Demand for Drones on the Rise, Due to COVID-19 DisruptionApr9

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Wing, already making deliveries for Walgreens and local bakery Sugar Magnolia, has just partnered with two new Christianburg businesses, Mockingbird Cafe & Bakery and Brugh Coffee, adding to the list of items its drones will deliver. The company will also expand the pharmacy items available for order to include more medicines and food options in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wing spokeswoman Alexa Dennett told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that plans to add the two Christiansburg businesses had been in the works for months, but the timeline was moved up due to the increased use of the service by those wanting to stay home and isolate themselves.

The uptick in demand for drone services is not unique to Christiansburg, as deliveries of everything from toilet paper in San Francisco to CBD products in Austin are being delivered to customers focused on avoiding all unnecessary human contact.

MRP reported last month that China had begun blazing their own trail in utilizing drones to counter the Coronavirus.

China’s JD Logistics used medicine delivery robots outside of hospitals. They operate autonomously and can navigate through traffic. The first bot delivered supplies to the Wuhan Ninth Hospital In February, prior to beginning daily deliveries. JD has also become the first company to use drones for consumer deliveries in China. With the typical boat delivery routes over Baiyang Lake in northern China’s Hubei province disrupted by the epidemic, couriers would need to detour over 100 km to deliver to this village via land-based routes. It took the drone just a few minutes to fly about 2 km from Xidi dock to a village on the other side of the lake. The drone dropped the parcels at a fixed point in the village, where customers picked them up without human-to-human contact, better protecting both customers and JD couriers.

Shenzhen-based MicroMultiCopter, has deployed their own drones to transport medical samples and conduct thermal imaging. Tech company Antwork is doing the same in Xinchang County, as parent firm Terra Drone has said that using drones was 50% faster than roads. This is similar to drone delivery projects MRP has previously covered from Alphabet’s Inc.’s Wing service, as well as UPS partner Matternet.

Police in the US are also following China’s example in deploying their own drones to disperse crowds and ensure the citizenry are following social distancing guidelines handed down from federal and state governments.

The Elizabeth Police Department in New Jersey will be among the first in the country to begin using drones with a recorded message from the mayor telling residents to socially distance and go home amid the spread of the coronavirus. The Elizabeth Police Department has been using drones since 2018. In one instance, its drones equipped with thermal imaging and cameras helped firefighters locate hot spots while combating flames aided investigators to determine the origin of the blaze.

Chula Vista police in California recently bought two $11,000 drones made by the Chinese company DJI, doubling the size of its small fleet, and plans to rig them up with speakers and night vision cameraswith the same goal in mind as the Elizabeth police. At present, the Department tells the Financial Times they fly 10-15 operations per day, but only for emergency situations. He is now working with the FAA to expand usage to protect the community during the virus outbreak.

“DJI’s Disaster Relief Program has provided 100 drones to 43 organizations in 22 states,” a DJI spokesman told NJ.com. “We’re excited to see our technology used to protect the public as well as protect public safety workers, and we’re glad to see that police departments, fire departments and other public safety workers are putting them to use immediately.”

MRP has previously noted the European embrace of drone technologies as well, going all the way back to April of last year.

Ireland’s Manna Aero made headlines earlier this year when the company announced its first pilot program, allowing anyone to order Ben & Jerry’s ice cream or a meal from a local Thai restaurant and have it dropped at a pick-up point on the University College Dublin campus.

Now, amidst Ireland’s national lockdown, the Manna has launched a drone delivery service in the village of Moneygall, delivering prescription orders for medicine to around a dozen vulnerable households. Having received authorization from the Irish Aviation Authority, Manna Aero’s service began last Friday as a pilot. However, if the trial is successful, the service will be rolled out throughout Ireland.

This is not the first time Ireland set a new standard for European drone use, as the world’s first documented drone delivery of insulin for a diabetes patient occurred in the country in 2018 after a diabetes patient, who had experienced flooding and snowdrifts as a result of a category 3 hurricane in 2017 and a winter blizzard in 2018, was housebound and struggling to maintain their insulin supplies. The first drone flight occurred on September 13 of last year and clocked in at 16 minutes, traveling from Galway, Ireland, to the Aran Islands, about 12 miles off of Ireland’s west coast under “beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) conditions”. DrugTopics.com writes that, not only did the drone service deliver needed diabetes medications, but it also took blood samples from the diabetes patient, effectively monitoring their blood glucose control.

UPS’s German partner Wingcopter conducted a demonstration with Merck earlier this year that saw its autonomous eVTOLs carry small packages between the drug company’s various office locations in Darmstadt in Germany. TechCrunch reports that the company also used its aircraft to deliver critical medical supplies and life-saving equipment to hard to reach areas through partnerships with UNICEF and other relief organizations.

Though drones have been proven their potential to be efficient at cutting costs, emissions, and delivery times, the biggest hurdles for the industry have been on the consumer side – getting customers acquainted with this new method of delivery. However, disruptive events like major weather events or the current outbreak of Coronavirus can be the catalyst that forces people to try out new technologies they may not have considered utilizing before.

While extreme use cases like Coronavirus do not last forever, they have the potential to change the viewpoint of users for good, while proving their real-world utility. Investors can gain exposure to drone technologies via the ETFMG Drone Economy Strategy ETF (IFLY).

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