Giving a glimpse of the future of urban living, a resident of Prestige Falcon City in Bengaluru received a grocery delivery via drone in less than 10 minutes. Online grocer Big Basket collaborated with SkyeAir, the drone mobility startup, to deliver the products through its drones.
Skye Air said the drones can carry 7 to 10 kg, and are faster than regular delivery services.
Ankit Kumar, the founder of Skye Air, spoke with AIM in depth about how the drone system works and how it is changing the country’s quick delivery service scenario.
“Drones are designed to make one delivery every 10 minutes. That means a single drone can complete around six deliveries per hour, essentially doubling the efficiency compared to a rider on a bike. And because drones deliver so quickly, we can do patching, which wasn’t feasible with road logistics,” Kumar said.
With human-led delivery by road, customers must wait a long time before collecting and delivering a patched package. But with drones, since they’re often heading to the same apartment buildings, patching becomes possible. In multiple instances, Skye Air has successfully achieved patching levels of up to 30 to 40%.
Kumar said that SkyeAir is using a generic LLM to optimise the delivery cycle and ensure the safety of the drone and the people around it.
This is not the first time drone delivery has been attempted in the country. In 2022, Swiggy initiated a request for proposals, inviting drone service providers to explore drone delivery of groceries in cities like Bengaluru, Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Goa. Even TSAW Drones in Bengaluru attempted to deliver the same for healthcare and quick commerce.
How Does the Drone Fly?
Regarding privacy, Kumar clarified that the drone has no cameras, so it cannot eavesdrop on anyone. The team developed a sky tunnel and mapped the entire city in 3D. The drone follows the 3D map, which takes care of all the static obstacles, such as the building, the telecom tower, and the power lines, as they are already mapped in the system.
For tackling dynamic objects, such as birds or kites, Skye Air also uses LiDAR for real-time scanning and decision making without the requirement of cameras.
The team has also installed parachutes on the drones, just in case the drone malfunctions, the batteries fail, or it cannot fly.
The drone has six motors, and even if two of them fail, it can easily land with four of them. It has an auxiliary battery so that in case the battery fails, the drone will not crash; it has a secondary flight termination system.
In case of a short circuit, which occurs due to electrical or wiring failure, the secondary flight termination system will automatically trigger, letting the drone come down safely.
“The drone should not go and land everywhere, so we have built in a winching mechanism. The drone will drop a package through the winch mechanism, which is currently there,” Kumar said.
When the drone reaches the skypod area, which is flying at 120 m, it lowers its altitude to 20 m, and the packages are dropped to the pod. The pod is connected to the drone at all times so that it can sync with the drone about the environment.
The Journey So Far
“We were the first in the country to do a BVLOSS flight for medicine delivery. We delivered medicine in Bikarabad, Telangana,” Kumar said.
The drone service started in Gurgaon in mid-2023, and it’s been two years. To date, they claim to have made close to two lakh shipments in a month.
Skye Air has been transporting multiple clients to about 60+ societies, complexes, and houses. In Bengaluru, they collaborated with Bigbasket, and in Gurgaon, they partnered with other quick commerce platforms like Zepto and Swiggy and brands like Tata1mg, Flipkart, and Apollo.
Kumar is planning to build Skye Air on a larger scale for the aerial taxi industry. For this, the team plans to use LLMs for drone-to-drone communication and better navigation.
“The second thing is that we still have the man in the loop, taking the package from the pod and then going to your doorstep and delivering it. I think that’s one area we are working on: how to automate that and make it much better.”
