DHL’s Drone Demonstration Fails to Deliver
Parent company Deutsche Post canceled the proposed flight of new unmanned aerial vehicle, blaming winter weather
German package delivery firm DHL is testing shipments with drones to special pickup locker stations. PHOTO: DEUTSCHE POST DHL
PRIEN, Germany—High in the Bavarian Alps, package-delivery giant DHL this week demonstrated the potential and pitfalls of shipping with drones.
The unit of German postal company Deutsche Post AG on Monday presented a new, unmanned aerial vehicle capable of carrying up to two kilograms, or almost 5 pounds, for several kilometers.
DHL, which already has used a drone to deliver medicine to a remote North Sea island, convinced German authorities to close local airspace for test flights and invited media to see the aircraft’s capabilities.
Later, Deutsche Post scrubbed the proposed flight Tuesday, saying the snow and sudden drop in temperature would make flying unreliable. The company had said its drone was well suited to use in mountain regions, where wind, cold and snow are frequent concerns.
Despite the setback, Deutsche Post’s board member Jürgen Gerdestold a group of international journalists who had traveled to see the flight that “the drone works.” He said “in the not-so-distant future, drone deliveries will no longer be a niche business” and the company would operate a fleet of flying DHL drones.
Still, DHL’s ability even to plan such a flight puts it far ahead of U.S. companies, which are struggling to test commercial drones under tough Federal Aviation Administration restrictions.
DHL also is developing driverless delivery vans, Mr. Gerdes said. “It’s unbelievable how well that works,” he said of the vans, adding that the technology isn’t in routine use.
The German company’s approach to drone delivery differs from those of Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit, which have both talked up prospects of autonomous deliveries directly to customers’ doorsteps.
DHL aims to use drones for shipments to parcel lockers—like the thousands of the company’s existing Packstation delivery lockers. Customers receive a personal code to open a specific locker after a package has been dropped off. By delivering parcels to pickup facilities rather than recipients’ homes, DHL aims to avoid the risk of collisions in landing at unfamiliar locations.
DHL Senior Vice President Ole Nordhoff said the company’s new drone can autonomously place parcels inside a locker unit through a door in the top. The unit automatically sorts deliveries into specific lockers. “The locker station is packed with technology,” Mr. Nordhoff said.
German package delivery firm DHL is testing shipments with drones to special pickup locker stations. PHOTO: DEUTSCHE POST DHL
The 12-kilogram aircraft has completed test flights of about 8 kilometers, climbing from a base at 700 meters to a remote ski area 500 meters higher up.DHL in 2014 conducted a three-month test in the North Sea using a helicopter-like drone. The company’s newest unmanned aerial vehicle has been redesigned and more closely resembles an airplane with propellers that tilt or the U.S. military’s tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey.
The company opted for a tilt-wing design because it can take off and land vertically like a helicopter and fly like an airplane.
“Tilt-wing drones are more energy efficient and can therefore travel longer distances,” said Dieter Moormann, a professor of flight dynamics at Germany’s University of Aachen, which is a partner with DHL on the project.
In Germany and other countries, drone operators must keep unmanned aircraft in visual sight, Prof. Moorman said. But Mr. Gerdes said he helped negotiate the exemption to that rule in setting up demonstrations in Germany.
In the U.S., a 2012 law exempts recreational drone use from most restrictions, but the FAA effectively has banned commercial use of the devices.
Two years later, the agency started approving commercial operations on a case-by-case basis. It has now authorized more than 3,000 companies to operate drones in the U.S. for uses including farming, filmmaking and aerial inspections of pipelines and other remote locations. Only licensed pilots are allowed to operate these companies’ drones.
U.S. approval of some commercial-drone operations has relieved a portion of pent-up demand for such flights, but the drone industry is still awaiting comprehensive commercial-drone rules that were proposed in early 2014.
The rules prohibit drones from carrying external payloads or flying over bystanders—conditions that likely preclude drone deliveries, industry officials say.
In Germany, Deutsche Post’s Mr. Gerdes said the company aimed to begin wider business tests of drones in a couple of years. He declined to discuss the investment the company has made in drone development or the cost of a single vehicle.
