Dutch student team aims to enable uninterrupted drone cargo delivery

Air transport without fossil fuel still has a major drawback: electric planes don’t get very far. Transporting goods by drone can circumvent that problem, if you use a network in which drones fly from depot to depot to change batteries.  

Two student drone teams of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) – Blue Jay and Syfly – have joined forces to develop this innovation under the name Aero Team Eindhoven.  

Bram Schut, who has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and is currently following a master’s degree in data science, is this year’s team manager, after joining Syfly two years ago. “Working with Aero is a great opportunity to develop some soft skills alongside all the theoretical and technical subjects we are taught at university. We are working with a team of about twenty highly motivated, volunteering students that aim to really make a difference.” 

The original Syfly team aimed to build a sensor network for the planet. They did this by employing fixed wing drones equipped with sensors that monitor key features of natural ecosystems. Schut was part of this team before both teams joined earlier this year. “Our goal with Syfly was to increase the accuracy, accessibility and quantity of data while lowering costs and labour. A good example of this is weather forecasting. By using a network of autonomous drones to collect atmospheric data, we tried to increase the accuracy of weather forecasts and lower costs. Unfortunately it proved very difficult to get companies interested and hence get sponsors aboard.” 

The other student team, Blue Jay Eindhoven, was originally founded in 2015 to organise the world’s first Drone Café in honour of the 60th anniversary of the TU/e. The increasing popularity of drones and the innovation possibilities with this technology sparked the effort to begin a student team that worked on indoor drones. The project evolved in the subsequent years to a drone that could be used to guide elderly residents of a nursing home out of the building during a fire evacuation.  

Due to a shortage of nurses and a fire brigade response time of about 15-20 minutes a fire in a home for the elderly can have disastrous consequences for the people inside the building. Various teams – teams change composition annually – have worked on the Blue Jay drone resulting in a drone that can recognise a particular person and different objects. This has been accomplished by combining intelligent learning algorithms with cameras of high image-resolution and depth vision, thus resulting in effective face and object recognition.  

The Blue Jay drone can also be assigned tasks in real-time through voice commands, but the most striking feature of the drone is that it can navigate any indoor environment all by itself. Also, once the drone senses its battery is running low, it can automatically fly back to its charging station. “Knowledge about this latter feature is very useful in our new project with the Aero team,” says Schut.  

Fewer staff positions 

In March of this year the two teams decided to join forces and come up with a new, innovative project. “The Blue Jay team faced several challenges with its drone, like the noise it makes inside a building. Obviously there are solutions to those challenges, but with the Syfly team also having difficulties, like finding funding, we felt like it was time to join forces and move on to something new,” said Schut.  

Moreover, most students that join the teams have technical backgrounds, making it hard to find people for management, finance and HR roles withing both teams. “That was another reason for us to join forces, because with just one team, we needed less non-technical roles, making sure the people that join us can participate in engineering – the role they like most,” added shut.  

The newly formed Aero Team Eindhoven also tried to get other student drone teams onboard, but most of those teams favoured staying autonomous. “We are in touch with several other student teams though”, said Schut. “We share information on specific subject with, say, the drone team at the University of Twente and the team at Delft University of Technology. Although not frequently, to be honest. Our contact is mostly informal, whenever we meet we do talk about drones, but the sharing of information and knowledge is mostly ad hoc when we encounter a challenge we know another team has already built some experience in.” 

Creating network of interacting drones 

After extensive research and brainstorming the Aero team came up with a cool new project. “We want to redefine flying”, said Schut. “By developing an autonomous drone network for sustainable transport by zero-emission in air delivery.” Aviation contributes to a big part of emissions globally; this remains a huge problem. Around 80% of aviation C02 emissions are emitted from flights of over 1500 kilometres, for which there is no practical alternative mode of transport.  

Current solutions aren’t there yet or don’t scale well enough. Therefore something has to change structurally. A transition needs to be started towards electric aviation, possible of overcoming the problems the sector currently faces, to empower more important players to embrace the transition towards a sustainable form of transport and aviation.  

“Our goal is not to increase the range of aerial vehicles, such as airplanes,” said Schut. “Multi billionaire companies are investing a lot of money to increase the efficiency of aerial vehicles and the efficiency of batteries. It might not take very long before hydrogen batterie can be useds, which  improves the capacity.” 

“However, these remain relatively small improvements on the range of aerial vehicles. Most flights are longer than 1500 kilometres. In order to solve this problem we need to change the concept of flying. A single aircraft will not be able to transport goods or people in the near future at this pace. 

We envision a world where drones are interconnected in the sky. Our ultimate goal is to create a network of drones that can interact with each other on a whole new level. Rather than increase the range of a single drone, we are creating a network with a scalable, practically endless range. Using this network, we can connect Europe through the sky, in a sustainable way, electrically. We want to create the technology that enables the first steps of this network.” 

The project the team is working on is a cargo drone that will be able to transport high priority products or necessities, like medication or donor organs between hospitals or priority packages between logistics warehouses and can be refuelled in mid-air by a second drone. This second drone, called a foetal drone, carries a spare battery and will switch the empty battery of the cargo drone by using artificial intelligence.  

“The cargo drone flies past these charging points where the foetal drones are awaiting a signal from a cargo drone to be refuelled. By creating this battery swap technology, we can innovate alongside the battery developments which will reduce the number of swaps needed,” explained Shut.  

The team has found a sponsor in GLS, one of the biggest shipping companies worldwide. “They aim to constantly evolve, innovate and grow. Topics such as sustainability cannot be overlooked and are actively considered and tackled in the company. To Aero, GLS is the main strategical sponsor, and supplies the funding, advice and platform for the initial use case of package-delivery.  

Our solution fits perfectly within the vision of GLS and by actively working together faster and better progress can be booked. To this end, strategic advice is given on how the technological development of Aero can be properly implemented in the world of shipping, and how developments can be steered towards the right direction.” 

Four-year-roadmap 

An important challenge with drones is their relatively short battery life. There are solutions where drones fly back to a charging station – like the Blue Jay drone could. But this comes at the expense of efficiency, as landing, loading and take-off take time. “This solution is useful for drones that stay in a certain range, like security drones on an industrial estate. For long distance flights across Europe there has yet to be developed a solution.” 

Aero Team Eindhoven aims to develop a cargo drone that only has wings. “This improves its speed and efficiency but at the same time means it is incredibly difficult for it to land – it needs a runway for that,” said Shut. “You can imagine it would be close to impossible to build a battery swap system that a cargo plane can land precisely on a marked spot. So that is why we came up with the second, foetal drone. This drone will be more agile for it not only has wings, but also propellors, making it easier for it to precisely dock the cargo drone.” 

The team is also developing the battery swap system this year. Schut said it has defined a four-year-roadmap. “This year we will be building the cargo drone to fly efficiently and to be able to carry larger packages”, Schut added. The team is developing this drone from scratch. “This year will also be about developing the battery swap system. Our goal is to be able to do a battery swap on the ground by the end of the year. If the system is able to swap a battery without losing power on the cargo drone – called a hot swap – that’s when we’ll call our current year to be successful.”  

Next year will see the development of the foetal drone after which the team can work towards the actual changing of batteries in mid-air.  

Challenges 

There are a lot of challenges the team faces. For instance, the precision with which the foetal drone has to land on the swap system of the cargo drone. “You can imagine up in the air there’s a lot of wind, more than we experience on the ground. This is something we need to calculate to be able to have both drones dock on each other to change the battery.”  

The swap system itself needs to be compact, because it needs to be fitted onto a drone. “We can built this very compact, but it needs to fold out in mid-air. Again, wind speeds will be challenging here. And also, the two drones need to dock in mid-air, so we have some people on our team developing a solution for this mechanical precision.” 

“But let’s not forget that it is already a challenge to build a new drone from scratch and get it to fly”, says Schut. “We are really taking this one step at a time. This year’s goal is to have a functioning cargo drone and a working, hot battery swap on the ground.” 

Aero Team Eindhoven is also working on a communication system that has the drones communicating with each other so the foetal drones that are waiting on the charging stations know when and where a cargo drone needs refuelling. “In an ideal future, Europe would have several of these charging stations and a drone highway for cargo drones that can stay in the air endlessly to deliver high priority packages around Europe.” 

With consumers increasingly expecting next day or same day delivery and digitalisation paving way for more international trading, the innovative solution Aero works on will be attractive to large parcel service providers across Europe. Asked if the team eyeballs intercontinental deliveries as well, Schut said: “That will be a huge challenge. Let’s just say that we aim to reach the UK to start with. Having drones fly across the ocean would mean that we would need charging stations in the middle of the sea. I don’t see that happening very soon.” But it is no denying that the innovation the teams works on could eventually form the basis for more sustainable aviation. 

Data analysis  

To learn about the impact of drones in cities and other populated areas, the team has started another project. “Many cities have a ‘no fly’ zone, because it is regarded dangerous to fly drones in populated areas”, said Schut. We have rebuilt four locations in Eindhoven in virtual reality. Participants in our project can experience what it is like when drones fly over. With sliders they can adjust the number of drones in the VR location, but also the noise, the altitude of the drones and their size. This way we aim to research when drones become a nuisance for local residents.” 

Generating this data is an important step forward in drone development, said Schut, for most Dutch municipalities now have rules and regulations that ban (commercial) drones. “By analysing the acquired data we hope to relieve the regulations, because those regulations inhibit innovation.”