Delivery
The site decides the delivery, not the aircraft
Almost every delivery drone project that stops, stops because there was nowhere acceptable to put the package down.
Why the last mile is the expensive one
Flying between two points is the solved part. An aircraft that can carry two kilos ten kilometres exists and can be bought. What has not been solved is the thirty seconds at each end.
At the depot end somebody has to load it, check it and launch it, and if that takes four minutes then the aircraft spends more time on the ground than in the air and the economics never close.
At the receiving end there has to be a place to descend into that is clear of people, wires, branches and wind, that the recipient can reach, and that is the same place tomorrow. In a Swedish town that place is rarely obvious.
The route
A straight line is not available
The direct path between two points crosses whatever happens to be between them, and some of that is airspace you may not enter with the permission you hold. The flown route is longer than the drawn one, always.
Every detour costs battery, and battery was already the binding constraint. This is why range has to be planned against the actual route and not against the distance on a map, and why a delivery that looks feasible at eight kilometres often is not.
The site
Wind makes the landing circle bigger than anyone expects
A landing site is not a point. It is a circle, sized by the aircraft's accuracy plus what the wind does to it on the way down, plus a margin for the gust that arrives at the wrong moment.
Obstacles shrink the usable circle from the outside while wind grows the required one from the inside, and those two numbers meeting is the question of whether a given address can be served at all.
Surveying candidate sites is unglamorous work and it is the part that decides whether the project is real. We would rather find out in week one than after an airframe has been bought.
The honest version of this is that some addresses cannot be served, and that the survey is what tells you which ones. A route list with three impossible stops on it is worth more than an optimistic one.
The questions
What has to be answered before an airframe is chosen
In that order. Reversing it is how projects acquire an aircraft that cannot do the job.
| Question | Why it comes first | What it rules out |
|---|---|---|
| What is being moved | Mass and shape set the whole aircraft | Anything that cannot carry it with reserve |
| Who is underneath the route | It decides the legal category | Routes that need an approval you do not have |
| Where does it land | A site is harder to find than an aircraft | Addresses that have no usable circle |
| How often | Ground time per flight decides the economics | Any plan where loading takes longer than flying |
Three of these four are answered on the ground, which is a fair summary of unmanned aviation generally.
Or write here
Three fields, and a person reads it
Name, an address we can answer to, and what you are trying to build. You get a reference back straight away.
What are you trying to deliver?
Tell us the package and the two ends of the route. The answer is sometimes that a van is still better, and we will say so.