A startup based in Silicon Valley is focusing on the difficulty of flying in congested areas.
We’ve looked at two very different participants in the drone delivery industry so far in the Drone Disruptors series. Flytrex, founded in Israel, aspires to be the drone of the American suburbs, buzzing over homes and dropping cups of coffee in your lawn. Then there’s Volansi, a firm based in the Bay Area wants to fly in more remote regions, even over water.
But for this week’s episode, we spoke with a business that hopes to deliver drones to the world’s most remote locations: cities.
Andreas Raptopoulos, co-founder and CEO of Matternet in Silicon Valley, told Modern Shipper, “We want to show how drone city networks work.” “Our objective is for drone delivery to become a crucial element of infrastructure in cities like San Diego, San Francisco, Miami, Berlin, and London.”
Raptopoulos imagines a city-wide drone nervous system, with drones hovering above the streets between urban nodes, sending and receiving goods. Modern Shipper sits down with Raptopoulos for this week’s Drone Disruptors to discuss health care, traffic, and integration.
Drones soaring above the cityscape
Cities have gone a long way since horse and buggy days, constructing intricate ground and rail networks. However, as e-commerce brings more things into circulation, Raptopoulos is concerned that cities may become too congested to be livable – which is where drones come in.
“Imagine how many automobiles you could take off the road if drone delivery could replace DoorDash or Uber Eats,” he remarked. “As e-commerce grows more on-demand, there will almost certainly be insufficient capacity on the road to meet that demand. You’ll need the third mode of transportation that isn’t dependent on the road.”
While Matternet may ultimately shift to home delivery, Raptopoulos says the company’s current concentration is on the city. Matternet focuses on the lightweight category, concentrating in payloads under 4.5 pounds, which account for around 85 percent of e-commerce shipments, according to Raptopoulos.’
But before Matternet flew in cities, it flew in regions that might be described as anything but. Matternet began by providing medical supplies, blood samples, and other health care products to rural countries such as Papua New Guinea and Bhutan. Its success in those areas enabled it to acquire the resources it needed to achieve its ultimate ambition.
Raptopoulos explained, “Matternet is a firm that was formed on the vision that drone delivery would transform the way the world works.”
A neurological system for drones
Matternet’s drones are designed specifically for use in metropolitan areas. They’re meant to carry 4.5 pounds or one gallon across a distance of roughly 14 miles and are lightweight and tiny, but Matternet’s offering goes much beyond the drones themselves.
Raptopoulos added, “We have an integrated end-to-end solution.” “So we design not only the aircraft that fly, but also how it’s combined and controlled in the airspace, how it’s monitored, and how we land.”
Matternet, according to Raptopoulos, is precisely what it claims it is: a network for the matter. His goal is to introduce not only drones to cities but also 50 to 100 nodes from which they may send and receive packages and a mechanism to track their movements between towers.
The nervous system’s nodes would be Matternet Stations, which can deliver packages 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and are equipped with automated payload and battery exchange. Operators can use the Matternet Cloud Platform, the system’s brain, to handle client requests, generate routes, and monitor and operate the drones in the meanwhile.
Because it gives Matternet management and visibility over the entire airborne infrastructure, this type of end-to-end solution, according to Raptopoulos, will help the company meet existing and future aviation safety regulations. But that’s just one of the features that distinguish Matternet.
“The second significant differentiation is that we are arguably the most advanced central operations in urban environments in the world right now,” Raptopoulos added. “And they were based on the third important differentiation, which is that we’re one of the most advanced – if not the most advanced – in our class when it comes to regulatory approvals.”
Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDa0zoqIYP4
Matternet has been delivering blood samples beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) in Lugano and Zurich, Switzerland, since 2017. In 2019, the firm teamed with UPS to deliver blood samples in the United States. It has now done over 10,000 BVLOS flights in cities across North America, Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, where it just launched the world’s first citywide medical drone network in Abu Dhabi this week.
Startups aren’t slowing down.
To many, the odds may be set against a startup like Matternet, which lacks Amazon’s vast size. On the other hand, startups have a few significant advantages over big businesses, according to Raptopoulos, which he believes will allow companies that didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago to dominate the drone delivery field.
“If you consider a corporation like Google, when they roll out a program, such as their delivery program, they must weigh the benefits of the program on a corporate level against the risk they must take, given that their main line of business is something completely different. And it must ensure that it is protected and does not pose a threat to their primary line of business,” he stated.
As Raptopoulos correctly points out, startups have a more substantial capacity to take risks, but what about the capacity to fund those risky ventures? That shouldn’t be a problem, either.
He asserts, “I believe the ecosystem around startups can demonstrate that they are leaders in a vast industry.” “A robust investment ecosystem surrounds them. So, once you can demonstrate that you have a path to grow, capital is no longer a constraint.”
