Drone delivery safety

Post-Drohnen. © Poste suisse.

Drone delivery is not yet fully developed and this raises legitimate questions about safety. For example, Swiss Post suspended its pilot drone-delivery project following a second crash. For nearly a year, Swiss Post and California startup Matternet were working on a drone delivery service in three cities (Zürich, Bern, and Lugano). Laboratory samples were transported between hospitals much faster and more efficiently with drones than with conventional ground transportation. The service had already made approximately 3,000 successful flights when a January 25 uncontrolled landing on Lake Zurich, due to a problem with the GPS unit, put things on hold until April. After the experiment resumed, a second accident in May led Swiss Post to suspend service again, this time for an indefinite period. This case is more worrisome because the 10kg drone crashed after a malfunction of its parachute “in a wooded area of the university district of Zurich, only 50 meters from a group of kindergarten children,” according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

© Stadtpolizei Zürich.

⇨ YouTube, “Transportation of laboratory samples by drone.”

⇨ IEEE Spectrum, “Swiss Post suspends drone delivery service after second crash.”