Drone Aircraft Delivery

Abstract

Drone aircraft delivery is a service that uses small, unmanned aircraft—"drones"—to deliver packages to customers. Once the province solely of the military, whose use of drones involves mainly surveillance (via cameras and microphones installed on drones) and delivery and targeting of weapons, drones have now entered the commercial arena. Companies and individuals can purchase sophisticated drones that are not much larger than a shoebox, and still smaller ones are available. Many large retailers have been exploring the idea of replacing their delivery fleets with automated drones as a way of saving money and speeding up deliveries.

Overview

Drone delivery technology involves a human being who uses remote controls to fly a small, radio controlled craft, similar to the way in which model aircraft hobbyists have long flown remote controlled (RC) miniature airplanes and helicopters. In contrast with RC devices, however, the new generation of commercial drones are smaller, quieter, and much more maneuverable, often employing multiple rotor blades like those on a helicopter, to allow them to make minute adjustments in position and trajectory. Some of these craft also have built-in cameras that relay video to the operator in real time, allowing the drone to be piloted even when it is no longer within line of sight. Devices like these have occasionally been used by paparazzi to fly cameras over the homes of celebrities in the hope of capturing candid photos and video. Research into new drone technology hopes to make it possible to deploy fully automated drones that are capable of self-navigation by identifying routes using GPS signals, navigating around obstacles, and returning to their home base (Ramadan, Farah & Mrad, 2017). Automated delivery is the ultimate goal of drone delivery, as significant savings are to be made not in moving from truck to drone delivery but in eliminating any human operator. Drone aircraft delivery is intended to replace much of companies' human workforce, which is a cause for concern among current delivery employees and their unions.

Usually when people first hear about the idea of drone aircraft delivery, their response is one of incredulity. This is partly due to surprise at how far drone technology has advanced, and partly due to the sense that using such sophisticated technology to accomplish something as mundane as package delivery somehow seems to be an extravagance. Nevertheless, major corporations and investors have been confident enough in the promise of the service to invest heavily in its development, despite the fact that commercial drones were until recently prohibited from flying in populated areas because of safety concerns. New regulations permit such flights, but only so long as the aircraft remains visible to the person piloting it, placing severe restrictions on the applications for which drone delivery can be used (Tavana et al., 2017).

The Last Mile. The type of delivery that most corporations envision drones being used for is clearly not the long-haul, cross-country journey from manufacturing center to customer's home. This part of a delivery—flying goods overseas, transporting them on ships and trucks—is usually the least expensive part of shipping services for a retailer, because computerization and economies of scale allow retailers to ship many goods at the same time, thus reducing the shipping cost per item; a plane might carry hundreds of packages from the same retailer, all destined for the same sorting facility. The segment of the transit of goods from seller to buyer that is the most expensive for the shipper, and therefore of most concern to retailers, is what is known as the "last mile," meaning the transfer of the goods from the final sorting facility to the destination, which is typically the home of the consumer who purchased the goods.

To illustrate, there might be a consumer in a suburb of Washington, D.C. who makes an online purchase of a pair of shoes. The retailer determines that the closest warehouse able to ship the shoes is in Ohio, so they are loaded onto a plane with other shoes also destined for the nation's capital. Once the shipment arrives in Washington, it is transferred to a sorting facility that organizes packages into batches that need to be delivered to the same general area. Once sorting is complete, each batch is loaded onto a truck and a driver takes it out to make the deliveries. This final step is considered the most resource intensive because it involves making a large number of stops to deliver a relatively small number of packages. Earlier in the trip, the retailer may have paid one hundred dollars to have one thousand packages flown from Ohio to Washington, so the cost per package for that segment of the journey would be only ten cents per package (one hundred dollars divided by one thousand packages). In the last mile, it might cost only thirty dollars to pay for the driver, the fuel, and the maintenance of the delivery vehicle, but if only five packages are being delivered, the cost per package would be six dollars—sixty times more than the bulk shipment's cost per package. Because the last mile seems to be a cost center for retailers when viewed this way, it has become a focus for finding ways to save money (Chen, 2017).

Various shipping methods for the last mile have been explored, using the metrics of route density (how many delivery stops are on a route) and drop size (how many packages are delivered to a particular location). Retailers want to maximize route density and drop size in order to reduce the average shipping costs, but these efforts must eventually reach a point where further progress is not possible without developing alternate methods, and this is why drone deliveries are the subject of so much interest. If automated drones could one day be used to deliver packages from the sorting facility directly to the customer, then there would be huge savings from no longer needing to sort deliveries or employ drivers—the last mile would become as efficient as other segments of the journey.

Further Insights

While many applications of drone delivery seem somewhat frivolous, such as the delivery of ordinary, everyday consumer goods or even fast food, there are other types of tasks under consideration. One area being explored is the delivery of medical devices and even medical assistance, albeit remote, via drone. The vision of this type of delivery is to get medical equipment to a person in need quickly and efficiently. For example, someone with a snake bite located out on a hiking trail that is not easily accessible to vehicles could be sent a dose of antivenin using drone delivery, potentially saving the victim's life. It is even possible that the same type of drone could carry communication equipment similar to that found in a cell phone, allowing a medical professional to have a video interaction with the recipient to provide guidance until help arrives. Drones could also deliver insulin to someone in diabetic shock, or a portable defibrillator for someone suffering from a heart attack (Elzweig, 2015).

Considering these possible benefits, it may seem surprising that drone delivery is so heavily regulated. The concerns that have driven the development of drone restrictions are many, but perhaps the most significant is the fear that if drone delivery becomes popular, there will be a much greater chance that drones could interfere with full sized aircraft. Full size aircraft are required to schedule their trips and provide detailed itineraries precisely in order to avoid crossing one another's flight paths or, even worse, crashing into one another. No requirements of this sort are in place to regulate the usage of drones, however, and it is far from clear how effective such requirements would be even if they were, due to the small size and affordability of commercial drones—they are much easier and cheaper to acquire than an airplane or a helicopter. The danger has been highlighted even further by incidents involving amateur drone pilots who have attempted to use their drones to capture video footage of fires, but have unintentionally prevented airborne emergency responders from being able to assist. The risk to pilots from interference by drones results in firefighting aircraft being grounded once a drone is spotted in the area (Đokić & Dobrodolac, 2016).

Issues

Criminal Activity. Drone aircraft deliveries are not all of the wholesome variety, unfortunately. Adding to the debate over whether or not drone deliveries should be allowed is their potential for use by criminals. On several occasions, drones have been used in an attempt at delivering contraband to inmates serving time in prison. The material—drugs, cigarettes, even cell phones—is loaded onto the drone, and the drone is then piloted over the prison yard, where it is dropped for the inmates to retrieve. The facilities where this has occurred have stated that they have no way of knowing how long the practice was being used prior to its discovery by prison staff.

Delivery drones have also been used in other types of criminal activity, such as smuggling goods across borders, spying on others using cameras attached to delivery drones, and performing reconnaissance prior to breaking and entering. These and similar misuses of delivery drones have made it necessary for authorities to develop countermeasures that can be used to discourage or prevent inappropriate use of delivery drones (Murray & Chu, 2015). These take many different forms, such as devices to jam the signals that delivery drones rely on for navigation, security systems that can detect approaching drones and sound an alarm, and even weapons that can be used to disable or destroy drones without causing excessive amounts of damage to other property or danger to people in the area (Dorling et al., 2017).

Privacy. Privacy violation is another potential area of concern regarding drone aircraft delivery. Whether a drone is remotely piloted or fully automated, in order to travel from its point of origin to the customer, it will have to collect data such as the GPS coordinates of the home or business receiving the package. Once data like this has been collected, there is the chance that it will be stored after the delivery has been completed, and information that is stored electronically is always vulnerable to attack by those who wish to use it for unauthorized purposes.

For example, a customer might request delivery of a package via drone so that it could be dropped in her backyard while she was at work. The drone pilot could make the delivery remotely by using the drone's video camera, and notice that a window facing the backyard was ajar. If the pilot passed this information to an associate, that person could then break in with very little risk of being caught. If drone delivery is to become commonplace, then there will need to be strong safeguards in place to protect the sensitive personal information that drones could otherwise obtain and relay (Rao, Gopi & Maione, 2016).

Consequences. The potential for drone aircraft delivery to interfere with commercial aviation and emergency services is great, and must be addressed before drone delivery can advance beyond the experimental, proof of concept phase. The Internet has forever changed the way people shop, making it easier and faster to purchase an item online and have it delivered the same day than it would be to drive to a local store and make the purchase in person. Every day people request deliveries of clothing, gifts, and even groceries, and each of these deliveries could one day be made via drone. In the United States alone, tens of millions of packages are delivered each day. The number of drones that would be required to take on even a part of this work would make air collisions not only possible, but inevitable, unless preventative measures are developed and implemented (Jackman, 2016).

It is important to note that the potential savings that may come from drone aircraft deliveries are not without cost, albeit of a different sort. These savings will be due to reductions in companies' workforce, similar to those that have occurred in other industries such as manufacturing and construction. More drone deliveries will mean fewer deliveries by employees, which will inevitably lead to job losses, and this is a matter of great concern for those who are employed in the shipping industry. I

Arguably, a growth in the use of drones could help to create other kinds of jobs that displaced workers could be trained for, but it is by no means clear that this will definitely happen, or that there will be enough of these new jobs. Even if the many safety and privacy concerns of drone deliveries can be addressed, it will also be important for government bodies and corporations to plan for their introduction in a way that does not have a negative impact on the workforce (Collins, 2016). This could involve workforce retraining programs, tax incentives for companies to provide displaced employees with additional support, and so forth.

Terms & Concepts

Cost Per Delivery: A measure of shipping costs that calculates the unit cost of a driver making a delivery with multiple stops. Shippers wish to employ drones and other measures to reduce cost per delivery as much as possible.

Cost Per Parcel: A measure of shipping costs that calculates the unit cost of delivering each package.

Drop Size: The number of packages delivered to a particular location during a delivery. As drop size increases, the cost per parcel of shipping decreases, making it a goal for cost reduction by shippers.

GPS: An acronym for the Global Positioning System, a network of satellites that allow those with GPS receivers to determine their location on Earth by triangulating the signals received from multiple satellites.

Last Mile: The segment of a shipping route between the last sorting and distribution center and the delivery destination—not a literal mile. The last mile is often considered the most difficult and expensive segment of the route.

Route Density: The number of delivery stops made during a given work period. Retailers seek to contain shipping costs by maximizing route density.

UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle): An acronym that is an alternate term for drones; the term was originally coined to describe the drones used by the military.

Bibliography

Chen, G. Y. (2017). Reforming the current regulatory framework for commercial drones: Retaining American businesses' competitive advantage in the global economy. Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business, 37(3), 517–541. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=125154574&site=ehost-live

Collins, J. C. (2016). Drones: Is drone delivery simply pie in the sky? Journal of Accountancy, 222(6), 1–2. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=119968813&site=ehost-live

Đokić, N., & Dobrodolac, M. (2016). A study on the modernization of postal delivery. Horizons Series B, 3551–558.

Dorling, K., Heinrichs, J., Messier, G. G., & Magierowski, S. (2017). Vehicle routing problems for drone delivery. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man & Cybernetics. Systems, 47(1), 70–85. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=120283805&site=ehost-live

Elzweig, B. (2015). Civilian commercial drones are coming; are we ready? Southern Law Journal, 25(1), 161–177.

Jackman, A. H. (2016). Rhetorics of possibility and inevitability in commercial drone tradescapes. Geographica Helvetica, 71(1), 1–6.

Murray, C. C., & Chu, A. G. (2015). The flying sidekick traveling salesman problem: Optimization of drone-assisted parcel delivery. Transportation Research: Part C, 54, 86–109. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=102102295&site=ehost-live

Ramadan, Z. B., Farah, M. F., & Mrad, M. (2017). An adapted TPB approach to consumers' acceptance of service-delivery drones. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 29(7), 817–828. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=123567715&site=ehost-live

Rao, B., Gopi, A. G., & Maione, R. (2016). The societal impact of commercial drones. Technology in Society, 45, 83–90.

Tavana, M., Khalili-Damghani, K., Santos-Arteaga, F. J., & Zandi, M. (2017). Drone shipping versus truck delivery in a cross-docking system with multiple fleets and products. Expert Systems with Applications, 72, 93–107.

Suggested Reading

Békési, B., & Koronváry, P. (2017). Are drones a boon or bane? Scientific Research & Education in the Air Force—AFASES, 1, 55–64.

Bohi, H. (2018). Welcome to the drone age: Oil, gas, engineering, construction use UAVs to reach the unreachable. Alaska Business Monthly, 34(1), 60–64. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=127770182&site=ehost-live

Boucher, P. (2015). Domesticating the drone: The demilitarisation of unmanned aircraft for civil markets. Science & Engineering Ethics, 21(6), 1393–1412.

Cracknell, A. P. (2017). UAVs: Regulations and law enforcement. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 38(8–10), 3054–3067.

Heil, J. P., Jr. (2015). Attack of the drones: Small unmanned aircraft claims are on their way. IDC Quarterly, 25(2), 52–56.

Pritchard, C. (2015). All eyes on drones. Journal of the Australian & New Zealand Institute of Insurance & Finance, 38(4), 1–3. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=114094650&site=ehost-live

Williams, A. (2018). Ready to really take off?. Automotive Logistics, 62–64. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=126986229&site=ehost-live