Before robots come knocking on your door to deliver your parcel, we would probably see drones doing the job. However, unlike Amazon’s bold ambition, Mercedes-Benz joins force with Matternet to explore the concept of combining both traditional man-to-door delivery using a van with drones. Of course, the van here we are talking about isn’t your run-of-the-mill van without front doors. It is the Mercedes-Benz Vision Van Concept, a purpose built delivery van that’s part of a high-tech delivery system going all the way back to the warehouse.
The cargo area of this high-tech van is where you will find an automated system that retrieves the package much like a vending machine to pass on to the driver/delivery to be hand delivered, or pushes the package up to one of the two drones nested on the roof of the van. As crazy as it may sounds, this is could be the future of door-to-door delivery in near future.
From what we see, it could be easier to realize over long range drone delivery as the drones will only carry out short range delivery, off the van. This negates the need to conform to aviation laws and whatnot, which, logically speaking, should be easier to implement. Just make sure dronephobic grouchy neighbors won’t shoot it off the sky when it is doing its thing.
The vehicle itself would be, naturally, electric powered, getting its omph from a 75 kW electric motor that would yield anything between 80 and 270 km (about 50-168 miles). So, the world will benefit from more efficient delivery that’s zero emission too. If it pans out, we can’t see what’s not to love, except for, as mentioned, shotgun wielding, unhappy residents.
Images courtesy of Daimler/Mercedes-Benz.
via Popular Science
