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Known for its embrace of emergent technologies, Mountain View has been an early adopter of delivery bots on its sidewalks and self-driving delivery vehicles on its streets. Soon it will experience a new autonomous delivery system, this time from the skies with a fleet of fast, lightweight and nearly noiseless drones.
Matternet, a Mountain View company, plans to launch a pilot program this summer that will have drones deliver medicine and food to residents right outside their homes.
“We’ve been working on building systems that enable ultra-fast, emissions free, scalable transportation of lightweight items in cities and suburbs,” said Matternet CEO and founder Andreas Raptopoulos.
Based in Mountain View since 2019, Matternet has already launched delivery drone services in Switzerland, Germany, and the United States in Florida and North Carolina. But it has not had the opportunity to fly its autonomous aircraft in Silicon Valley until recently.
Last year, the company was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate commercial drones “beyond visual line of sight,” making it possible to fly the drones for longer distances.
“This puts us in a very unique position where we can actually bring this type of innovation home. This is where we live and work, and it remains something that we only reserved for other places in the world. So now we have the opportunity to bring it here,” Raptopoulos said.
For years, Matternet has partnered with health care facilities in Europe to transport medical specimens between hospitals and laboratories. With FAA certification, it is now planning to scale up its commercial operations in the U.S. and have drones bring medicines directly to people’s homes.
“An over-the-counter drug or prescription drug eventually will be delivered directly to somebody’s backyard, instead of them having to go the store,” Raptopoulos said.
The drones, which can travel a maximum distance of 12 miles, are faster than vehicle courier services, as they do not get stuck in traffic. In Europe, it takes over an hour to deliver a package by vehicle but less than 15 minutes by drones, Raptopoulos said.
The process also is a lot more environmentally friendly, Raptopoulos said, and cited a statistic that about 30% of a city’s carbon emissions are coming from “last mile” vehicle deliveries. The drones can significantly reduce this output, as they are capable of carrying small packages without contributing to traffic or carbon emissions, he said.
While in the health care space for many years, Raptopoulos is planning to use the drones for food delivery as well, which he anticipates launching in partnership with Mountain View businesses.
Currently, the city does not have any ordinances on the books that affect drone delivery operations, according to Jim O’Sullivan, Matternet vice president of regulatory strategy and special projects. But the company is taking steps to reach out to the community and explain its plans and operations, he said.
The drones transport boxes, ranging between four and 16 liters in volume, and can carry loads of up to four and a half pounds. Prior to a delivery, the company surveys the route to make sure there are no obstacles or sensitive flyover sites, O’Sullivan said.
The drones then are preprogrammed to follow the route autonomously, although a pilot will be stationed at the mission control in Mountain View to keep an eye on operations. If there is an anomaly during the flight, a parachute will deploy to bring the drone safely to the ground. The aircraft also rely on GPS for navigation, O’Sullivan said.
The drones, which fly high, are not loud, according to Raptopoulos, who compared the noise level to background office din when the drones are hovering near the ground. The drones also do not collect any photographs or WiFi data during flights. The only time an image is captured is when a drone takes a video of the package being lowered to the ground as proof of delivery.
“We really want to make sure that the community knows that we’re not out to collect data,” Raptopoulos said, adding that the point of the company was to make delivery systems more efficient.
As part of its pilot program, Matternet will operate the drones five days per week during business hours. It also plans to exhibit the drones at the Mountain View Annual Technology Showcase in July.
“We have seen the benefit that this technology brings in other parts of the world. We’re extremely excited to bring it home,” Raptopoulos said.
This story has been updated with the plural usage of “aircraft” and a cited statistic of 30%.
It’ll be interesting to see how this works with Moffett Airfield’s flight restrictions.
FYI, the plural of aircraft is aircraft, not aircrafts.
“The drones, which fly high…” How high? The control areas for Moffett Field is a class D airspace that goes from the surface up to 2500′. And right next to that is Palo Alto airport’s class D airspace. It almost completely covers Mountain View. The city of Mountain View has no jurisdiction over it, cannot permit aircraft to fly in it, that’s federally-designated airspace. The drones could fly over that airspace but would still have to enter it to deliver anything.
I’m pretty sure Matternet has worked out the airspace access issue. They must have dealt with similar things in their European operation.