Objectives of the service
3PL providers serving rural areas face significant challenges, including high delivery costs, driver shortages, and limited infrastructure. Labour, van and transportation cost account for up to 85% of the total delivery cost, and long distances and low parcel volumes make operations inefficient. To lower the cost, the 3PLs are often forced to lower the quality of service. There is a pressing need for a cost-effective, quality and environmentally friendly delivery solution to serve these communities.
IONA addresses these challenges by offering an autonomous drone delivery network tailored for rural & remote logistics. The solution includes drones purposefully built for logistics capable of carrying up to 14 kilograms with range over 100km. These drones integrate with existing Transportation Management Systems (TMS) via the IONA Cosmogony TMS, a platform for UAV-enabled logistics operations. By leveraging satellite data and advanced algorithms, Cosmogony TMS handles landing zone identification, emergency responses, SORA-compliant autonomous flight and intelligent parcel allocation between drones and vans. IONA offers customers a turn-key solution from hardware, flight operation, regulatory compliance, drone integration with existing TMS and more.
This service reduces delivery costs up to 20x, unlocks lucrative revenues from faster next-day deliveries, and reduces carbon emissions by up to 45 times.
Users and their needs
IONA’s drone-based delivery solution primarily targets third-party logistics (3PL) providers in Ireland and the UK, operating in rural and remote regions. These 3PLs serve as the commercial backbone for the communities but are struggling with high costs (up to €20 per parcel), driver shortages, and hard-to-meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs) from upstream logistics partners which put pressure on their profitability and limit them from serving high-margin same/next-day deliveries.
User Needs
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Lower costs for rural and island deliveries
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Seamless integration of drones into their Transportation Management System and overall operations
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Out-of-box regulatory compliance (SORA) with fully-managed flight operations
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Reliable capacity to tap into highly-profitable same-day/next-day deliveries
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Reduced environmental impact
Challenges
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Complex BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) UAV regulations and approvals.
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Current fleet capacity is fully tied to meeting standard delivery SLAs and they struggle to hire more people to expand the capacity and serve urgent deliveries
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Limited drone expertise within 3PLs and inability to operate the service themselves.
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No technological capabilities to develop or modify their Transport Management Systems to handle drone operations
By meeting these needs, IONA’s Cosmogony TMS aligns with 3PL workflows, improves operational efficiency, and expands access to critical services in underserved areas.
Service/ system concept
IONA provides a complete, turn-key solution for last-mile drone deliveries to logistics providers.
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IONA SonnetQuad autonomous delivery drone is 5-20x cheaper than a van.
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Cosmogony TMS handles integration with existing systems, economically allocates parcels between drones and vans, handles regulatory compliance and flight planning and supplies all relevant data for IONA Drone Network Operations Center (NOC)
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NOC then handles all flight activities in the daily operations according to the regulatory requirements.
In practice, a 3PL provider receives bulks of parcels from upstream providers at its warehouse.
As the parcels enter into 3PL’s system, Cosmogony TMS analyses all parcels and evaluates which parcels to serve by vans and which by drones.
Cosmogony TMS then handles landing zone identification, flight planning and emergency response planning as well as all related regulatory authorizations. Cosmogony finally creates job assignments for both drones and the Network Operations (NOC) Center staff.
At the proper time, the drone is loaded with parcels and NOC initiates & supervises autonomous flight.
Once a parcel is delivered, proof of delivery is propagated to the 3PL systems and the drone returns to the warehouse for its next scheduled flight.
Space Added Value
An autonomous drone delivery service would be completely impossible without Space assets.
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SonnetQuad drone fundamentally require precise GNSS for BVLOS navigation
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SonnetQuad relies on satellite communications because it is the most reliable channel for BVLOS flight in rural, remote and over-open-sea routes.
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The regulatory self-authorization will rely on multitude of satellite data for improved safety classification and emergency landing zone classification in case of catastrophic comms or system failure
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The industrial, local, home and reverse logistics will require very-high-resolution satellite data to identify, derisk and pre-approve landing locations for delivery
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Business viability and autonomous routing will require both historical and real-time satellite data (or satellite-derived data) for flight monitoring and evaluation of SLAs before opening a new operations and adding new routes.
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Future deliveries to off-shore boats will leverage satellite AIS for navigation and landing zone identification when applicable
Current Status
UAV: The IONA SonnetQuad UAV has reached TRL-7 level of maturity with all flight characteristics and aerial capabilities across various environmental conditions. The next stage focuses on enhancing payload management, developing robust emergency response protocols for the BLVOS autopilot based on landing zone classification and overall preparing the drone hardware for mass production.
Cosmogony TMS:
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a high-availability infrastructure has been developed.
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SORA-compliant mapping has completed the PoC stage with semi-automated route finding and the overall solution has been developed under the guidance and feedback from Murzilli Consulting.
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Satellite-enabled landing zone classification engine has completed the advanced PoC stage.
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Van-vs-drone engine is in a fully scoped and derisked PoC stage
Network Operations Center: The ground communication infrastructure (mainly C-band radios) is being tested for reliability of communication with SonnetQuad drone. Flight telemetry, supervision and emergency responses are currently handled via off-the-shelf ArduPilot Mission Planner
Robotics Hubs: Hub concept has been researched and largely derisked thank to cooperation with The National Robotarium. IONA is now preparing for R&D work on community hubs and home landing zones and related integration with the UAV & Cosmogony.
Prime Contractor(s)
