Airmail took on a completely different meaning above Drenthe today. Not the postman or parcel courier, but a drone delivered an order with ‘medicines’ to the parcel locker of Hub Borger.
The province of Drenthe wants to use the test to see whether drones are suitable for delivering goods in the countryside in the future. Recently, the start-up Drone Delivery Services from Assen, in collaboration with De Buren Pick-up Walls and parcel locker manufacturer VEPA, has investigated how drone deliveries can be made. At the bus station in Borger, along the N34, they had a drone deliver a load this afternoon.
A large drone, about three feet wide, took off from the parking lot behind the bus station. A drone pilot controlled the machine from a distance and maneuvered it over the trees to the parcel locker 100 meters away. The drone hovered over it and a hatch at the top slid open. With extreme precision, the pouch containing the medicines was dropped into the open compartment and landed on a cushion inside the safe.
With a code on her phone, deputy Nelleke Vedelaar opened the safe and took out the bag. This time there were no real medicines in it, but field beans from farmer Geert, from De Streekboer. “It is not the intention that the airspace will soon be full of drones,” says the deputy. “But this can be very important in the accessibility of the countryside. It also saves CO2 emissions if it replaces road transport.”
Drones will by no means be able to replace all parcel deliveries, but urgent orders are mainly being looked at. “Think of blood tests or medicines. Especially where speed is required and where you don’t want to get stuck on the road. In this way, a vet could check much faster whether a dog has a virus by taking a blood test, while he would otherwise would have to drive 40 kilometers in front,” Vedelaar cites as an example.
“It is a project in which we look further than today,” says Frans Hamstra of Drone Delivery Service. “We hope that within five years it will be the most normal thing in the world. The ultimate aim is to be able to transport products over 30 to 50 kilometers.”
Technically speaking, delivery by drone is already possible, but the regulations are still a stumbling block. “Now the rules don’t allow it yet, because you fly out of sight,” says Hamstra. “You have to imagine yourself sitting behind a laptop and then you control that drone remotely. Then you also have to be sure that the package will arrive perfectly down to the square centimetre.”