Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing time on March 10 morning news, it is reported that Google parent company Alphabet subsidiary Wing hopes to form a drone delivery network, the network will be able to complete the delivery of millions of orders each year. The company says it will increase efficiency by operating a network of drones.

The technology is being "scaled up" in Logan, Australia, where Wing delivers up to 1000 packages a day. The company is also conducting drone delivery tests in Lusk, a Dublin suburb.

Wing said they and other companies are in talks with the UK Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority to agree regulations allowing drone deliveries.

CEO Adam Woodworth said the delivery system looked "more like an efficient data network than a traditional transportation system."

He also said that in the experiment,"we did a lot of grocery deliveries, we did a lot of cooked food deliveries, and we did a lot of coffee deliveries. "

Currently, consumers are not charged extra for drone deliveries. The company did not disclose the final price for the service. But experts say drone companies will have to make a lot of deliveries in order to be financially sustainable.

Dr Steve Wright, of the University of the West of England, said it was not surprising that Wing was one of the companies trying to achieve unmanned home delivery. "Everyone is still working on drones themselves, and these devices will operate non-stop at night and during the day, much more than we did before, but now people's thinking has shifted to larger application scenarios," he said. The first issue companies are grappling with now is regulation. However, the next problem is imminent, and that is how to manage and guide this huge number of robots. And the answer is big data, and Wing and Amazon both see it. "

Wing's drone delivery network consists of three basic hardware elements: delivery drones, drone landing and charging platforms, and automated loaders that allow businesses to leave packages for collection.

With these elements, the company says, drones can pick up, deliver, and return to recharge in a pattern that makes the most sense for the entire system, rather than just flying from a base to a customer and back.

"A concrete example would be a drone taking off at one location, it might fly to another business to pick up a box, then it might fly to the delivery location, and then instead of returning to its takeoff platform, it might fly to another adjacent location," Woodworth said in an interview. "

The advantage of working the system as a network is that it can quickly adapt to peak demand in a particular region. The position of charging piles can also be increased rapidly.

The company says the system also has a high level of automation, and when a drone is activated, it checks whether it is in the right place, has the right software on board, and is authorized to take off.

Instead of just monitoring one drone, ground pilots can oversee a fleet of delivery drones to ensure they operate safely and efficiently.

Woodworth said more civil aviation regulators around the world were adopting rules allowing such operations. But the project also has some challenges to overcome, such as complaints from local residents about noise.

Woodworth said the company had put in "a lot of work to make the aircraft as quiet as possible." Planning software is designed to avoid creating "drone highways," where each flight passes the same house.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.