Zipline

Zipline’s “Zip” is a fixed wind drone. It is a proprietary design with all software and hardware designed in house. It has a range of 100-150 KM round trip, with 1.5 kg of cargo, depending on wind conditions. It is designed with redundancy in mind as it features two motors with independent batteries with redundant flight hardware both internal to the drone as well as on the ground based flight control servers. In the event of a catastrophic failure it has an emergency parachute and kevlar fuselage.

The navigation software is proprietary and is called ZipNav. The flight code is written in C/C++ on the drone and C++ and python on the ground systems. They utilize Micrium for the RTOS on the drone.

Embedded systems on the drone use both Hercules and Atmel processors.

Technical details:

– Zipline uses pneumatic launch ramps to fire the drones aloft.

– Drone power supply: 2 interchangeable batteries

– Drone weight: ~10 kg

– Products are discharged with a parachute into a designated landing zone

Provided by Zipline as a part of the service

Since this is a service provided by Zipline for a per flight cost, there are not any ongoing life cycle costs.

Since launch, Zipline has over 5000 deliveries including over 10,000 units of blood.  Most deliveries are in under 30 minutes. ^{Interview with representative}

All flights are coordinated with The Rwandan Civil Aviation Authority.All of the flight systems and hardware have built in redundancies as well as an emergency parachute landing system in the case of catastrophic failure.