Mercedes Shows Off Electric Delivery Van Equipped With Drone Swarm
Mercedes-Benz is looking at mounting automated flying drones onto a new line of electric vans as part of a $562 million investment aimed at speeding delivery times for online orders.
The small pilotless aircraft would be part of a suite of onboard systems, including digital sorting equipment, that could cut both costs and delivery times in half for the final portion of a package’s journey, the carmaker said Sept. 7 at a presentation in Stuttgart, Germany. The two drones can each fly items weighing as much as 4.4 pounds as far as 6 miles, enabling service to difficult-to-reach to places.
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The concept is among the Daimler AG unit’s efforts to help corporate customers speed product transport as volumes rise because of the boom in electronic commerce. Deutsche Post AG’s DHL division and UPS Inc. are also looking at how to ensure items are delivered on the first attempt even when the consumer isn’t home. Online retailers such as Amazon.com Inc. are experimenting with handling deliveries themselves.
UPS ranks No. 1 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest U.S. and Canadian for-hire carriers.
“The business in our sector is changing dramatically, so we’re looking far beyond our core product and getting into new markets,” Volker Mornhinweg, who heads Mercedes’s vans business, said in a statement. “We want to make vans an intelligent, connected data center on wheels.”
Matternet's second-generation drone, Matternet M2.The investments will be spaced over five years. Mercedes didn’t outline a timeframe for when the drones or technologies such as a robotic arm for sorting parcels inside the van might become commercially available.
Many industries are researching potential uses of drones beyond dropping the latest internet shopping on people’s doorsteps, such as railroad-track inspections, spotting criminals on the run or organ delivery for hospitals, though a regulatory structure for the aircraft is still in its infancy.
“The growth in transportation means we have to change our processes accordingly,” said Stefan Maurer, head of Mercedes’s future transport systems for vans.
The drones on the Mercedes concept are fixed to the van’s roof above a hatch that opens to the vehicle’s inside. Made of carbon fiber and aluminum, the mini-copters with four propellers measure about 22 inches across. The aircraft were developed jointly with Swiss partner Matternet, and similar models already have helped carry medicine to people in difficult terrain, Mercedes said.
When a van reaches the area where the drone is supposed to takeoff, a robotic arm in the cargo area moves parcels inside a special box to the hatch, which opens automatically for the drone to pick up the item. Using GPS, the aircraft flies to a landing spot set by the customer, Mercedes said.
