Smart freight: drones + artificial intelligence =?

Drones are now a common thing in our lives. Many people have seen the magnificent pictures taken by drones. In modern battlefields, drones play an important supporting role for ground forces. In many cases, drones are even used as the main attack point to directly carry out precise strikes on enemy targets.

However, in addition to military use, drones are far more than just cameras in daily life. They have a wide range of uses. Today, we will talk about the next trend of civilian drones: cargo drones. In addition, we will also introduce some novel uses of drones. These clever ways to solve specific problems are only possible today with the booming development of drone technology.

When developing cargo drones, the purpose was very clear. It was not to simply transport goods, but to solve the problem of high logistics costs in rural and mountainous areas. This is a very good starting point. If a large number of deliveries need to be made to remote areas, using drones for transportation is indeed an option worth considering. In order to solve the problem of difficult and high costs of land transportation in these areas, air transportation does have certain advantages in some aspects.

If we consider the personnel cost alone, although the salary of a pilot may be much higher than that of a courier, drones do not require a pilot to operate, and a freight solution that relies solely on drones is feasible. Therefore, using multi-rotor drones for freight is an excellent solution for the last leg of express delivery in remote areas. Low altitude and low speed can avoid many air traffic control problems, and the special flight mode of multi-rotor drones makes them extremely affordable in terms of R&D costs and R&D cycles. The main problem at present is the high operating cost of using small aircraft.

Cargo drone (Photo courtesy of Visual China)

It is said that the overall cost of multi-rotor drones in the industry is currently 8 yuan/(kg•km), which is several times the delivery cost of urban couriers, but lower than the logistics cost in rural areas. If the transportation cost of multi-rotor drones is so high, it is indeed difficult to commercialize them. Not to mention buying rice, noodles, oil, liquid beverages, even buying some daily necessities, the transportation cost is still very high. At present, our "Village-to-Village" project is actually well developed. At least in the eastern region, hard cement roads or asphalt roads have basically been realized to enter villages and transportation to cities. In the western region, highways have also been realized to enter towns. Therefore, the high cost of rural logistics should be caused by insufficient orders, rather than simply high transportation costs.

At present, there are quite a few companies researching unmanned transport aircraft, both in China and abroad. The most famous ones are Google, Amazon and DHL. The latter two are all rotary-wing drones, and the load capacity is only a few kilograms to tens of kilograms. However, Amazon began testing "Prime Air" at the end of 2013 and released a video of drone delivery at the end of 2017. On the basis of conventional multi-rotor drones, it focused on a certain aerodynamic layout, which should be able to increase the flight speed. Google is developing a vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing drone, which is similar to the "Osprey" rotorcraft. Although no specific figures have been released, the capacity should be relatively large, probably in tons. However, its drone development plan "Project Wing" can be described as ill-fated. It started in 2012 and completed the test in Australia in 2014, but in recent years, the project has experienced many layoffs and reorganizations.

There is no doubt that cargo drones will gradually enter our lives in the past 10 years. In addition, there are many novel applications of drones. On June 18, 2020, a research team from the Hokuriku Institute of Science and Technology in Japan published a paper in the academic journal Science, saying that they used a toy soap bubble gun carried by a drone to achieve artificial pollination of wild plants. Due to the influence of global warming trends, the inherent living rules of bee colonies have been broken, and the number of bee colonies has dropped sharply, which has directly led to a pollination crisis for crops around the world. Although there have been a lot of studies trying to restore the pollination ability of bee colonies, or to find and train alternative species such as flower flies. But Japanese scientists have taken a different approach, mixing pollen and soapy water and pouring it into a bubble gun, and then using a drone to carry it for artificial pollination. At present, this research has achieved unexpectedly good results, with a pollination success rate of 90% under suitable conditions, and researchers are making further improvements to it.

Another wonderful use of drones that I want to introduce to you is related to the ice and snow disaster that occurred in Texas, the United States in February 2021. In this disaster, a large number of power transmission lines were damaged by freezing rain, millions of households lost power, and tens of millions of people were without water. Many people can't help but ask, if the disaster happened in China, how would we respond? The answer is to use drones to solve the threat of freezing rain to power transmission lines.

my country's power transmission and transformation related industries have long introduced line inspection drone systems. Using program-controlled drones, we can efficiently check the safe operation of the lines along the transmission lines. Even in extreme weather disasters such as freezing rain, equipment such as flamethrowers carried by drones can also clear snow and icicles on the power lines. Even if there is a large-scale rain and snow disaster, there will be no major power outages.

Drones + artificial intelligence =?

To many, drones are just fun gadgets, but in just a few years, drones have far surpassed their purpose as robotic toys and have enhanced and redefined many industries. They are used to quickly deliver goods, for security monitoring, safety inspections, and even equipped with missiles and bombs for military use.

Although some experts believe that the next generation of drones are still limited by human controllers, this can no longer prevent the combination of artificial intelligence and drones. The U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched the "Air Combat Evolution" project, which aims to develop artificial intelligence that can perform air combat missions. For pilots, air combat is full of high risks and uncertainties. Because of this, pilots may experience slow reactions, misjudgments, improper actions, etc. due to continuous high-intensity thinking and difficult operations, and may lose the air combat. Artificial intelligence controls unmanned fighters and can perform better than human pilots in air combat. This is the starting point of the "Air Combat Evolution" project research.

Artificial intelligence can allow machines, such as drones, to make decisions and operate in the shoes of human controllers. However, when a machine has the ability to make decisions and “learn” functions independently of humans, potential risks must be considered, which could be harmful to society as a whole.