Cargo Business Techwire

Friday, June 13, 2014

Making it work: Start-up pairs delivery drones with trucks

Start-up firm AMP Electric Vehicles plans to pair trucks with heavy-duty octocopters to make drone-dropped packages more than just a novelty. By working in concert with delivery vans, drones could make shipping faster and cheaper.

Working with researchers at the University of Cincinnati, AMP is developing drones that act as a kind of sidekick to truck drivers. For example, rather than driving a 20,000-pound truck five minutes out of the way to deliver a three-pound box, for example, a driver stay on the main route while sending the drone off to complete side jobs.

"When the Amazon thing came out, that really lit a fire," says AMP co-founder and CEO Steve Burns. His company, which makes an electric delivery van called the Workhorse, worked with university aerospace engineers to build a prototype delivery drone called the HorseFly.

Among its most important features, the HorseFly is designed to recharge wirelessly just by coming near the Workhorse van and its giant battery.

"We’ve tried to make it for the real world out of the gate," Burns says. "It’s a work truck. It has to be a work drone."

For more of the Wired story: www.wired.com