The company has a centralized control center in Shenzhen, where employees can take over control of the drone in an emergency. It currently has more than a hundred drones that can be used to deliver goods around the city. On average, one operator monitors 10 drones at a time.
Mao notes that not all human labor can or should be replaced by machines. But making the process even more automated, such as handing over to robots the loading of packages onto drones and changing batteries: “Our team has to bend over a hundred times a day to load a package and change batteries. Human bodies are not designed for that kind of movement.
“Our vision is to turn the launch pad into a fully automated factory assembly line,” he says. “The only task for people will be to put non-standard food and beverage products into a packaging box.”
Regulatory and economic constraints
Today, there are few technical obstacles left to delivering food and packages using UAVs, says Jonathan Roberts, a professor of robotics at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, who has been researching drones since 1999.
“ using drones, but whether it makes financial sense is hard to say,” notes Jonathan Roberts.
The choice of location often depends on regulatory regulations. In 2002, Australia became the first country in the world to introduce drone legislation. The law allowed universities and companies to senegal number data experiment with drones as long as they obtained official licenses.
“So Australia was the perfect place to test it,” says Roberts, which is why Alphabet’s Wing tested and launched drone delivery here earlier than in any other country.
It’s a similar story with Meituan. The Shenzhen municipal government has built a robust supply chain for drone manufacturing and is particularly friendly to the industry. In addition, the Chinese government has allowed special economic zones, including this city, to exercise great flexibility in regulating commercial drones.
That’s why Meituan is doing most of its experiments here. The company just opened a new route in Shanghai and has been launching drones in other cities from time to time, but Shenzhen will remain its main testing ground.
However, the law simply allows drone delivery. Economics will determine whether this idea will come to fruition — and how long it will last.
A number of companies, such as Wing, are testing in suburban areas where wealthy residents live, but traditional delivery is inefficient. This model is difficult to replicate in China, which has a largely urban population. Some players, such as JD and SF Express, have chosen to start in towns where ground transportation infrastructure is weak and drones can fill a niche.