DHL comes with third version of its parcelcopter

DHL has presented its latest drone, the Parcelcopter 3. The drone with rotating wings can take off vertically and then rotate the wings and move forward at a height of about 30 or 40 meters.

This technique should allow the drone to fly faster than the previous two quadcopters with which DHL conducted tests. The drone performs its flights autonomously, including take-off and landing in the purpose-built ‘skyports’ at the beginning and end of the route.

The test route that DHL uses for the Parcelcopter 3 runs in the south of Germany, from Reit im Winkl at an altitude of 688 meters to Winklmoosalm at 1154 meters, over a distance of 8.3 kilometers. Depending on the weather conditions, the drone takes 6 to 9 minutes. The drone has an average speed of 70 km/h. The maximum speed is 126 km/h at an altitude of at least 80 meters above the ground. The device itself measures 2 by 2.2 meters and can carry up to 2 kilograms of cargo, with which the drone weighs a maximum of 14 kg. The body is made of a carbon fiber composite.

The Parcelcopter 3 uses several separate systems to fly, so nothing goes wrong should a system malfunction, but it is also monitored by humans. What kind of sensors the drone uses to choose its path, DHL did not want to say, only that ‘indeed GPS is used, among other things’. The drone has no cameras on board to determine its direction, although DHL did say that a camera is sometimes put on it for “testing purposes”. The flight path between the two skyports is also equipped with certain guidance systems, but according to DHL, these are not technically necessary to choose the right path.

DHL Parcelcopter or ‘Package Copter’ 3.1

DHL also developed a special landing building for independent loading and unloading: the skyport. The skyport automatically changes the container with a maximum capacity of 4.4 liters. The roof of the skyport can be opened and closed within three minutes. The entire building measures 3.5 by 5.5 meters. Each skyport can hold up to five containers.

The purpose of the skyport is to be able to reach otherwise hard-to-reach places faster, hence the test location in the Alps. Users can place the container themselves in the skyport or pick it up, so that the system functions fully automatically. In principle, the whole should be able to continue to function under almost all weather conditions, but unfortunately this was not the case for the press presentation. It is unknown what the exact reason was. The organization kept it on the quickly changed weather conditions. Remarkable was the choice for a demonstration in the middle of January.

For the time being, DHL does not intend to deploy the parcelcopter in other parts of Europe or the world. In Germany it is possible to use special flight corridors, but such laws and regulations are different in each country. It is also not yet clear whether and when such delivery drones will operate in urban areas. However, DHL wanted to say that this will probably be very practical in the future, because delivery trucks move very slowly and the delivery of packages is therefore slow. Another reason to use a drone is safety. DHL’s CEO of postal and e-commerce Jürgen Gerdes cited Sao Paolo in Brazil as an example. There, helicopters are used to move packages, because it is too dangerous to drive through the streets at night and ‘during the day actually’. When asked whether DHL feels Amazon’s breath on its neck, Gerdes said that DHL really enjoys the competition and that it is Amazon’s main partner in Germany when it comes to delivery. According to Gerdes, it would also not be logical if Amazon were to do what DHL does in Germany.

Photo 1: Drone rising (see twisted wings) 2, 3 and 4: skyport opens and drone rises/falls out/in, 7: tail propeller, bottom protrudes a bit tail in photos 5 and 6