It's great to see other countries trying out this form of delivery, as rural roads in Africa can be quite bad.
I'm interested to see if this trial is successful in Tanzania, given that it's geographically much larger than Rwanda and has a much lower population density.
Tanzania: 47.5 persons/km^2 [1]
Rwanda: 445 persons/km^2 [2]
Rwanda is more dense by an order of magnitude.
[0] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37646474
My guess is they'll focus on a single mountainous area initially.
The concept is proven. Now they just need to upgrade the drones to create higher capacity.
Really impressive.
It's unlikely to be an issue in the wide open spaces of these countries - but an autonomous equivalent of the ATC system for drones will be needed when Amazon et al. start doing these deliveries in first world cities. Do you know of any companies working on this problem?
I think the real problem is regulatory; any such system is only likely to happen if it has the explicit blessing of a regional Air Traffic Management authority, in which case they're probably more likely to develop, fund and run it than a startup, though there will be a place for technology companies that don't mind working with their procurement cycles and living off grant money for a while. A quick Google suggests US authorities are working on it http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-drone-traffic-20170501...
Other drone delivery programs in developing countries have foundered because those countries have refused to give permissions for flights out of security concerns.
It's quite interesting technically. Regular ATC works by keeping flights quite far apart and separated by 1000ft or more in barometric altitude which wouldn't work with delivery dones but maybe you could use phone style gps location. It's not considered reliable enough for airliners but might be acceptable for drones.
Reason is money. UPS or the USPS can do it if Amazon and Walmart don't beat them first. Salaries and benefits are the biggest slice of the pie for expenses.
Also the "long way down" is good.
We're establishing a pharmaceutical (generics) formulation plant in Kigali. Technologies like zipline could come in handy for our project...
https://www.llamasoft.com/llamasoft-supports-zipline-improve...
That seems to be a critical part for implementing this in an urban delivery system. People will likely need to install some sort of out-of-reach delivery chute on their roof or some sort of box on the buildings to prevent theft.
It will make it more expensive to implement but I can't see how deliveries would work without some sort of on-the-ground infrastructure like this.
But when it does happen though it will be glorious.
Reason is money. UPS or the USPS can do it if Amazon and Walmart don't beat them first. Salaries and benefits are the biggest slice of the pie for expenses.
I can see that for large packages (~50% of current parcel delivery?) but that still leaves all standard envelope based mail and smaller package. Such as books by Amazon or the very broad group of various daily products people would START purchasing online if they could get same day delivery.
If we look merely at how things work now - yes - I believe what you're saying makes the most sense. Because it's merely a big optimization of the current systems.
But I believe this downplays the innovation that very fast same-day delivery of packages (within a few hours even) that drones could provide. It would seriously expand the scope of services businesses like UPS and Fedex can provide.
Suddenly pharmacies, drug dealers, restaurants, local bakeries, convenience stores, gas stations, liquor/wine stores, etc, etc have a new retail venue.
Why stop at the busy gas station to fill your cars tank before the daily commute when you can wake up to a prepaid jerry can in your drone box?
I'd bet the answer will likely be a combination of both with a much higher volume in the drone delivery side.
I have nothing against the technology, I'm just really curious about it's more 'nefarious' uses.
But that mission can be a challenge during emergencies, times of unexpected demand, bad weather, or for small but critical orders.
Um 2-3 out of those four will not be improved by drones!
Using drones for just-in-time deliveries will allow us to provide health facilities with complete access to vital medical products no matter the circumstance,” concluded Bwanakunu.
Including bad weather eh?
Emergencies (presumably political or military) will bring challenges of their own (since drones could conceivably be doing espionage and might be shot at), but can be routed around, and for times of unexpected demand it's a lot cheaper to store and launch many drones than it is to whistle up many trucks and drivers.
OF course the use case is limited at present due to payload limitations and so forth, but is there anyone who doesn't expect that to keep improving?
Example: http://www.frontpageafricaonline.com/images/countynews/bcty-...
Google title for a book. Start a kickstarter and get rich $$$.
As for drone GPS, there are VERY high accuracy options available using RTK. Especially RTK over satellite with systems from Trimble and Leica coming to mind. These are typically used in terrestrial survey and allow very high degrees of confidence in the physical location of the drones. I don't believe RTK works for planes, but it is in commercial use in drones all over. s
