UPS testing drones for use in its package delivery system

“Our focus is on real-world applications that benefit our customers”, said Mark Wallace, UPS senior vice president of global engineering and sustainability. The tests are created to see how well a drone can perform when delivering items to areas that are normally hard to reach.

But before these drones can hit the skies, the Federal Aviation Administration has to approve them. Drone-makers are working with regulators to tweak existing rules.

To obtain an FAA waiver exempting them from certain rules, companies must spell out a business case and use data to prove their drones are safe.

This strategy, if it continues, is surely an effort to differentiate UPS from competitors like Amazon, FedEx, and Walmart, which appear to be taking a more consumer-facing approach to drone delivery-in other words, they want to get socks and toothpaste to your doorstep, not emergency medical supplies.

Many in the industry expect the FAA to eventually loosen the regulations.

The line of sight regulation he is alluding to says that the operator of the drone must keep the device within their line of vision.

Other commercial uses for drones include crop monitoring, power and pipeline inspection in hilly or mountainous terrain and antenna inspections.

In the test scenario, the drone successfully transported an asthma inhaler from Beverly to a child at a camp on Children’s Island. These drones have been used to check inventory on high storage racks. The company also said it’s looking at using drones to send humanitarian aid to out-of-the-way areas around the globe.

The CyPhy drone used in Thursday’s test is the Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications (PARC) system.

“Now we can conduct commercial operations without having to go through the rigmarole of getting an exemption from the FAA”, said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chief technologist of CyPhy Works, the Boston-area drone startup that operated the drone.

Even so, UPS projects the commercial drone industry will generate more than $82 billion for the US economy in the next 10 years. “Drone technology used in this way can save lives and deliver products and services to places that are hard to reach by traditional transit infrastructures”. The battery-powered drone flies itself, so very little user training is required.

UPS notes that it has already been testing out drones inside its own warehouses.