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It’s not hard to imagine a world where drones carrying everything from last-minute birthday presents to your dinner fill the skies, and following IBM’s latest patent that world might not even be too far away.
The invention would allow delivery drones to pass packages to one another mid-flight, like a relay race.
Each drone would come equipped with extendable arms fitted with magnets that would connect mid-air and pass off the package, locking it safely in place as the arm retracts and it continues on the next part of its journey.
The invention, described in US patent number 9,561,852, even suggests that a customer’s own personal drone could get involved for the last leg of the race – meeting the delivery drone close to home and ensuring it gets back safely.
A communications link also described in the patent would allow a personal drone to communicate with the IBM delivery network, making things seem pretty seamless.
IBM is certainly not the first to propose delivery-by-drone, but this system potentially solves one of the challenges posed by using drones as a delivery method – limited flight range. It also hopes to optimise any potential delivery network by ensuring everything is connected, another of the problems posed by having myriad drones roaming the skies.
“Drones have the potential to change the way businesses operate and by leveraging machine learning, drones could change ecommerce,” Sarbajit Rakshit, co-inventor on the patent, said.
And Rakshit suggested that the patent could have an impact wider than just e-commerce.
“Our inventor team is focused on improving how the most valuable cargo is delivered globally. This could create opportunities such as managing drones to deliver postal packages and medicine in developing countries via the most direct route,” he said.
Amazon delivered its first package via drone at the end of 2016, and it seems there’s no escaping drones as the next big thing when it comes to delivery.
