For the first time, Amazon recently used a drone to deliver a package to consumers. It sent a Amazon Fire TV device and a pack of popcorn to a man living near Cambridge, England. Amazon officially confirmed the news on December 14, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos called this a milestone.
Amazon's commercial delivery drone project began in 2013, when Bezos said that in 2018, the delivery of goods through drones will be realized. The project currently covers only two consumers, but Amazon said it will promote the business in the next few months.
"At present, the development of the industry needs to wait for legislation, and there are different constraints at different stages of delivery, mainly due to load and battery life." Zhang Xiaonan, director of innovation strategy of Dajiang, told 21st Century Business Reporter, in warehousing, long-distance distribution At the three levels of the last few kilometers, at present, the UAV is used for warehousing management and the last two or three kilometers of distribution technology is relatively mature, and the long-distance distribution has not yet met the requirements.
First commercial delivery
On December 14th, US time, Amazon announced that it has begun to deliver goods to consumers through drones. The first product to be delivered by the drone was Amazon's Fire TV smart TV and a bag of popcorn, which took 13 minutes to complete. Currently, the weight of the goods targeted by this delivery service is limited to 5 pounds (about 2.27 kg).
From the warehouse to the consumer's home, the entire process is completed by the UAV developed by Amazon. The buyer of the goods will place a QR code at the location suitable for the receipt, and the drone will deliver the goods to the designated location. At present, Amazon's drone distribution service still requires weather conditions, and it is only delivered during the day and when the weather is good.
Amazon officials claim that the drone distribution service enhances Amazon's service capabilities, while also improving the overall security and efficiency of the transportation system, and has great potential. Therefore, Amazon will expand this experiment in the future.
This test seems to reflect Amazon's determination to carry out the drone delivery experiment. There are also people in the industry who believe that Amazon's approach shows that drone delivery is becoming a viable business. It has been three years since Amazon first announced its drone distribution plan, and Bezos proposed in 2013 that it will achieve the goal of distribution through drones in 2018.
Although the service is currently only available to two consumers, Amazon said it will continue to expand its coverage and eventually provide drone delivery services to dozens or even hundreds of consumers, all around Prime in Cambridge, England. The Air Ground Center is a few miles away.
The U.S. drones used to deliver goods are not the same shape as the previous exposure models. Amazon has previously said that the company has been trying to use a variety of different types of drones to work. Recently, Amazon also announced its laboratory project in Austria, which has assembled dozens of computer scientists to study computer vision perception and drone avoidance.
Since 2015, Amazon has also been experimenting on the outskirts of the Cambridge area where the drone is being distributed. Compared with the United States, the United Kingdom is considered by many to be relatively more lenient in drone management policies. For example, drone companies are allowed to fly outside the line of sight, and controllers operate multiple drones at the same time. Of course, the premise is that the drone company can obtain the permission of the British Civil Aviation Authority, and Amazon obtained the license in July 2015.
At present, Google's X Lab also has a drone delivery project, and Google's project has been in operation. However, according to the latest regulations of the US civil aviation department, commercial delivery of similar drones launched by Google and Amazon is not within the allowable range.
Three parties involved in the domestic market
It has always been said that the sound of drones distributing goods is the marketing and even speculation of enterprises has never stopped. Especially in the case that the drone technology has not been widely spread in the past two years, the popularization of drone delivery is considered to take a long time.
In China, players involved in similar projects include logistics companies, e-commerce platforms, and drone companies. In 2015, Taobao tried to participate in the distribution of goods in Beijing, and Yuantong, Feifei and Taobao jointly completed this attempt. In this test, the ginger tea ordered on Taobao can be delivered to the designated city or region within one hour.
But this attempt has not been carried out. On December 15th, a person familiar with the above-mentioned cooperation who asked not to be named told the reporter that the above-mentioned cooperation between Taobao and all parties was under pressure from the regulatory level. In other words, the current regulatory layer does not encourage drone distribution attempts in first-tier cities such as Beijing.
Regulatory is indeed the biggest uncertainty in the current testing of drone distribution.
At present, domestic drone supervision is still in a vacuum zone. In short, there are still specific legal rules applicable to the manufacture and use of drones in current civil aviation regulations and regulations. Even in foreign countries, the current drone supervision has not fully kept pace with the development of the industry. In June of this year, the US government announced the drone regulation rules, allowing the use of small drones for low-altitude flights for education and scientific research, but suspended the approval of commercial drone delivery services from companies such as Amazon and Google until the government Class flight alone establishes regulatory rules.
Despite this, in the past two years, a large number of companies continue to explore in the field of delivery drones. According to public information, Jingdong has already obtained approval reports for drones from the civil aviation department and the Air Force, and is allowed to conduct delivery tests in two counties under Suqian and Sichuan provinces. Liu Qiangdong said in a high-profile manner that the Jingdong drone will cover more than 420,000 villages in a year.
At the Asian Consumer Electronics Show held in May this year, JD.com showed two delivery drones that it is developing. Compared with Amazon's drones, Jingdong's two drones are much larger in size. Zhang Chen, CTO of Jingdong Group, said that Jingdong hopes to transport 30 kilograms of parcels for 30 kilometers through drones.
Obviously, Jingdong is working hard to transport long-distance drones, and the application scenario is in rural areas. However, unlike the previous Taobao attempt, and the current mode of Amazon, the two domestic e-commerce platforms hope to complete the entire distribution chain through the mode of distributor + drone, in which the drone plays the bearer. The role of goods transport in a certain distance.
But the extent to which drones can reduce the cost of current logistics systems is still unknown. But it is obvious that there is also a scale effect in the distribution of drones: as this approach becomes more popular, the cost of a single order is likely to decline.
In the field of drone delivery, there are also logistics companies, of which the representative company is SF. As early as 2013, SF Express confirmed that the company is testing the drone distribution service. The 21st Century Business Herald reporter learned that "Shunfeng UAV" is also a product of SF and UAV manufacturers.
In March 2015, SF Express tested drone shipments in remote and rural areas in the Pearl River Delta region at a density of 500 sorties per day. The drone manufacturer that cooperated with SF at that time was Shenzhen's ultra-flying drone, but the subsequent outflow of the SF-based drone project gradually became less and less. The industry applications currently focused on the ultra-flying drones have also become agricultural.
But not all logistics companies are optimistic about drone delivery. The long-term observation is whether the drone can achieve a higher cost performance than manual distribution.
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