Objectives of the service
Governments and major couriers across the globe are seeking to deploy drone technologies to revolutionalise last mile logistics services. Innovations in drones are projected to bring autonomous goods delivery with 70% cheaper costs (Gartner), enabling instant delivery services with zero emissions in flight with electric propulsion systems.
Although advancements have progressed in terms of flight, aerial delivery services are yet to commercialise due to lack of infrastructure technologies. NASA states that 70% of the market is dependant on infrastructure and yet only 3% of the market is focused on this to date. Inteliports is solving key challenges in the sector, building new technologies to tackle how drone services can be implemented into the built environment, communities and at business ends.
With advanced robotic automation technologies, Inteliports is continuing autonomy in the air to the ground, enabling automated charging, deployment, storage and retrieval of the fleet and the goods that they carry. In doing so, the project ‘PORTAL’ seeks to demonstrate a new method of integrating drones into society, through a collaborative multimodal chain with micromobility services at ground. The project, in partnership with Vodafone, seeks to develop automation and asset tracking technologies to enable multimodal capabilities in a first-in-kind concept of operations.
Users and their needs
Drone delivery services are expected to bring a paradigm shift in logistics, not only for its impact in urban environments, but also to bring advancement and resilience to communities of all kinds; urban, suburban, rural, third-world environments (disaster, humanitarian aid). Drone services bring impacts across various sectors where there is a need for cheaper, faster, greener goods transportation services. This applies to medical deliveries (high-value, time-sensitive goods), disaster relief & emergency aid, construction projects for hard-to-reach areas (offshore windfarms, construction sites) as well as routine commercial logistics.
Inteliports is currently servicing the NHS for medical delivery projects where drones can be used to transport goods such as pathology samples, PPE, organs and critical medicines. In rural cases, the use of drones can reduce the time of delivery from 4 hours to just 15 minutes (Isle of Wight to Portsmouth).
Inteliports also has a partnership with the Isle of Wight council, with a vision to deploy drones and drone ports across the island to create better access to services from the mainland, reducing the reliance in carbon intensive ferry transfers for island logistics.
Our services have a global potential to almost any region and community with cheaper, faster, greener logistics methods.
Service/ system concept
Inteliports’ technologies are solving key challenges in the sector with particular focus in these areas.
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Extended service capabilities through deployment of a multi-nodal network. Electric drones typically have a runtime of 30-40 minutes. Crafts today, with the limited power capability typically favour range or payload, or in other terms, service coverage or revenue per flight. Inteliports is enabling the possibility of both, where the craft can maximise payload capabilities and automated infrastructure can enable extended/unlimited range in the same way petrol stations extends the journey reach of ordinary cars. Inteliports’ hardware technologies handle charging, deployment, storage and retrieval (of goods and fleets), however, through artificial intelligence and SATCOMS enabled asset tracking technologies, will allow for a completely automated network that can oversee thousands of missions simultaneously.
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Easy implementation/adoption of drone services. By extending the autonomy to the ground, personnel do not require to be trained to handle dangerous drones and goods are simply loaded/unload to a drone port where Inteliports’ systems handle the rest. Inteliports is enabling ‘plug & play UAS services’.
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Multimodal service implementation. By creating safe, secure, automated landing infrastructure for drones, Inteliports is enabling the possibility to create multimodal services with any mode of transport. The PORTAL project is demonstrating the collaboration with micromobility services (e-bike couriers) to allow for a more consolidated implementation of drone services.
Space Added Value
The key development in project ‘PORTAL’ is designed to ensure optimal handover procedures. Optimal handover procedures are when the drone or micromobility arrive at the port such that there is no down time of the package, the drone or micromobility. AIIDA (Autonomous Inter Intra Droneport A.I) can ensure this handover procedure is optimal in a closed system, but without perfect data is limited to reactionary model. Inteliports is proposes a new use of GNSS and SATCOM (and LTE) systems to increase the available states and predictive nature of AIIDA. By understanding location and proximity of all asssets, AIIDA can optimise intra drone port procedures (charging, storage, deployment) leading to inter drone port/multimodal network processes.
Current Status
Inteliports has developed AIIDA (Autonomous Inter Intra Drone port A.I) where SATCOM data is being fed into real-time decision making processes for missions. Pre project, AIIDA functioned as an autonomous conductor of inter drone port activities. However, external factors such as environmental conditions, multimodal continuation/collaboration, or consideration of other missions/ports in the network, were not part of the intelligence. It acted as a closed ‘Inteliports only services’ without any third party integration available. Stakeholder engagement asked for a UI based approach to drone port interaction.
All intra-droneport actions are now brokered, prioritised and executed by AIIDA, allowing for truly remote, autonomous missions to be carried out. The concept of operations for deployment, receiving and handover of goods to other modes has been trialled at Inteliports’ trial site and is to begin real world trials in the Isle of Wight in September.
Prime Contractor(s)
