In the winter, delivering packages to villages in the mountains can be dangerous and unreliable because the roads are icy and sometimes blocked by the snow. That’s why, La Poste, a French postal service, has decided to start delivering its parcels by drone to remote villages in the Alps mountains.
Drone Delivery Service
France’s civil aviation authority permitted La Poste to start using the drones for deliveries. DPD operates the service on behalf of La Poste in the small village Fontanil-Cornillon in the Isère region of south-east France. From there, a DPD operator parks his truck, that’s equipped with a special launch-and-landing platform and flies the drone 760m above sea level, up the mountain to a small village called Mont-Saint-Martin.
The drone containing the parcels is guided to a “secure terminal” where it releases the package. The recipient then receives a code and can go collect their package.
DPD said:
There are many benefits to drone delivery in the mountains as compared to delivery by van. For the driver, in addition to the time saving, there is reduced risk on roads that are dangerous and sometimes blocked, especially in winter. For the customer, it guarantees that they will receive their parcel even if the road is impassable.
Delivery Drone Features
- The drone flies at around 30km/h.
- It can complete a round trip delivery in about 8 minutes.
- The drone has six electric motors that can be charged using solar panels.
- It has a built-in GPS.
- They don’t emit any CO2 into the environment.
In case anything should go wrong, the drone also has several safety features:
- An anti-collision system.
- A camera and a flight recorder.
- An autonomous parachute.
The only downfall is the drone can only carry packages weighing under 2kg and measuring less than 31cm in length, 15cm in width, and 10cm in height.
DPD director, Jean-Luc Defrance, said:
In the Alps, snow falls regularly in these mountain areas and can prevent a traditional delivery person from climbing to Mont-Saint-Martin. Thanks to the drone, we will still be able to transport the packages to the village.
La Poste has already used drones to make deliveries in the Var region of southern France. However, this is the first time the post office used the technology in the mountains. France isn’t the only country using drones to deliver parcels. In Switzerland, the postal services are already using drones in mountain areas.
