Drones have transformed blood delivery in Rwanda
wired.com
wired.com
Zipline's aircraft tend to fly the same trajectories over and over again, whatever's lowest energy, fastest, or avoids flying over populated areas unnecessarily. The vehicle isn't really designed to fly repeated grid patterns. We're also hesitant to intentionally collect aerial photography. It isn't necessary for our core business of efficiently delivering medical supplies, and could negatively impact the perceived utility of our system.
You should check out Saildrone. They make autonomous boats for collecting ocean science. https://www.saildrone.com/
I seem to be pretty good at drilling down into complex problems and finding relatively simple solutions. I am also pretty good at pushing back on things when they don't pass my smell test, and am willing to crack eggs as needed. Those are skills I practiced quite a bit in my solar car racing days. It's the sort of thing that many engineers struggle with, and are often afraid to do. In a good organization, though, it's the sort of behavior that others respect and appreciate. It helps to have an optimistic, easy going attitude.
DON’T BE FOOLED by Rwanda’s rural demographics; the country has a reputation for leaning into health tech innovations. Rwanda’s universal health care system reaches over 90 percent of the population. In 2009, the government piloted a phone-based program, called RapidSMS, to track and reduce maternal and child mortality. By 2013, RapidSMS connected 15,000 villages to the country’s wider network of doctors, hospitals, and ambulances.
This is inspiring.
As cynical as this may sound that 90% figure is v optimistic, virtual access to doctors and hospitals is not the same as physical access. But this is massive progress nonetheless.
https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/launching-drone-delivery/
https://www.pushkin.fm/show/whats-your-problem/
The big challenge they talk about is bringing the service (which already works in Rwanda) to the US, where aviation regulation is very different.
(Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford, about "awful human error, tragic catastrophes, daring heists and hilarious fiascos" and what one can learn from them is also entertaining and informative.)
I guess you could discard less perishable products if they were moved around for use.
Listening to a couple minutes, it sounds like they talk about expired medicine. Great. In any case, I don't see that there is really much of a market for moving 4 pounds at 60 miles an hour in the US. We have decent roads everywhere and the resources to have extra things where they might be needed.
A concrete example. Like I say, I live in a region that is larger than Rwanda, with something like 1/75 of the population density. There is a hospital with an emergency room in town here, the regional hospital is about 55 miles away in a straight line, a 75 minute drive if you don't speed, and then a real city is about 100 miles away in a straight line, a 2 hour drive if you don't speed (and it's similar for most of population in the region, living close to an emergency hospital and not all that far from a larger hospital).
What logistics are you going to institute where frequent small deliveries make a difference compared to regular vehicle based deliveries?
I guess if it is cheap it can be used for home deliveries.
This Zipline stuff is launching simple, low-cost vehicles, dropping very valuable (even life-saving) things from parachutes as simply as they can.
Google is launching very complex (part helicopter, part fixed wing) aircraft, lowering $5 coffee drinks to people so it doesn't spill.
How can it be so different? Do they just... have too much money and are over engineering something because they can? or have lost the plot? Or will they eventually get into delivery of some good that will justify the cost?
Or maybe I'm being a little harsh and it's just a reflection that in developed countries, life-saving needs are already taken care of quite well at the local level and all we have are coffee drinks to satisfy people's urgent desires nowadays.
Yes, "they just... have too much money and are over engineering something because they can". But also they are trying to fly precisely through extremely busy and regulated airspace to make a pin-point delivery of a low margin product. So you really do need a hover-capable vehicle and a method of landing within ~1m of your target. This may or may not actually be a good business model, but as you point out, in fancy countries we already have roads and plentiful hospitals.
Zipline's drop zones are larger and their operating area is so rural (not even roads! let alone air traffic!) that they had the freedom to choose simple, reliable design strategies.
Convincing the same manager to green light a potentially life saving project for stuff they'll never see with their eyes, on the other side of the earth is way more difficult, that's just human nature I think.
This is also why I think empowering (~= sponsoring/supporting) local people to solve themselves their problems is critical and can't be replaced by drop in solutions sent from big brains who have no skin in the game. It sometimes work, but it would be the exception and not the rule.
I saw another video about a network of automated delivery bots on a very famous and chaotic Minecraft server, 2b2t, run by an opportunistic software developer. Players who want large amounts of valuable in-game items make a small payment of real life currency to this player† and request it to drop them off at a certain set of in-game co-ordinates. The bot player uses a glider to get there and delivers large payloads of valuable items taken from a secret cache. Then the bot self-destructs so that they respawn at the secret cache instead of potentially revealing its location by going back. A very large chunk of the server's player base of players on this server have no home base, and just roam a very chaotic landscape which has mainly just large main highways, which get griefed often. It's only a game, but I think that models to us how relatively wealthy nomads living in very rural area/the wilderness would be a good target market for drone delivery.
I think for automated delivery systems in well-connected/developed areas, we want a system that uses small rails/tubes like what we see in Brave New World.
† This is against Minecraft's terms of service, but they do it anyways.
- The drone is not a quadcopter, they are too inefficient. Mini plane design.
- GPS device is directly attached to the swappable battery unit to ensure it is always connected to a satellite, eliminating satellite connection delays when the drone powers up.
- It is launched into a sky by a powered rail. It doesn't need to land to deliver the goods, the items get parachuted down. No infrastructure needed on the receiving end, the item just drops from the sky.
- For landing the drone flies past an aircraft arresting wire while hooking onto it which decelerates it and causes it to swing down (suspended above the ground). Easy to retrieve.
it seems the operations have been cleverly simplified too, I hope they can successfully expand!
I haven't paid attention to the statistics in a while, but these days the busiest distribution centers can launch a vehicle once per minute or so, and they do.
One of the sound bits I heard while skimming was that the recovery system misses 10% of the time. We've dialed it in to be considerably better since then. I'm going to forward that timestamp to a particular coworker and see if it causes his eye to twitch... :-)
Do the aircraft boards/computer get tied to some kind of simulator and (autonomously) fly around/run the actual control surfaces (in reality) as it flies in the simulation that would be neat. Although it might not make sense.
One thing that we don't have plugged in normally is the propulsion motors. The noise would be rather obnoxious considering the HIL setups are in the office. Also, I believe we still omit the wing tip LEDs; not only would they be obnoxiously bright, but they would melt themselves for lack of actual airflow!
that's cool, I'm gonna look into that "hardware in the loop"
Another innovation is the clip on wings.
I think this is clever engineering and a necessity for their time to fly requirements.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bnoUBfLxZz0
Also, Wendover have a fantastic Youtube channel that’s focused on global logistics. It’s endlessly fascinating and extremely well executed. Strongly recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-M98KLgaUU
It was really interesting to watch. General idea discusses the problems it faced in the US in seemingly optimal circumstances (airspace restrictions, density, existing delivery networks) and how it does live and help out in other places, highlighting zipline as an example.
Drones is a transformative technology, and we as usually go for 19th century Red Flag car laws.
That's a loaded term. It means whatever you want it to mean. If you are a drone enthusiast, it means you fly wherever you want, take pictures of whatever you want. To other people, it means freedom from having a drone buzz over their house taking pictures.
Simple search terms give you your answer.
I read your post. I go, surely with what he’s stated if it’s true, it wouldn’t be hard to find.
I put in my iPhone search engine “Texas drones animal cruelty”
And, in the first results, are these receipts you ask for.
I am begging you to simply use the search engine that takes no more than five seconds of your time rather than posting asking for “receipts” or “sources” & “citations” …
In any case, it looks like the law got mostly overturned a couple weeks ago, if I'm reading correctly. I imagine there will be ongoing litigation. Even without "ag gag" legislation, there is no shortage of people who really don't want drones flying around their neighborhoods taking pictures.
P.S. my Web searches didn’t come up with reliable-looking results, which is why I asked the illicit question.
All I’m trying to say is not to post the most low hanging of fruit. Something to the tune of “I’ve looked & you appear to be incorrect” is much better than “receipts?”
Do you disagree?
Quad copter drones are easier to make, and have a lot of resources.
But, I feel these mini plane types drones will be the workhorses in coming years.
Arducopter, pixhawk, missionplanner, diydrones.com
Read everything. after that go to aliexpress/amazon to start your journey.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/gallery/2022/...
My inner seceng wonders ( which likely cannot be answered in an open forum :) ) about the security of the system since the payloads are likely valuable - meds and all.