Drones Come to The Mainstream

Drones Come to The Mainstream

Updated September 25, 2014
DHL To Deliver Medicine Via Drones



Deutsche Post DHL Follows Amazon and Google in Testing Delivery Drones



BERLIN—  DHL said it would use a drone to deliver medication to a German island in the North Sea, marking the first routine drone delivery to customers and another step in the rapid advancement of the technology.

DHL said Wednesday that as part of a month-long feasibility project, it will start using unmanned aircraft this week to carry medicine from the harbor town of Norddeich, Germany, to the small island of Just. Each day—depending on weather—the drone will fly autonomously on a preprogrammed seven-and-a-half-mile route, the first routine missions in Europe in which a drone will operate beyond the pilot's eyesight, DHL said.

DHL's plans follow those of Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc., which have each tested their own delivery drones. Those U.S. Internet companies have said the routine deployment of the devices is years away—in part because of regulatory challenges—but DHL is hoping to demonstrate that the technology is ready for some real-world applications.

Drone makers and observers have touted the potential for drone deliveries in remote areas where existing infrastructure makes shipping difficult. Governments have also been more willing to authorize drone flights over less populated areas, so the technology is expected to arrive first in islands like Just, where there are no cars, and the remote outback in Queensland, Australia, where Google tested its delivery drones.

Several government agencies worked together to establish a restricted flight area specifically for the North Sea drone flights, DHL said. U.S. aviation authorities have moved more slowly than other countries in approving commercial-drone flights, even for testing, prompting Amazon to conduct some of its tests in Canada, and Google in Australia.

DHL launched its drone-research project last year in Bonn, Germany, delivering medication across the Rhine River to a lawn behind the company's headquarters. In that weeklong project, a pilot on the ground controlled the bright-yellow quadcopter—a small helicopter with four rotors—on its one-and-a-half-mile round trip.

DHL said its partners, Microdrones GmbH and a German university, revamped the drone for the new project to withstand the wind and weather conditions of the North Sea.


The drone will land on a specified field in Just, where DHL couriers will retrieve the parcels and deliver them to residents and vacationers on the island. DHL said pilots on the ground in Norddeich will stay in contact with air-traffic controllers and monitor the drone in case they need to intervene.

Thanks to a proliferation of inexpensive sensors, chips, cameras and other gizmos that can be tacked onto wannabe spy planes and helicopters, it's easier than ever for technologists to build craft that fly themselves.

The techies are sending the three-to-six foot wide drones, guided by computers, radios and soon cellphones, to survey fields, capture action shots from the air or follow them around to snap photos at optimal angles. About their only constraints: a 400-foot ceiling for amateur drones set by the Federal Aviation Administration—and battery life.

A product designer in San Francisco, has built about a dozen drones for $150 to $1,000 each. He says he spends at least 20 hours a week tweaking and flying them. He says drones have allowed him to capture some hard-to-get photos of the Bay Area—including an image of himself on top of Corona Heights shot from far away.

Another hobbyist, pilots a drone as pedestrians watche in Berkeley.

A product designer, who helped design the Flip video camera, is working on technology that allows the drones to be controlled via iPhones and Android devices. He also recently built drones with a fancy chip that can process inputs from three gyroscopes, three accelerometers and a compass."We're ahead of the phones," he says, who adds that he prefers the helicopters to the airplanes, because they are easier to test in his backyard.

At Berkeley Marina, a software engineer at Walt Disney Co.'s Pixar Animation, takes his airplane drone and "quadcopter" out for a spin almost every weekend. His fanciest drone is equipped with a camera that allows him to see what it sees by wearing goggles. "It's very similar to being in the air," he says.

The drone subculture in Silicon Valley reflects the widening use of unpiloted aircraft by the U.S. military and law-enforcement agencies. Some entrepreneurs are imagining businesses based on the gadgets, a brainstorm of some computer programmers, which would deliver a taco to a customer's door.

The growth and increased sophistication of the toy vehicles has raised questions about whether the technology should be in hobbyists' hands. Privacy advocates, meantime, have raised concerns that drones could be used for surveillance.

The FAA allows amateurs to fly drones for fun, as long as they stick to rules like not flying the machines over people and keeping their drones below 400 feet and in their line of sight. The FAA has said it plans to allow commercial use—meaning businesses that deploy drones, such as the one designed deliver a taco—in the coming years.

Meanwhile, demand is increasing for instruction on how to build a drone. A workshop for hackers in Oakland, plans to hold sessions for building 10 to 20 drones in coming months. The president who works on security communications for the Mozilla Foundation, says building a drone can be detailed, requiring soldering, other mechanical skills and uploading software to run the hardware.

"If things go crazy, it will fly in your face," He says of the devices. One of the trickiest steps is calibrating a drone to fly outdoors based on the wind and other variables, he adds.
Some are proving drone-building can be a business. In 2009, a drone evangelist, co-founded a drone-building company in San Diego. The firm sells drone parts, such as electronic pilots and sensors. He says it is growing at 50% a year and has multimillions in revenue.

He likens the community of hobbyists to Silicon Valley's Homebrew Computer Club in the 1970s, where Apple Inc. co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak showed off their first personal computer. At the time, the future uses of computers weren't clear, he says, with the software applications materializing over time. "I think drones will go the same way."

Organizations That Have Sought to Use Drones 

Police departments and universities nationwide have obtained licenses from the FAA to use drones, according to data obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group. See a list of what groups have requested licenses, and the status of that request.
 

Organization	Status of License
U.S. Air Force	Active
Arlington (Texas) Police Department	Active
U.S. Army	Active
CAL FIRE (California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection)	Expired
City of Herington, Kan.	Active
City of Houston Police Department	Expired
City of North Little Rock, Ark., Police Department	Active
Cornell University	Expired
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)	Active
DHS (Department of Homeland Security) / CBP (Customs and Border Protection)	Active
DHS (Department of Homeland Security) / Science and Technology	Active
DOE (Department of Energy) - Idaho National Laboratory	Active
DOE (Department of Energy) - National Energy Technology Laboratory	Expired
Department of Agriculture - US Forest Service	Disapproved
Department of Agriculture - US Forest Service	Expired
Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service	Disapproved
Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service	Active
Department of the Interior - National Business Center/Aviation Management Directorate (NBC/AMD)	Active
DOJ (Department of Justice) - Queen Anne's County Office of the Sheriff (State unknown)	Expired
Eastern Gateway Community College	Active
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation)	Active
Gadsden Police Department (State unknown)	Active
Georgia Tech Police Department, Office of Emergency Preparedness	Disapproved
Georgia Tech Research Institute	Active
Hays County Emergency Service Office (State unknown)	Expired
Kansas State University	Active
Mesa County (Colo.) Sheriff's Office	Active
Miami-Dade Police Department	Active
Middle Tennessee State University	Active
Mississippi Department of Marine Resources	Active
Mississippi State University	Active
Montgomery County Sheriff's Office (State unknown)	Expired
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)	Active
U.S. Navy	Active
New Mexico Tech	Active
New Mexico State University Physical Sciences Laboratory (NMSU-PSL)	Active
Nicholls State University	Expired
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)	Expired
Ogden (Utah) Police Department	Active
Ohio University	Active
Orange County Sheriff's Office (State unknown)	Active
Otter Tail County (State unknown)	Disapproved
Polk County Sheriff's Office (State unknown)	Active
Seattle Police Department	Active
Texas A&M University Corpus Christi	Active
Texas A&M University - TEES (Texas Engineering Experiment Station)	Active
Texas Department of Public Safety	Expired
Texas State University	Active
University of Alaska Fairbanks	Active
University of Arizona	Expired
University of Colorado	Active
University of Connecticut	Active
University of Florida	Active
University of Michigan	Expired
University of North Dakota	Active
University of Wisconsin	Expired
USMC (United States Marine Corps)	Active
Utah State University	Active
Virginia Commonwealth University	Expired
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University	Active
Washington State Department of Transportation	Expired

Monty Henry, Owner

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