Online ordering and food delivery platform Zomato on Wednesday said it has successfully tested its maiden drone delivery technology using a hybrid drone that covered a distance of five km in about 10 minutes with a peak speed of 80 km/hr to deliver a food packet, weighing 5 kg.
Drones are seen as viable delivery model, as currently, the average time required for the food delivery platform's biker fleet to deliver food is 30 minutes.
"The only possible way to reduce the average 30 minutes to 15 minutes is to take the aerial route. Roads are not efficient for very fast deliveries,” the company mentioned in its statement.
Zomato had acquired TechEagle, a Lucknow-based drone startup, to solve issues such as reducing pollution and handling traffic in 2018 end.
Speaking about the equipment/vehicle used to test deliver, Zomato highlighted using a hybrid drone with a fusion of rotary wing and fixed wings carried a payload of 5kg, in the form of food packet.
Zomato pointed out that the drones used for testing are fully automated, with (remote) pilot supervision in place to ensure safety of the vehicle in use. Over time, as the company collects more data, it is likely to do away with the pilot supervision, letting it operate intuitively, based on the data available to the drone.
Illustrating the design and engineering of the drone, Zomato talked about its lightweight nature, but keeping safety as its priority. The drone has inbuilt sensors, and a computer onboard to make sure it doesn’t crash into other objects.
Interestingly, the drone can either function as a helicopter or an airplane. This ensures it doesn’t need a landing strip to take off or land, and when it is mid-air, the drone flies like a plane, to cover distance quicker.
It’s fascinating to see an Indian brand adopting drones, that too for delivery, and it seems Zomato’s mission to take off has been greatly helped by its acquisition of TechEagle last year.
This startup was founded in 2015 by Vikram Singh Meena who was a student at IIT-Kanpur back then.
Zomato is forming a consortium as per DGCA’s guidelines to carry out experimental Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations (BVLOS) BVLOS operations, the company statement added.
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