Home > News

FedEx to Test Autonomous Cargo Delivery by Air

By Laura Tucker
Fedex Autonomous Delivery Featured

We’ve been hearing for some time about the onset of autonomous and drone deliveries, and there’s no better time than now to advance this technology. FedEx is jumping on the bandwagon, as it will soon start testing autonomous cargo delivery by air.

Also read: FTC Investigated Amazon for Deception with Prime Accounts

FedEx Working with Elroy Air

The pandemic escalated the need for autonomous and drone deliveries. Being unable to breathe the same air as others, much of the world spent much more time at home. Shopping at a brick-and-mortar store became passé.

But this put much stress on the logistics industry. FedEx announced this week in a blog post that it was looking into autonomous technology to help with the demands of its delivery schedule. It has been working with Elroy Air since 2020 to develop an aircraft that would fit its needs.

Fedex Autonomous Delivery Test Flight
Image Source: YouTube

“FedEx was built on innovation, and we are always looking toward new technologies to help enhance the logistics industry through improved safety, efficiency, and customer service,” explained FedEx Express executive Joe Stephens. “We look forward to continued testing and learning throughout our collaboration with Elroy Air.”

Elroy Air was founded in 2016 and is based in San Fransisco. The company has been working on what would be the first end-to-end autonomous vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aerial cargo system.

The product of Elroy Air’s development is the autonomous Chaparral C1 aircraft, announced earlier this year. It’s able to carry 300 to 500 pounds of cargo and deliver it as far as 300 miles. It can make those long-range flights without additional airports, charging stations, or pilots.

of3eGMhqX2I maxresdefault

“We are proud to work with FedEx to build the next generation of express logistics,” stated Kofi Assante, Business Development and Strategy VP with Elroy Air. “When you’re not limited by challenging infrastructure, traffic, or airports, logistics can reach more people, faster than ever before. We look forward to working together to create a new future for how we get goods to people around the world.”

FedEx believes it can incorporate the Chaparral C1 into the shipping service, with an eye toward 2023. The company believes “continued innovation and automation will improve safety, efficiency, and productivity.”

A Push for Autonomous Land Deliveries Too

With prices of gas heading to astronomical prices, autonomous delivery could be even more alluring. This extends to “last mile deliveries,” as well as the air cargo business.

Technology news has been peppered the past few years with stories of small autonomous delivery robots in testing phases. The Domino’s Pizza chain ad Uber Eats have pushed forward with autonomous testing.

Research shows that more than 20 percent of urban pollution can be attributed to last mile delivery. Autonomous robots could alleviate some of that. They can also complete their runs during times with lower traffic concerns.

Fedex Autonomous Delivery Robot
Image Source: UPC

Multiple companies are engineering autonomous delivery robots to handle this demand for last mile delivery. New robots developed by Polytechnic University of Catalonia and CARNET, and partially funded by the Volkswagen group SEAT, are headed for pilot programs in Spain, Germany, and Hungary.

These robots are 5.6 feet by 38 feet by 3.8 feet and have six wheels apiece. They can travel up to 12.4 mph and can go up or down stairs up to 17.9 inches tall.

A press release noted that these autonomous delivery robots would represent “a significant reallocation of the carrier’s costs and would make the service more economical and efficient than with conventional vehicles.”

There’s still a push in the industry for autonomous cars, too, though Tesla seems to keep running into speed bumps along the way. Read on to learn about the battle over the Autopilot feature.

Featured Image Credit: YouTube

Subscribe to our newsletter!

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

Read next

In 2016, archaeologists dated two rings of snapped stalagmites in France’s Bruniquel Cave to 176,500 years ago, evidence that Neanderthals had walked 336 metres into darkness with fire and built architecture deep underground long before modern humans reached Europe
Otto von Bismarck was 74 when Germany adopted the world’s first national old-age social insurance program in 1889, setting the pension age at 70 after years of fighting socialists with bans, laws, and a promise few workers would live long enough to use
When cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov stepped out of his Soyuz capsule in March 1995 after 437 consecutive days aboard Mir, doctors recorded him at several centimetres above his pre-flight height, and his spine had become so unaccustomed to gravity that the recovery team carried him to a chair rather than risk the compression of letting him walk.
When Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky pointed a rotating antenna at the sky in 1932 looking for sources of transatlantic radio static, he kept picking up a faint hiss that peaked every 23 hours and 56 minutes, and he eventually realized he had become the first human to hear the center of the Milky Way.
A contemplative scene with two scientists in a vintage laboratory setting.
When Harvard astronomer Cecilia Payne submitted her 1925 doctoral thesis arguing that the Sun was made almost entirely of hydrogen, the field’s senior figure Henry Norris Russell talked her into adding a line calling the result ‘almost certainly not real,’ and then published the same conclusion himself four years later to widespread acclaim.
When seismic waves from the Chicxulub impact reached what is now North Dakota roughly ten minutes after the asteroid struck, they appear to have triggered a ten-metre standing wave in an inland river that flung fish onto the bank and buried them under glass beads still falling from the sky.
When survivors near Lake Nyos woke on the morning of 22 August 1986, the cattle were dead in the fields, the birds had fallen out of the trees, and 1,746 of their neighbours were lying where they had stood the night before, with no fire, no flood, and no wound to explain it.
In October 2002, a Russian scientist named Dimitri Malashenkov stood up at a space conference in Houston and quietly explained that the dog Laika, whom the Soviet Union had publicly mourned as a heroic week-long orbiter in 1957, had actually died of heat and panic within about five hours of launch.