Use Case - Drone Delivery
Autonomous Drone Delivery
Delivery is where a drone has to leave the pilot's sight, thread its way through a city and arrive somewhere precise. That takes navigation that does not depend on a clean GPS fix, a link that does not depend on line of sight, and enough on-board compute to make decisions when the link drops. VOXL provides all three.
What Delivery Operators Use It For
- Limiting person-to-person contact, keeping deliveries safe and sanitary.
- Cutting cost with affordable, vision-based aircraft rather than heavy sensor payloads.
- Speeding operations up and completing more deliveries per day per aircraft.
Uber Eats
In 2019 VOXL flew in Uber Eats' beyond-visual-line-of-sight food delivery testing in San Diego. Read the announcement.
"Integrating drones into the national airspace, especially in high-density urban areas, is challenging. Tall buildings and flight distance mean operating beyond the range of typical remote control, so the integration of ModalAI has been crucial to our efforts." Dr. Tom Prevot, Director of Uber Elevate.
What Makes It Work
| Need | On VOXL |
|---|---|
| Navigation between buildings | Visual inertial odometry and obstacle avoidance from the VOXL SDK |
| Command and video beyond line of sight | 4G/LTE and 5G add-ons on a carrier network |
| Compute for on-board decisions | VOXL 2: Qualcomm QRB5165, 15 TOPS, flight controller on the same board |
Start with Starling 2 Max as a 5G-capable development platform with 500 g of payload, or see e-commerce for the industry view and 5 things to know about 5G drones for the connectivity side.