I learnt about Zipline in a talk at JuliaCon by Tucker McClure who spoke about how they use Julia for designing and tuning their aircraft. Had the great fortune of spending an evening at the conference to learn more about the company itself, how it got started and their use of Julia.<p>Recommend the 2019 JuliaCon video on how Zipline uses Julia for vehicle simulation:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8rPZVotroY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8rPZVotroY</a><p>And this video by Real Engineering that does a great job of explaining how the whole thing works:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c</a>
Zipline is such an awesome company. I love that their largest target market is Africa. Almost every high-tech startup starts with conquering the US en EU markets even though double-digit growth of economies is now mostly happening in emergent markets. It’s one of many interesting points touched upon in Hans Roslings last book (Factfulness - a must read!) and here we have a company that did exactly that. And they are doing it with such cool technology as well!
The website includes a video [0] that explains how it works in more detail too.<p>It's quite interesting how they evade issues with landing and lifting the plane, lifting the plane by shooting it off a rail seems like a common approach but landing it by catching it using a small hook at the tail of the plane isn't that common I presume.<p>On their website it says "Gas combustion vehicles break down, get stuck in traffic jams that prevent urgent response, and put human drivers at risk behind the wheel, particularly when the route is rough and treacherous. Zipline’s drones are battery powered and fly quickly and directly to their destinations, leaving ground vehicles behind."
That sounds like an unfair comparison, a more accurate comparison would have been to gas powered drones. Is it still the case for gas powered drones that they're more unreliable than electrical drones? It's probably because of the weight of a gas powered engine in such a small drone no?<p>[0] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c</a>
What’s often overlooked about Zipline is that they started as Romotive, a company that made iPhone—powered robots for kids.<p>Through the sheer force of willpower by the CEO (Keller) they found a new path and have become what they are. It’s a great startup story of how to persevere.<p>Disclosure: My firm was one of their first investors.
It's wonderful. The word "Droneports" is becoming mainstream.<p>Can someone shed light on their economies of scale? What are the challenges they may be facing?<p>It is also interesting to know the technical and engineering challenges they may be facing with the technology. Are they drones completely autonomous? Command Control can change the route mid-flight? How do they do communication in long-range? How do they handle faults in-flight?
This stuff is awesome, and I really hope we reshape society for automated last-mile.<p>Trucks and human drivers walking up to doorsteps are <i>insanely wasteful</i>, slow, and expensive. I wish more apartment buildings and metro neighborhoods were into pneumatic tube systems, too.<p>The last time they were tried, microcontrollers and fiber optic networking weren’t as good as they are now. A packet switched automated last mile system for everyone would be incredible.
Discussed in this September 2019 New Yorker article: <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/23/jonathan-ledgard-believes-imagination-could-save-the-world" rel="nofollow">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/23/jonathan-ledga...</a>
So what prevents the package from being dropped on someone unaware of the delivery? How heavy and how fast do they fall? Their website doesn't seem to cover this, the mention of a predetermined drop point makes me think that it is just gps. And the box in the video seems to drop pretty quick.<p>Just curious if I missed something on the site
Drones are loud and pretty energy inefficient compared to hydrogen balloons. I understand large balloons like Zeplins cost a lot of lives, why can’t we make mini Zeplins for <1kg payloads. Or <5kg payloads. That should scale right?<p>A drone could be attached to the balloon and it would help reduce the energy needed to fight gravity and could probably cruise for a much longer distance.
We changed the title from "Zipline - Vital, On-Demand Delivery for the World" which is too marketspeak. If someone suggests a better (more accurate and neutral) title, we can change it again.