MT #5 - Drone Delivery Services 

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is becoming a key topic to provide new mobility services and new connections and modes of transport in urban environments. The concept is increasingly present in cities´ plans for a sustainable development and economic growth. Several initiatives and projects have been developed in recent years or are currently underway with the goal to build the U-SPACE framework and test the operations that will allow UAM solutions to run safely and coordinated. 

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or "drones" are expected to affect significantly the logistics sector in the following decade. So far, the use of drones was utilized by the logistics sector for undertaking operations related to inventory management, inspection and surveillance. Given though the rise of the e-commerce by 30% during COVID and the constantly increasing demand for next-hour deliveries, drones have started being noticed by the city logistics market as the means for achieving faster, cheaper and more efficient deliveries.  However, still, there are certain challenges and limitations in the wide deployment of UAVs in urban delivery service operations such as technological limitations for covering effectively a wide spectrum of delivery needs in terms of speed and capacity caring requirements, legal limitations for setting a safe and secure ground of their implementation and facilitating higher penetration levels and finally societal limitations referring to the need for higher levels of public acceptance. 

The opportunities of drone delivery services are versatility and might transform various industries by improving efficiency, reducing costs and enhancing accessibility, among others: retail and e-commerce (from groceries to electronics), healthcare (medical supplies, vaccines, blood, and lab samples to underserved areas), food (quick delivery avoiding traffic as well as open delivery services for underserved peri-urban areas), agriculture (seeds, fertilizers and pesticides directly to farms), disaster relief (deliver food, water and medical aid in inaccessible areas) and logistics and warehousing (transport goods within large facilities or between nearby locations).