We may soon start to see the future of drone technology making its mark into the logistics industry as a convenient and faster way to speed up parcel delivery services, which can be a serious alternative to road travel and conventional freight delivery.
According to Mashable, an Australian medical company is planning to exploit this benefit as it is in the final stages of preparations for using drones to deliver medical supplies for hard to reach areas of the Australian Outback. This includes the potential to transport emergency medical supplies including perishable ones like blood for transfusion and organs for transplant.
The Angel Drone Project, a collaborative effort launched last week by the Australian RPAS Consortium, plans to deliver medical supplies using custom-made remote-controlled flying devices that will make delivery more efficient and at minimal costs, based on a related report from the Business Insider.
The group is composed of firms specializing in security, hardware systems, software and legal teams, in cooperation with the University of Sydney and UAS International. A trail run is in the works to transport blood samples, according to the group's president Ron Bartsch. This is a plan they hope that would introduce the market into the new age of logistics.
This came on the heels of ongoing experiments being conducted by Amazon.com and Matternet in efforts to speed up last-mile delivery for parcels and online order requests from branched freight networks to the actual doorstep delivery process.
Amazon is planning to launch Prime Air, a drone delivery service that can initiate parcel delivery service of packages of up to five pounds in 30 minutes or less dispatched from an Amazon warehouse. The company claims that they are currently developing several prototypes to handle a wide variety of packages and models that are best suited to different environments and may announce developments soon enough.
A couple of months back, Google X, the division that carries out the Project Wing drone delivery project under the umbrella of Alphabet, received White House approval to conduct test flights with authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration.
One of the marked benefits of drones is that it provides a faster means of transport from point A to point B by eliminating traffic land traffic obstacles and eliminates the use of fossil fuel to minimize carbon footprint, among others. This could well be an alternative that would usher in the new age for logistics.
