For quite some time now companies have been promising customers that they will be able to start receiving packages via drones.  Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has much of The United States waiting on edge for the official launch of Amazon Prime Air.  A service that will be able to deliver orders to residences within 30 minutes.  After all, we have heard of a number of situations where drones are making deliveries on a regular basis.

In Ghana, Zipline is set to begin making up to 600 drone deliveries of blood and medical samples to around 2,000 health care facilities daily.  In Switzerland, Matternet has had a perfect safety track record with close to 2,000 drone deliveries within their city structures.  Matternet has also begun making medical deliveries in North Carolina in collaborations with UPS.  But that is about as far as drone deliveries have progressed in the US.  So how is it that one of most advanced countries in the world is being surpassed by smaller countries when it comes to drone deliveries?

The answer lies in the fact that The United States is such and technologically advanced nation that it creates major logistical blocks to allow for autonomous drone flight.  The US has more planes flying through it’s airspace than any other nation in the world.  It is estimated that there are around 87,000 flights just taking off from US airports daily.  While countries like Switzerland only see a small fraction of flights compared to The US, and even far less in Ghana.  This frees up a lot of airspace for drones to fly safely throughout cities and countrysides.

While the idea of ordering a new pair of shoes online, or some burgers from a local restaurant, and having it delivered to your home by drone in around 30 minutes sounds great, safety comes first.  Logistically, the US has yet to find a safe way of allowing this over broad areas.  As of right now the FAA regulations on drone flights are very strict, though they have been lessened recently.  Because of all the airports and current flight paths crisscrossing the country, finding direct drone flight paths that don’t coincide with no fly zones is difficult.  There is also the issue of finding a way to allow a drone to fly autonomously through a dense city or suburban area safely.  For now the FAA requires all drone to be flown within line of sight of it’s operator, greatly diminishing the flight distance.

In North Carolina Matternet and UPS have been able to circumvent this by having fixed flight paths within the confines of the WakeMed hospital campus.  They have found that delivering medical supplies this way saves a huge amount of money and time.  Previously, blood samples would have to be driven through the same roadways used by the rest of the Raleigh commuters.  This could take sometimes up to an hour, jeopardizing the survival of the samples as well as costing a fortune in gas and wages.  Now the deliveries can be made swiftly and directly.  But for deliveries to be made to private residences this would not be the case.

With the success that Zipline has shown in Ghana, and even more so Matternet’s success in Switzerland and North Carolina, air traffic logistics are being researched to find an answer.  The FAA is currently working with NASA to create a system that would allow drones to communicate with air traffic controllers.  This just might be the step that will allow companies to launch programs like Prime Air.

Previous Drone News: