tion from trials to widespread use. Limits on battery
life and payload weight still restrict the distance
they can travel and the size of the packages they can
carry. Strict government regulations and public
safety concerns have made many companies wary
of investing in broader drone programs until the
picture clears up.
In the meantime, some see a very different future
for drones in logistics—one where the flying bots are
used for collecting data instead of delivering parcels.
Attach a small camera to a drone and it can send
wireless video back to users, allowing them to count
inventory, patrol boundaries, or locate trucks.
Without the burden of a payload, the lightweight
drones can hover for hours over small areas like
truck yards or inside giant warehouses, proponents
say. And by avoiding flights that cross public roads
and buildings, drones can dodge many of the tough-est safety restrictions that now inhibit their use (such
as rules requiring them to stay in sight of a human
pilot and to avoid private property).
VIEW FROM ON HIGH
Transportation and logistics giant UPS Inc. has
already run trials that involve flying drones inside its
DCs. The airborne vehicles can perform inventory
counts in cavernous warehouses faster than a worker
could on foot, and they can verify the quantity or
identity of goods on high shelves without the safety
risks that come with sending an employee up on an
elevated platform, a UPS spokesman said.
Retail powerhouse Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has also
been experimenting with indoor drones. It recently
applied for a U.S. patent on a system that would
leverage both their data collection and delivery
capabilities by using drones to locate and drop off
merchandise within its giant retail stores, a company
spokesman confirmed. Intended to cut the amount
of time customers spend waiting for their goods,
Wal-Mart’s patent application describes a process in
which a store employee would dispatch an airborne
drone to fetch an item located within that store
and bring it to a waiting customer. To avoid having
drones flying over the heads of nervous shoppers, the
system would configure the flight path so the bots fly
over shelves, not aisles.
Other logistics-related opportunities include using
drone cameras to scan buildings for safety and security purposes, inspect lots and yards, track the location of trucks as they approach the dock, and locate
trucks in a staging area when it’s their turn to load,
said Bruce Bleikamp, a sales manager for Cimcorp,
a manufacturer and integrator of automated robotic
solutions.
“Sometimes drivers get tired of waiting and they
just leave,” he said. “Say you told the guy to go park
in slot #67 at the end of the row, but then when you
go back to get him, he’s not there. Now you could
dispatch a drone to fly over the area and locate him,
so you could have somebody go knock on his win-
dow and tell him to get back here.”
Alternatively, a DC manager could dispatch a
drone equipped with a camera to hover over a
fourth- or fifth-level rack in a high-bay warehouse
and perform a quick inventory count, eliminating
the need to send a lift truck to the location, pull the
pallet down to ground level, and have someone con-
