Revolutionizing Last-Mile Delivery

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A new partnership will supply a fully automated and intelligent smart drone delivery solution. International express delivery service provider, DHL Express, and intelligent autonomous aerial vehicle company, EHang, will try to tackle the last-mile delivery challenges in the urban areas of China.

The project raises hope that smart drone delivery as an innovative logistics solution would be expanded and realized in more areas,

The new customized route, which has been exclusively created for a DHL customer, covers a distance of approximately 8km between the customer premises and the DHL service center in Guangdong Province.

The advanced UAV from EHang’s newly-launched Falcon series overcomes the complex road conditions and traffic congestion common to urban areas. It reduces one-way delivery time from 40 minutes to only eight minutes and can save costs of up to 80 percent per delivery, with reduced energy consumption and carbon footprint compared with road transportation.

The drone, with eight propellers on four arms, features vertical take-off and landing, high accuracy GPS and visual identification, smart flight path planning, A fully-automated flight and real-time network connection and scheduling, according to smartcitiesworld.net.

The drones, which can carry up to 5kg of cargo per flight, take-off and land atop intelligent cabinets that were specifically developed for the fully autonomous loading and offloading of the shipment. The intelligent cabinets connect with automated processes including sorting, scanning and storage of express mail, and will feature high-tech functions such as facial recognition and ID scanning.