Drones in Logistics: Uses and What the Future Holds
This post was originally posted on the Iris Automation Blog
There has been a lot of contention over how truly feasible Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are as last-mile logistics solutions. Currently, Amazon, Wing, Zipline, Uber, and Matternet have all developed unique UAV delivery platform technologies to tackle the problem of last-mile delivery.
While package delivery and military operations are the most covered use cases for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), there are lucrative opportunities for their use in logistics, particularly in tackling the last-mile delivery and rural/urban-first logistics which tend to be generally high-cost operations. We’ve already seen the value of using UAVs for warehouse inventory management, and current use cases are being explored and utilized to speed up efficiency and productivity and lower costs across many industries. The applications are incredibly timely in addressing delivery challenges during COVID-19, as demonstrated recently in Christiansburg, VA, where a local public library partnered with Wing to deliver books to students during library closure due to the pandemic.
But first, a primer
A few major topics need to be addressed to adequately cover the use of UAVs in logistics. These are:
