How Logistics Drones are Blazing a Trail for Urban Air Mobility    

UAM (Urban Air Mobility) and AAM (Advanced Air Mobility) promise a revolution in faster, cleaner, more integrated transportation.

As with any revolutionary change, there are challenges to overcome before the UAM dream becomes a reality. Keeping passengers and people on the ground safe, delivering enough sustainable power to carry the required payload, creating the necessary infrastructure and appropriate regulatory frameworks are just a few.

While UAM has been taking its first tentative steps, the use of drones in logistics has been quietly maturing. Much of its growth has been in areas that may be less visible - delivering  drugs in Africa more than parcels in Paris - so it’s easy to underestimate the maturity of the logistics drone market. It is this maturity and the learnings that created it which could help address some of the challenges facing UAM.

In this post, I explore how far drone use in logistics has laid the foundations for UAM and highlight some of the remaining challenges.

Logistics Drones – a Hidden Revolution?

Eight years ago, it looked like drone-based delivery could be commonplace in at least some North American and European urban areas by 2021, yet today, save for a few trial schemes, the skies remain relatively drone-free. A  TIME Magazine article from November 2021 highlights some reasons why Amazon’s Prime Air service rollout is taking longer than expected. Other services have faced similar challenges.  

Regulatory approvals have taken time, not helped by some well-publicised drone incursions, but the last three years have seen significant FAA approvals, including for Google and Amazon to operate drone services, so the future is getting much closer.

Meanwhile, much of the logistics drone revolution has been happening away from the world of online retail delivery.

In areas like East Africa, the different infrastructure challenges and the demand for effective, rapid supply chains into remote locations for functions like medication delivery has driven fast-track approvals and more progress.

Sparsely populated areas often lack the infrastructure for traditional delivery modes, and there are fewer safety concerns where drones can operate hub to hub without overflying populated areas. The COVID pandemic has added a further driver with the need to deliver more vaccines and other medical supplies.

The African experience is creating transferable capabilities for other markets.

Zipline is one  example of a company now growing its presence in the US market, while Wingcopter, one of the biggest logistics companies in Europe, has been delivering drone successes in areas as diverse as medical supplies delivery in Vanuatu, wildlife conservation in Canada, and volcanologcal research in Italy.

These developments, along with continuing technological innovation and ever-growing customer demand for rapid last-mile delivery, is leading analysts to speak with more assurance about drones as the future of parcel delivery, and to project a CAGR of 21% for drone transportation and logistics from 2020-2027, to reach US$45.5 Billion by 2027.

The UAM Propulsion Challenge

Propulsion is perhaps the biggest single area where UAM needs to innovate.

The higher payloads involved in UAM versus logistics drones mean that energy density – the amount of energy that can be stored in the propulsion system – is key.

Anyone who has followed the race between electric automobile manufacturers to increase range between charges will appreciate the level of focus on increasing the energy density of battery propulsion systems.

At the same time, green hydrogen or fuel cells, could offer viable alternatives for UAM propulsion.

Whether the sustainable UAM propulsion solution is battery or hydrogen, it remains one of the key questions for the sector to address, one I will explore further in a future article.