Cars That Think

MARCH 15, 2024

We know the folks at Zipline pretty well, though, and they’ve certainly made creative engineering work for them, as we saw when we visited one of their “nests” in rural Rwanda. Visual sensors on the Droid find the delivery site and check for obstacles on the way down, while the thrusters compensate for wind and movement of the parent drone.

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Design Wind IDEA Concept 141

Cars That Think

MARCH 15, 2023

While the event didn’t show a complete delivery cycle, we’re told that all of the hardware is operational and very close to a production design, and that all of the delivery steps have been successfully completed with real aircraft.

Rwanda 104

Rwanda United States Wind Hybrid 104

Cars That Think

APRIL 17, 2024

We’ve been covering the drone delivery company Zipline in Spectrum for several years, and I do encourage listeners to check out our great onsite reporting from Rwanda in 2019 when we visited one of Zipline’s dispatch centers for delivering vital medical supplies into rural areas. Just go to spectrum.ieee.org/newsletters to subscribe.

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Commercial San Francisco Rwanda Future 129