Drone Express uses Azure Machine Learning to train drones to make safe autonomous deliveries to customers’ front doors

Drone Express is delivering groceries to customers’ front doors, but not by land. Instead, this company makes airborne deliveries with drones. “The number one item we’re delivering is ice cream,” says Beth Flippo, CEO of Drone Express. “Drones are fast enough to deliver it before it melts.” However, no company has received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorization for a drone to make a delivery without a pilot maintaining line of sight. 

Drone Express needs one more certification to enable truly autonomous drone deliveries: the Part 135. However, that’s no easy feat. The Part 135, also known as an on-demand domestic air carrier certificate, is the same certification attained by commercial carriers. The FAA will only issue the certification to a company that can demonstrate the safety of its system. The company turned to the FastTrack for Azure and Enterprise Data Science Platform teams to help build and efficiently operationalize the AI models. By using machine learning on Microsoft Azure, which offers a suite of cloud solutions, Drone Express is on track to become one of the first companies to attain FAA certification for autonomous drone delivery.

Flying groceries to the customer’s doorstep with Azure AI

Headquartered in the “Birthplace of Aviation” in Dayton, Ohio, logistics company Drone Express uses drones to make last-mile deliveries. Drone Express launched in 2018 when then-parent company (now subsidiary) Telegrid—a telecommunications company and defense contractor—mounted its wireless mesh network technology to drones. The company now uses drones manufactured by Telegrid to deliver groceries to customers’ homes.

“Drone Express’s first partner was the Kroger Company, a large national grocery chain that is strategically located within three miles of one-third of the US population,” says Flippo. “This company has great locations.” Drone Express can make deliveries of up to 5 pounds and sends multiple drones to fulfill larger orders. And rather than making substitutions for out-of-stock groceries, its drones can pick up the exact items from other stores. “Using drones is going to change the way people get deliveries,” says Flippo.

Drone Express began delivering groceries to customers on July 4, 2021. Since then, it has begun working alongside Papa John’s locations in Georgia and Ohio for pizza delivery, along with engaging Winsupply for construction supply delivery in Ohio. Currently, Drone Express pilots must maintain a line of sight with the drones, so the company must send one pilot to the store for order pickup and another to the destination to receive the drone. Using a mesh network, pilots hand off control of the aircraft in midair to land the package safely.

The need to include human pilots increases costs for both Drone Express and its customers. As a result, the company has been hard at work on the certification process for autonomous deliveries. With zero safety incidents in over a year of operation, Drone Express is close to achieving the demanding Type Certificate and Production Certificate. So, too, are some of its competitors.

It is the formidable Part 135 certificate that has stymied the efforts of every drone delivery provider until now. “Having live, in-the-air decision-making capabilities is the only way to make autonomous last-mile airborne delivery happen,” says Flippo. Only a drone with highly advanced AI can make the split-second decisions needed to safely deliver parcels in an urban environment. So, in 2021, Drone Express started developing an AI that is powered by Azure Machine Learning and Azure IoT stacks. 

Equipping drones with AI using Azure Machine Learning

Using AutoML for computer vision in Azure Machine Learning, Drone Express trains its machine learning models by feeding them photos of obstacles and scenarios that the drones could encounter and teaching them to identify safe delivery areas. Because the models must run on the drone in real time, Drone Express is developing hardware that can run the model computations in a power-constrained environment while remaining lightweight and not overheating. 

The first aircraft with this hardware will enter production by the end of 2022. Drone Express is also working with the team at Microsoft to build AI models that use minimal processing power while delivering inferences quickly so that the drone can react mid-flight. “While our competitors are focusing on how to carry more weight, we are focusing on building a more intelligent aircraft,” says Flippo.

Implementing machine learning will increase the safety of Drone Express deliveries by removing the potential for human error. “A pilot on the ground could be having a bad day, which can affect safety,” says Flippo. “The drone isn’t going to make the same mistakes.”

Moreover, deciding where to deliver the package while keeping people at a safe distance can cause pilots anxiety. Using AI, the drones will be able to choose a delivery site in seconds, leaving the pilot to focus on keeping onlookers out of the way. Once the AI is implemented, Drone Express expects to reduce the time it takes to choose a safe spot and release the package from around five minutes to one minute.

“Our team embraces anything that’s going to make us safer and better and put us ahead of the competition,” says Flippo. “Our people understand that implementing AI is going to make their jobs better and help them move into other areas like air traffic control. Part 135 is key to being able to fly beyond visual line of sight.”

Equipped with its new AI, Drone Express is poised to become one of the first drone delivery companies in history to reach this goal. With Drone Express on track for Part 135 certification, the FAA has responded positively to its Azure-powered solution. This will enable its drones to cross state lines and to leave the pilot’s line of sight. Customers can expect faster and cheaper deliveries as AI takes the controls.

Delivering the future of autonomous drones with Azure AI

Drone delivery costs only a few cents in electricity, so Drone Express is pioneering a cheaper, more sustainable last-mile delivery method. Once the company implements AI, it hopes to make autonomous drone deliveries in major urban areas where direct line-of-sight piloting is not feasible. This will increase access to vital goods for many Americans.

From the beginning, Drone Express has worked with Microsoft cloud technology. It chose Azure to host the mobile app that customers use to order deliveries, and it uses Azure Kubernetes Service to deploy and scale containers for its solutions. “Using Azure has changed our perspective, not only on AI, but also on what we’re doing as an organization,” says Brandon Mabey, Chief Strategy Officer at Drone Express.