If, as planned, a drone carries a food order from a Buffalo Wild Wings store in Mobile to a waiting customer next month, that’ll be a small step forward for drones. But it’ll be a huge leap forward for a startup company that aims to help local brick-and-mortar businesses level the playing field against giants such as Amazon.
Stories about drone delivery tend to focus on the drones, or on the novelty of having one’s dinner arrive via skyhook. But in a backroom in a west Mobile shopping center, an unlikely team of partners are trying to crack the real problem: Creating a system that makes the technology painless and reliable for a business to use, as well as economical for the customer and safe for the surrounding community.
Deuce Drone has announced a trial run in August with a Mobile-area Buffalo Wild Wings franchise owner, and grocery delivery testing with Rouses Markets in the fall. They’re steps that put Deuce Drone in the middle of a race toward the day when unmanned aerial package delivery is a commonplace service.
One of the venture’s founders, Mobile-based real estate developer Philip Burton, said it’s hard to be sure exactly when that future will arrive. But he acknowledged that the effort to pioneer the field is intensely competitive.
“Generally speaking, it’s a lot sooner than you think,” he said.
Deuce Drone began to take shape when Burton, the president and CEO of Burton Property Group, became acquainted with John W. Fanning. Fanning, the founding chairman and CEO of Napster, has gone on to found or invest in a number of technology-oriented ventures, including investment firm NetCapital.
Drones were a hot topic. Burton said Fanning saw potential in Mobile as a test market. They began pulling in other partners, including one very familiar name from Mobile’s aerospace community: Rhett Ross, the former president and CEO of Continental Aerospace Technologies, who’d led that aircraft engine maker through the development and construction of all-new facilities at the Brookley Aeroplex. Ross’ retirement from Continental was announced in September 2019.
Burton said Ross’ particular area of expertise is his knowledge of the Federal Aviation Administration’s exacting regulatory processes. Ross said he told Burton early on that “you’re going to have to think about safety, safety, safety. That’s all the FAA thinks about.”
Other core team members include Blaine Holt, a retired Brigadier General with aerospace expertise. Thanks to Boston-based Fanning’s proximity to MIT, Deuce Drone recruited two undergraduates studying drone-related topics in aerospace engineering, KJ Hardrict and Timmy Husain.
This eclectic crew was still taking shape when the COVID-19 epidemic hit. In some ways, it helped: Husain said he’d been worried he had too many other irons in the fire to get involved. “We ended up getting out of MIT for COVID, so it cleared my plate,” he said.
Burton said the epidemic has also put a new premium on the idea of a third-party delivery service that doesn’t involve more people handling the customer’s goods. “COVID has given us more relevance than we could have asked for,” he said. “It’s put it in hyperdrive.”
Deuce Drone is not a drone builder.
“There are a number of companies that make very nice drones with very nice capabilities,” said Ross. “The real barrier becomes, how does the average retailer interact with a drone to load a package and have that package delivered?”
The Deuce Drone concept is built around three key components. The first is comparable to a dumbwaiter: When a restaurant has packaged an order, for example, employees can put that box on a conveyor belt or load it into an elevator that ferries it to the second piece, a unit that serves as a mini-airport. The “drone port” handles loading, charging and other operations. The third and most complex piece is the command and control system that routes drones to their destinations.
The six-rotor drone on display at Deuce Drone’s workspace on a recent day was a much more formidable machine than common recreational models. Burton said it could hit 40 mph and carry a 12-pound payload. Even so it was a small part of the overall product that the company calls ADDIS, for Aerial Drone Delivery Interface System.
In addition to the Westwood shopping center in west Mobile, Burton Property Group’s holdings include Jubilee Square in Daphne and Foley Square in Foley. Burton said that his desire to help brick-and-mortar tenants remain competitive is what drove his interest in drone delivery.
By dedicating space to drone ports, Burton said, a retail space like Westwood can become “a mini-fulfillment center” for retailers.
“I saw a need to provide retail with a way to compete with the 900-pound gorilla, Amazon,” he said.
Burton and Ross said they think that particularly for mom-and-pop stores and restaurants, their system will have some advantages over third-party delivery services such as DoorDash, Uber Eats and Waitr. Employees at a business will assemble an order themselves and send it out knowing that no middleman will handle it before it reaches the consumer.
“The benefit to the retailer is getting that consistency,” Hardrict said.
Other potential bonuses: Retailers won’t have to take on the cost of owning the drones, and as more users join, the network can shift drones around to meet demand. More of them could flock to participating restaurants for the lunch rush, for example, then later shift to supermarkets.
As for the key question of how to be sure a drone lands where it’s supposed to, Ross said that the first phase of the system will feature a fail-safe method. Customers who sign up will be given a target mat with a QR-style code printed on it. The app they use to place their order will let them assign a fairly precise landing zone; laying the target map down will enable the drone to verify that it’s coming down on exactly the right spot. Later versions likely will simplify the process.
There’s a lot of work to be done both before the upcoming demonstrations and after. And life isn’t going to get any less complex: Hardrict and Husain soon will begin graduate studies at Stanford while continuing to develop ADDIS. They say it’s actually normal for students in their field to be doing such work outside the classroom.
“They’ll be researching in the field we’re trying to pioneer,” said Burton.
It’s a big undertaking full of high-tech challenges and futuristic visions. But Burton said it’s all driven by a demand that’s as down-to-earth and understandable as could be.
“How many times have you gone to the grocery store and forgotten the eggs?” he said. “The last thing you want to do is get back in the car and go back to the store.”
In the not-too-distant future, you might not have to.
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