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 1.75 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

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Since launch, Zipline has over 42,385 deliveries including over 10,000 units of blood.  Most deliveries arrive in under 30 minutes. ^{Interview with representative}

The drones can deliver a product in about 15 minutes. They are capable of flying up to 75 mph with a range of about 93 miles. Each drone can support a payload of up to 3½ pounds.

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.