.

(Photo by Manjunath Kiran / AFP)

Mobility restrictions are also a big problem in India. With a population of nearly 1.4 billion people, India saw nearly 34 million cases, with over 450,000 deaths reported. Despite accelerated vaccination efforts in the country, getting vaccines to those in remote locations is still a big challenge.

However, drone technology is changing this. In Hyderabad, drones commenced the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines, beyond the visual line of sight. Typically, drones are only allowed to be flown within the line of sight with anything beyond that posing a risk to the drone.

The Times of India reported that the drone delivery service is a joint initiative of the Telangana government, World Economic Forum, NITI Aayog, and Apollo Hospitals. The project is expected to pave the way for more healthcare drone delivery services around the country. Each drone is capable of carrying a payload of 4kg and 200 doses of COVID-19 vaccines throughout the 6.6km flight.

For UNICEF, drone technology in healthcare can only be successful if the health supply chain is fully understood. This includes understanding the potential use cases, locations, routes, commodities, and transportation modalities, as well as having a cost-effective strategy on drone optimization.

“The effective use of technology cannot be scaled without building an appropriate support system and enabling environment. In order to operationalize the use of drones for pandemics or, in general, health supply chain work, enabling environment becomes crucial,” stated the report.

As such, drones may just revolutionize the healthcare system and help provide aid to those in remote locations. While the technology is still in its testing phases, improvements in drone technology, as well as the network, will be crucial in ensuring the processes are seamless in the future.

The post India and Indonesia leveraging drone technology to deliver vaccines appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

When the cellphone network was being developed back in the 1970’s and 80’s, who would have predicted that this invention would lead to a situation in which most of us now walk around with a small, powerful, indispensable computer (which, amusingly we still call a phone)?

The effects of the development of autonomous transport, therefore, are unpredictable – we really don’t know where we might be in 10 years, never mind 100 years hence.

What we can do, however, is look at some of the themes which are developing in the autonomous travel arena in technology, and try to extrapolate out the emerging technological threads.

Uber and Lyft have disrupted traditional taxis, services like Malaysia’s GoCar app are changing car hire, and MoBikes is changing bike hire. As autonomy becomes installed in more forms of transport, we may begin to see what we could term transport-as-a-service (let’s use the acronym TaaS). TaaS is the logical extension of disruptive tech in mobility.

TaaS would change our conception of ownership of transport. Rather than have vehicles sat outside our apartments, or on our driveways, perhaps the future is in using vehicles as needs arrive?

Public transport of today is already a TaaS, albeit one with obvious strictures. Will public transport exist if we can use personal vehicles to transport us, at will?

Or perhaps, we’ll not want to relinquish our own vehicle (at least, for now) and instead, allow others to use our vehicles – while they’re unused in the office car park, for example.

Same old congestion?

One of the oft-quoted positives of autonomous vehicle technologies is so-called tailgating. This is where vehicles can safely drive very close to one another – in a tight convoy if you will. This means that roads are used much more efficiently than human drivers could ever hope to achieve.

The technology behind this type of convoying relies to a certain extent on vehicle-to-vehicle communications, (perhaps using 5G’s low latency and high speed) as well as a mixture of GPS, radar, lidar and other sensors.

While this is technologically impressive, making lots more room on the roads by utilizing super-convoys may not pay dividends, according to some studies’ findings. The laws of induced demand stipulate that as more capacity on our road networks becomes available, more vehicles simply take up the new capacity.

In short, instead of less congestion than we have now, we’ll have similar congestion problems in terms of slower than necessary journey times, but the congestion will be created by many more vehicles on the road.

The problems with pollution, therefore, may be massive; especially given that, in some opinions, the mainstream automotive industry has an enormous investment in fossil-fuel infrastructure. At least the first few generations of autonomous vehicles are likely to be, at best, hybrid electric/petrol models.

We also need to consider what we actually want autonomous vehicles for, and who is to benefit from the new technology and possibilities. While images of high-tech driverless buses moving the otherwise housebound sick and old may abound, history has shown us that the people to benefit from the newest technologies are the rich, first-world elite.

Some technologies in this sphere are, however, are designed to be more egalitarian. The DROS platform from DIDRIVERS, for instance, is designed to be able to deliver autonomous capability to any form of transport. DROS facilitates autonomous operation using widely-available “standard” sensors, so is suitable for use in forklift trucks, freight lorries, domestic lawn mowers and personal vehicles alike.

Insurance & ethics

It seems inconceivable that autonomous vehicle manufacturers will allow their products to be held liable in the case of accidents (unless absolute liability can be proven due to physical malfunction). With faultless systems for the autonomous “driver”, we can assume that accident insurance will continue to have to be paid by those not well-off enough to own or use autonomous vehicles.

However, such speculation may be as misguided as that postulated by those who thought we’d all be driving flying cars by 2019. For the meantime, at least, according to DIDRIVERS’s Dr. Swash:

“Private transport such as the cars we drive to work won’t yet be fully autonomous due to unrationalised cost of sensors – they will just enhance our driving experience.”

For now, the legislative and regulatory systems need to develop. The laggardness of governments to legislate in this area is perhaps understandable: reactive, rather than pro-active responses will be more accurate than trying to legislate now for an uncertain future.

While the race to vehicular autonomy is global and (at least for the household-name tech giants) headline-grabbing, here are three companies whose individual research and production are of interest to our readers, as potential game changers in this unpredictable field.

DIDRIVERS

This London-based startup has partnership organizations in UAE and differentiates itself from its competitors on a number of key points.

Firstly, its products are manufactured using 3D printing technologies, which significantly lowers costs and delivers bespoke services.

Secondly, DIDRIVERS uses a fusion of camera, lidar, radar and other active sensors in its perception and cognitive driving solutions, which can validate the created data by cross-checking one source against the other. Data can, down the line, be validated against a real-world map, too.

Thirdly, DIDRIVERS have produced the world’s first robotics operating system (DROS – DIDRIVERS Robotics Operating System) which has all intelligent and cognitive driving logics and they license it out to different organizations in the automotive sector. One recent deal is with GAUSSIN, who will use DROS in their specialist load vehicles.

DROS allows off-the-shelf sensors to be controlled and their data collated and fusion, so, in theory, any vehicle can be equipped with autonomy with minimum re-engineering work.

The company’s product line demonstrates this wide-ranging capability. Its line-up includes self-driving freight lorries and truck right down to self-steering, self-powered luggage and wheel chair – plus everything in between.

DIDRIVERS’s recent showing at GITEX 2017 provoked huge interest from both private and public sectors, but, the company’s meetings on the exhibition floor confirmed that the public sector, in particular, needs holistic, proof-of-concept testing before wholesale deployment.

STARSHIP TECHNOLOGIES

This magnificently-monikered Estonian startup has offices Tallinn, London, Washington D.C., California and Hamburg. Its autonomous delivery drones have been extensively tested on different continents and provide a worthy alternative to traditional delivery methods.

While big players like Amazon are seriously thinking about flying drones dropping off parcels – despite air traffic regulations – Starship’s pavement-based offering seems more suited to the real world.

The small robot vehicles travel at the same speed as a pedestrian and a host of onboard sensors prevent any mishaps. The vehicles themselves are secure and are monitored by human operators in a central depot.

You may think that this type of delivery system removes the need for the traditional delivery van and driver, who is subject to the problems of traffic congestion and, because of the same, contributes to pollution. And in many ways, this is true.

But in an interesting development, the company’s recent deal with Mercedes-Benz Vans effectively uses delivery bots plus traditional vans to massively increase the system’s range.

The Starship bots are probably only suitable for urban use for now, as their range, individually, is limited. But the Estonians seem to have come up with a solution employable now, using technology we know is reliable.

BLICKFELD

This Munich-based startup believes its product could make the process of mass manufacturing autonomous vehicles much more affordable, by offering Lidar systems at a significantly lower cost.

Lidar (light detection and radar) is the method by which most forms of autonomous vehicles are made “aware” of their surroundings. Near-infrared light is used to detect the shape of nearby objects, allowing autonomous vehicles (or rather their processing systems) to analyze the world around them.

While a decent lidar can cost in the region of US$80,000, the German company hopes to lower this cost and begins first trials with auto equipment manufacturers early 2018.

Like DIDRIVERS, Blickfeld believes its future is in using commercial, off-the-shelf components. This means that lidar systems can be mass-produced at a cheaper price without sacrificing quality and safety standards.

As well as cost, there’s also the issue of physical bulk with systems as they have thus far developed. Traditionally, Lidar systems were niche products which involved spinning mirrors to send scans around the area, making the devices around the size of a can of coffee, minimum. But solid-state Lidar (a device which moves its beams via “solid state” – i.e. electronically) will lower costs and reduce bulk. This is Blickfeld’s goal.

The post The (autonomous) drive to the future appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.