Starship
Technologies Delivery Drone: The Drones and the Mothership
Airborne
drones grab most of the headlines in the civilian sector; hobbyists are using
them to fly, photographers are using them to film, and
Amazon is trying to use them to deliver
packages (Manjoo, 2016). When unmanned ground vehicles
(UGVs) are seen, it’s typically in a
military application: the most well-known UGVs are the
explosive-ordnance robots that help
keep troops safe in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A company named Starship
Technologies is looking to change that. Based in Estonia, the
company has introduced a six-wheeled UGV that aims to revolutionize
a process that we’ve all
come to take for granted: small parcel delivery. And
while their drone is already in limited use,
they’ve now partnered with Mercedes-Benz Vans
(Daimler, 2017) to create a van-drone concept
that may really put UGV delivery on the map.
But
first, a little background.
Starship
Technologies was founded in 2014 by Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, a pair of
programmers and entrepreneurs who co-founded Skype
(Markoff, 2015). According to Markoff
(2015), They had one goal: to develop a UGV versatile
enough to develop all types of small
packages, from food to medicine and everything in
between. Their efforts resulted in an as-yet-
unnamed robot that resembles a futuristic cooler on
wheels:
The Starship drone is
already seeing use as a food delivery vehicle (Brown, 2016), but
that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Starship’s goal
for this drone is for it to become a vehicle that’s
used to deliver anything that fits into its cargo
container. This is where Mercedes-Benz Vans
comes in. The van manufacturer spotted a major
weakness with the Starship system, one that it
feels that it has the means to address: the Starship
drone must return to its warehouse after every
delivery to be reloaded, which severely limits both
its range and the amount of deliveries it can
make in one day (Daimler, 2017). Mercedes also thinks
it has the solution: a combination of van
and drone that they refer to as the “mothership”
concept.
The mothership concept is
simple. A van, acting as the mothership, rolls out on a delivery
run, loaded with both drones and cargo. Once it
reaches a central location, the drones deploy and
make their deliveries; once those deliveries are
complete, the drones come back to the van,
reload, and go on another delivery run. According to
Daimler (2017), Mercedes believes that this
will cut down on the costs of building and operating
decentralized warehouses, as well as give its
van customers potential new streams of revenue. Here
is an image of the concept in action:
And
here is an image of the inside of the drone docking area at the rear of the
van.
Note the abundant cargo
space in the middle of the van bed; the drones are small enough
that they can be docked on the sides of the van.
This
van/drone hybrid is, in my opinion, the perfect compromise between human
control
and autonomic function. A human driver puts the van in
place, and then drones deploy and make
up to six deliveries at once. These deliveries present
minimal impact to traffic and safety
(because the drones are using the sidewalks), and the
presence of the van means a quick
turnaround time for the drones. And, in case there is
a mechanical issue with a drone, the driver
can quickly retrieve the malfunctioning unit (instead
of the drone lying helpless in the street
while a repair truck deploys). UGV delivery may be the
future, and the mothership concept may
be the key to that future.
References
Brown, M. (2016). If
drone delivery is the future, people are pretty chill about it. Retrieved
from
https://www.inverse.com/article/19920-inside-starship-s-plan-for-a-pizza-delivering-robot
Daimler. (2017). Investment
in Starship Technologies, manufacturer of delivery robots.
technologies-manufacturer-of-delivery-robots-00010487.asp?donotredirect=true
Manjoo, F. (2016). Think
Amazon’s drone delivery idea is a gimmick? Think again. Retrieved
is-a-gimmick-think-again.html
Markoff, J. (2015). Skype founders build a robot for suburban streets. Retrieved from
streets.html
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