New Foldable Design Improves Drone Delivery

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of talk in the media about potential upcoming drone delivery services. The most well known of these is probably Amazon’s Prime Air, which was originally announced back in 2013. So far, neither Prime Air or any other service has actually taken off, and the whole idea has become somewhat of a joke in the news.

The reasons for this are pretty obvious: the cost for a fleet of delivery drones would be very high, most drones can’t carry very much weight or travel very far, and the regulations involved are a maze of red tape. But, a new design from a team at EPFL’s (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) Laboratory of Intelligent Systems may make drone delivery more feasible.

Their design uses a foldable structure to form a sort of cage around both the package and the drone itself, to increase customer safety. It’s capable of carrying a 500 grams (1.1lbs) over a distance of 2 kilometers (1.25 miles), while flying completely autonomously and relaying its position to both the sender and recipient. Because the drone is foldable, it can be easily packed up and stored or returned, and it even integrates a parachute for safety if there are flight problems.

This isn’t a huge leap forward, but it’s certainly a step. The weight-carrying and flight distance limitations mean it’s only viable commercially for delivering light packages to nearby recipients. But, it could be very beneficial for other purposes, such as delivering medicine to people in hard to reach places. The design team is hoping to improve both the payload capacity and travel distance, so we may see their design being rolled out for commercial delivery in the future.