Drone deliveries are evolving rapidly into a scalable and global transportation network for a range of goods, from medicines to fast food. Instead of jumping in your car and hitting the road to get what you need, the vision for the future is to get it delivered straight to your doorstep.
Data from Research and Markets revealed that the global drone logistics and transportation market size was estimated at $17.92 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 35.42% to reach $202.76 billion by 2030.
So, why are drones not yet mainstream? Factors such as safety and security, airspace management and infrastructure, and public acceptance and trust have presented significant challenges to growth, as Julian Estevez, associate professor and drone delivery operations researcher at the University of the Basque Country, explains.
He says: “Ensuring safe operation and integration of drones in airspace, particularly in urban areas with dense populations, requires robust systems for collision avoidance, redundancy, and managing unexpected events. The general public’s acceptance of drones operating in urban and residential areas plays a crucial role in the growth of drone deliveries. Addressing concerns related to privacy, noise pollution, and potential disruptions is essential to gain public trust and support.”
Not surprisingly, the biggest obstacle to growth has been regulation. Drones are regulated by national aviation authorities, and the rules surrounding the use of drones for commercial purposes vary from country to country. However, changes are taking place that will increasingly allow drones to fly over populated areas out of the pilot’s sight. And for one sector pioneer, Andreas Raptopoulos, cofounder and CEO of Matternet, that vision of a mainstream drone transportation system is already becoming a reality.
Born in Athens, Raptopoulos studied mechanical engineering and robotics in Greece before enrolling at London’s Royal College of Art, where he studied product innovation, fueling his ambitions to be an inventor and his desire to use his technical knowledge to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.
He says: “Growing up, I recall seeing images of the famine in Ethiopia and the transportation challenges that exacerbated the crisis. That made a huge impression on me as a youngster and became a key motivation to put my skills to work to try and solve this problem, which, to me, highlighted huge inequality. My passion for technology and drive to solve these problems led me to create Matternet.”
Launched in 2011 in Silicon Valley, Matternet is a leading developer of commercial drone delivery systems for urban and suburban environments. In 2017, it became the first company in the world to be authorized for commercial Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations of drone logistics networks over cities in Switzerland, delivering medical samples between hospitals and testing centers.
“We partnered with Swiss Post, which used the Matternet M2 drone delivery system to transport blood samples over the city of Lugano,” says Raptopoulos. “This was a world first; flying a commercial operation over densely populated areas transporting real customer cargo, in this case, blood samples that had been collected at one hospital facility and were being taken to the main hospital facility for testing.”
A few years later, Matternet launched operations at Labor Berlin in Germany, paving the way for the first urban BVLOS medical drone delivery network in the European Union. Matternet is expecting imminent changes to German regulation, which will allow BVLOS and reduce the time to get results for medical diagnostics, thereby creating a positive outcome for patient treatments. Labor Berlin is Europe’s biggest hospital laboratory, providing full-service medical diagnostics for dozens of hospitals and doctors’ offices.
CEO of Labor Berlin Nina Beikert says: “Matternet’s technology platform can speed up the transport of human specimen samples from hospital locations to Labor Berlin’s central lab by up to 70%. Using drones for our sample logistics contributes to a reduction of car traffic and emissions in the heart of Berlin.”
In 2019, Matternet partnered with UPS and launched the first regular commercial drone delivery route in the U.S., transporting diagnostics and medicine to hospitals in North Carolina much faster than other transportation options. While the main focus was on delivering to medical facilities, the team saw a greater opportunity to affect patient outcomes by expanding to home delivery.
“There are patients who aren’t very mobile and can’t always get to the pharmacy to get their prescriptions,” says Raptopoulos. “The pharmacy will deliver them by road, but they have traffic to contend with. Getting medicines delivered to people’s homes by drone, just in time, will absolutely improve their lives.”
Drones are also environmentally friendly, with CO2 emissions typically lower than electric cars and vans making a single delivery. As an alternative to sending goods by road, drone transport also contributes to a reduction of vehicle emissions. “When someone needs something delivered, instead of committing a human and a car to the road, a drone can carry it much faster and in a way that is better for the environment,” explains Raptopoulos.
Last year saw another breakthrough for the company and the drone industry when Matternet M2 became the first drone delivery system to achieve standard Type Certification, verifying its airworthiness, and Production Certification, signifying that it has passed performance tests and quality assurance tests by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the U.S.
Raptopoulos says: “We have an airworthy aircraft, an operation regulated and approved under Part 135 operator rules. The next crucial step is flying beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) in the U.S., which means flying long distances autonomously without human control of the aircraft or the airspace. The FAA recently signaled that it was looking to accelerate BVLOS exemption waivers for a small number of top aviation firms. Our partner UPS is one of them, so we feel very optimistic.”
Earlier this year, Matternet announced a partnership with U.S. cargo airline Ameriflight, which received FAA approval to operate the Matternet M2 for commercial delivery. Working together, Ameriflight and Matternet are set to become a fully operational, large-scale drone airline in the U.S., focusing initially on health care but also expanding into e-commerce.
While hospitals, laboratories and pharmacies will be among the first to benefit from reduced reliance on ground transport for urgent deliveries of samples to laboratories and pharmaceuticals to patients, Raptopoulos believes that drones will ultimately impact one of life’s most fundamental processes, how we move and transact goods of all types.
He says: “I liken it to growing up with no internet, compared with the connectedness we enjoy today. Imagine if access to goods was as frictionless and inexpensive as access to information through the internet. This technology will transform healthcare and e-commerce, facilitating a huge leap forward for many places with inadequate or non-existent roads today. For future generations, drones will be a new layer of the transportation infrastructure that people will take for granted.”
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