With a series of informal but enthusiastic Tweets Ryan Oksenhorn, the founder of the startup Zipline, presented the drone of the same name. It is a silent, precise, environmentally friendly delivery aircraft with a design that I personally find really adorable.
Zipline: country you go, deliver kawai
After millions of miles of testing the old delivery method by dropping packages with a parachute, the Zipline team came up with a much more sophisticated and pricey system. A sort of Zipline "mother drone" remains suspended a few hundred meters in the air and a "baby drone" containing the package to be delivered is lowered via a cable.
The "child" drone, equipped with its own thrusters to compensate for the wind and inertia, dynamically identifies the landing point, deposits the package and goes back to the "mother drone" in just 10 seconds. Practical and safe.
How about?
Sul official site of the startup Oksenhorn calls (not without emphasis) this delivery system the best ever seen on the planet. The drone passes the so-called “neighbor test”: it is so quiet that your neighbors won't even notice the delivery.
Not only that: given the stability, Zipline's drones can reach speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour (70 miles per hour) and deliver in any weather condition.
Good prospects
Considering the "environmental performance" of this delivery drone (it emits 34 times less carbon than petrol cars and 9 times less than electric cars), Zipline can really have its say.
Of course, it remains to verify these figures and understand how much it costs to buy, operate and maintain these drones. But if Oksenhorn's vision comes to fruition, we'll have deliveries that are quiet, precise, efficient, environmentally friendly, and (to me, as mentioned) adorable.
Zipline could represent a step forward towards a fascinating and functional future, in which technology changes our way of living in a useful and pleasant way.
