The world’s largest autonomous delivery system specialized in on-demand drone delivery and instant logistics, Zipline, has unveiled its new platform that provides quiet, fast, and precise autonomous delivery directly to homes in cities and suburbs which, includes an updated drone, as well as a more accurate method of delivering parcels to a customer’s home.
The home delivery platform which is practically silent designed to sound like wind rustling leaves and is expected to deliver up to seven times as fast as traditional automobile delivery, completing 10-mile deliveries in about 10 minutes.
The new delivery platform, includes docking and charging hardware that can be attached to the outside of any building or set up as a freestanding structure. When the drones return from delivery, they will dock themselves, release their empty droid, take on a new one, and then fly back off to do another delivery.
Zipline also designed an accompanying software that can be integrated with third-party inventory management and ordering systems, as well as an app that lets customers and companies track orders “to the second.” This was revealed by the Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, CEO, of Zipline,Keller Rinaudo Cliffton.
In a virtual meeting, he said Zipline has spent the last several years building and fine-tuning its next-generation technology, Platform 2, P2, to provide an optimal customer experience at scale. He added that,unlike other drone delivery services, Zipline’s drones fly more than 300 feet above the ground and are nearly inaudible.
“When the Zip arrives at its destination, it hovers safely and quietly at that altitude, while its fully autonomous delivery droid maneuvers down a tether, steers to the correct location, and gently drop off its package to areas as small as a patio table or the front steps of a home. This is all made possible through major innovations in aircraft and propeller design”. He stated.
According to the Co-founder and CEO of Zipline, several businesses across the healthcare and restaurant sectors, have already signed on to use Zipline’s new home delivery service. He further revealed that Sweetgreen is partnering with Zipline to further its mission of connecting people to real food in the United States while moving a step closer to its pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2027. By ordering through Zipline’s marketplace, Sweetgreen customers can get their orders using 97 percent less energy than traditional automotive methods.
Mr Cliffton, reiterated that over the last decade, global demand for instant delivery has skyrocketed, but the technology we’re using to deliver is 100 years old pointing out that they are still using the same 3,000-pound, gas combustion vehicles, driven by humans, to make billions of deliveries that usually weigh less than 5 pounds.
“It’s slow, it’s expensive, and it’s terrible for the planet, our new service is changing that and will finally make deliveries work for you and around your schedule. We have built the closest thing to teleportation ever created – asmooth, ultrafast, convenient, and truly magical autonomous logistics system that serves allpeople equally, wherever they are.” He noted.
He further stated that Zipline plans to conduct high-volume flight tests this year involving more than 10,000 test flights using about 100 aircraft. The first customer deployment of P2 will follow shortly after that. Zipline’s record for safety has been proven over the past seven years of operations and more than 500,000 commercial flights. Its long-range platform, P1, has autonomously flown 40 million miles worth of commercial deliveries through all kinds of weather without a safety incident – the vast majority of which were flights flown beyond visual line of sight.
Mr Cliffton also revealed that Zipline has received Part 135 certification, is authorized to complete the longest-range, on-demand commercial drone flights in America, and has completed more deliveries in 2022 than in all previous years combined, planning to complete about one million deliveries by the end of 2023 saying by 2025, Zipline is expected to operatemore flights annually than most airlines.
The Co-Founder and CEO of Sweetgreen Jonathan Neman, said the future of delivery is faster, more sustainable, and creates broader access, all of which provides improved value for customers. He added that “We couldn’t be more excited to work with Zipline to complement our delivery strategy. Zipline’s sustainable technology and ability to reach customers quickly, with a great delivery experience, will help us give our customers what they want when they want it.” He stated.
Michigan Medicine will use Zipline’s new service to more than double the number of prescriptions it fills each year through its in-house pharmacy. Intermountain Health will use it to deliver prescriptions to patients’ homes in the Salt Lake City metro area. MultiCare Health System plans to use the new platform to expedite diagnostics and deliver prescriptions and medical devices throughout MultiCare’s network of facilities, including hospitals, laboratories, and doctors’ offices. And Zipline’s first customer, the Government of Rwanda, will use the company’s new home delivery service to enable urban aerial last-mile delivery to homes, hotels, and health facilities in Kigali and elsewhere in the country.
Zipline’s end-to-end solution seamlessly integrates with a business’s current operations. Thatincludes its dual-use docking and charging hardware, software that easily works with third-partyinventory management and ordering systems, an intuitive app that allows order tracking down tothe second, and an autonomy system that has already guided the flight paths of 40 million commercial miles.
Each P2 Zip has a 10-mile service radius while carrying a 6-8 pound payload for out-and-backdeliveries from a single dock. Alternatively, it can also fly up to 24 miles one way from dock todock, charging at each dock before picking up its next delivery. Because Zips can move fromdock to dock, Zipline can dynamically respond to peak order times – ensuring there’s enoughdelivery capacity for an urgent prescription delivery or a busy Friday pizza night or weekdaylunch rush.
