Name: How Rwanda Built A Drone Delivery Service
Uploaded: 2021-04-19T12:01:46.000Z
Duration: 11 min 46 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

基礎受動態

This episode of Real Engineering is brought to you by Brilliant, a problem solving website

that teaches you to think like an engineer.

In the past few years there has been a lot of buzz around the possibility of drone delivery

Most think companies like Amazon will be the first to deploy them in their distribution

centres, but few realize the technology is already in use for a far greater purpose in

More than two billion people across the world lack access to essential medical products,

like blood and vaccines, due to poor quality or even non-existent infrastructure.

Last month I visited Rwanda with Sam from Wendover Production and Joseph from Real Life

We were all struck by how modern and clean Kigali, the nation's capital, was but just

a short drive outside the city the quality of roads deteriorated quickly.

The country has been working hard to improve their transportation links over the past 2

decades, but of the 14,000 kms of roads in Rwanda, only 2,600 kilometres are paved.

The rest consist of uneven dirt roads that become incredibly difficult, if not impossible

to navigate during the countries raining season.

We got a taste of this while on Safari when our 4x4 got stuck in the mud, forcing us to

get out and push, keep in mind we were looking for lions on this trip.

Medical supplies, by nature, need to be on hand quickly.

If a mother is bleeding out during childbirth, she cannot afford to wait 3 hours for blood

Leaving people living in remote rural villages in danger.

Zipline, the real reason we visited Rwanda, is working to solve this problem with their

Each capable of carrying 1.6 kilograms of medical supplies, about the weight of a three

These amazing little drones have a TONNE of geeky engineering design that was influenced

Several unique factors influenced their designs.

The first is the speed the plane needs to get into the air.

The moment an order comes in, the clock has started and Zipline aims to have the drone

in the air in as short a time as possible.

This is, after all, an emergency and seconds count.

Currently they are averaging just 5 minutes from order to launch.

That's the time it takes for an order to arrive in their on-site pharmacy to launch.

Getting a plane into the air that quickly is pretty astounding, some would struggle

just to get a drone out of its case and flying in that time, and Zipline have come up with

some amazing solutions to reduce those seconds.

Just like a DJI Drone, Zipline's plane needs a GPS connection in order to fly as they are

If you have ever flown a drone you know it can sometimes take a little while for the

drone to boot up and make a connection with a GPS satellite.

So, to remove that delay, Zipline moved the GPS circuitry from the plane to the battery.

This means it's always on and always connected.

This innovation alone removed on average 10-15 minutes off the launch time.

The battery is one of 4 pieces of the plane that need to be assembled prior to flight.

First the order is placed inside the drop hatch of the fuselage, which is then placed

on the launcher, the wings are then attached followed by the battery.

This modular design makes the plane much easier to handle, allowing staff to easily lift it

More importantly, it separates components so if there is a problem found with the wings

during the pre-flight check, they are simply swapped out without having to start the entire

Pre-flight checks are often a lengthy process and Zipline have come up with some cool solutions

Checking the flight surfaces is done with a mobile app that connects to the launcher

The launch technicians simply point the phones camera at QR codes on each control surface,

sending a message to the plane to actuate the control surface.

The phone then utilizes a computer vision algorithm to make a pass or fail judgement

Once the plane is ready and assembled on the launcher, the next time saving measure kicks

Rather than telling you how this works, I'm just going to show you.

We spent 2 days at Zipline and this never got old.

The rail uses a pulley and an electric motor to quickly and safely get the drone up to

Accelerating the plane to its 100 kilometre per hour cruising speed in just 0.3 seconds.

It launches the same way every time and reliably clears the obstacles in front of it.

Take-off and landing are the most difficult stages of a flight.

To avoid having to land at the destination the plane simply drops the supplies in a insulated

cardboard box with a simply parachute, which can be thrown away.

Meaning the clinics need no infrastructure to sign up as a client of the distribution

When the plane does eventually need to land, the procedure to allow it to land with no

Once again, I think it's easier to just show you how it works.

Cut to footage - It may be difficult to keep track of everything

that happened there, so here is that again in slow motion.

There is a small hook at the end of the tail boom, which will grab a wire strung between

two actuated arms on either side of the capture system.

It's hard to see it in real time, but in slo-motion to can clearly see that the arms

actually raise up at the last moment to catch the hook.

The plane is communicating its location in 3D space with the radio receivers next to

the platform, allowing the wire to stay out of the way until the last moment.

Minimising any risk of collision with the wire.

The capture system misses about 10% of the time, but the plane is programmed to immediately

detect a miss and throttle up it's engines to gain altitude and make another pass.

An older design of this system, had a retractable tail hook that caught an actuated wire closer

to the ground, which then slowed the plane down enough for it to landed softly on an

This system was fraught with design issues.

When it rained the inflatable would pool with water, which was no problem for the water

proof plane, but forced the staff to crawl through it and lift a relatively heavy plane.

The retractable tail boom needed a motor to control the retraction, which could fail and

added weight compared to the simple metal hook attached to the carbon fibre tail boom