New Articles

Future Proofing Tracking Links for Drone and Robotic Deliveries

tracking supply chain technology drone delivery logistics

Future Proofing Tracking Links for Drone and Robotic Deliveries

In today’s dynamic world, the logistics and parcel delivery landscape is undergoing a transformative shift driven by technological innovations. Drone deliveries and robotic deliveries through autonomous vehicles are reshaping the way goods are transported and delivered to consumers. One notable aspect of this change is the significant improvement in speed and efficiency. Drones and autonomous vehicles offer faster delivery options by bypassing traffic congestion and optimizing routes, resulting in quicker turnaround times.

With these exciting changes come new challenges, especially when it comes to tracking packages and thus the need for future-proof tracking links has never been more pressing.

Traditionally, tracking packages was as simple as scanning a barcode or typing in a tracking number. But now, with drones zipping through the sky and autonomous vehicles navigating the roads, we need smarter tracking systems. The advanced tracking links use technologies like GPS, RFID, and sensors to keep tabs on packages every step of the way. This means we can see where your package is in real-time, from the moment it leaves the warehouse to when it arrives at your door.

But these tracking systems are about more than just keeping an eye on packages. They’re also about making deliveries more efficient and cost-effective. By using artificial intelligence and data analytics, companies can optimize delivery routes, predict demand, and make sure packages are delivered on time, every time. These future-proof tracking links are engineered to adapt seamlessly to the evolving demands of the delivery landscape.

Did you know these tracking links can also serve as a powerful marketing tool?
They enable businesses to engage customers through targeted promotions and advertisements. With features such as highly customizable URLs and delivery time slot preferences, customers have more control over their deliveries than ever before. They can choose the delivery options that best suit their needs and preferences, resulting in a more personalized and satisfying experience overall.

By leveraging customer data and preferences, businesses can deliver tailored offers directly through the tracking link, driving sales and enhancing the overall customer experience.

The Way Forward

The future of logistics is marked by innovation and adaptability. Drone deliveries and robotic deliveries through autonomous vehicles are revolutionizing the delivery landscape, offering faster, more efficient, and environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional delivery methods. However, their widespread adoption depends on overcoming regulatory challenges and ensuring safety and reliability in their operation.

By embracing next-generation tracking links, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and deliver exceptional experiences in an increasingly digital world. As we navigate the evolving landscape of logistics, one thing is clear: the future is bright, and the possibilities are limitless.

The article was written by Dhaval Thanki, EVP – LogiNext.
LogiNext is a global technology firm that offers a SaaS-based Delivery Automation Platform. The software helps brands across Food & Beverage, Courier, Express and Parcel, eCommerce & Retail, and Transportation (3PLs, 4PLs, etc.) to digitize, optimize, and automate deliveries across the supply chain. Growing at an average rate of 120% YoY, LogiNext has 200+ enterprise clients in 50+ countries. With headquarters in New York and regional offices in Mumbai, Jakarta, Delhi, and Dubai.
service

Drone Drops: Redefining Convenience in Delivery

The global Drone Delivery Service Market is worth US$ 426.1 million in 2023 and is expected to reach US$ 7,217.4 million by 2033. The global market is projected to progress at a CAGR of 32.7% during the forecast period.

Cost-saving Technologies Drive Drone Delivery Service Market Growth

Various driving factors influence the global market. Some of these factors are as follows:

Efficiency and Speed: The demand for drone delivery services is rapidly growing due to reduced delivery times and efficient delivery packages to consumers.

Last-mile Delivery Solutions: Increasing adoption of drone delivery services to improve delivery challenges in less time. These delivery systems can quickly reach remote and hilly areas, significantly driving market growth.

Cost Savings: The increasing adoption of drone delivery reduces fuel expenses, labor, and vehicle costs. Businesses prefer these deliveries to optimize the supply chain, fueling market growth.

Reduce Carbon Emissions: The rising environmental pollution caused by traditional delivery systems is reduced by drone delivery solutions. Consumers are focused on sustainability, which is surging the demand for drone delivery services.

Innovation Technology: The growing technologies among drone delivery improve battery, payload capacity, and reliable solutions to enhance end users’ demand.

Market Competition: Key companies focus on developing new and advanced drone delivery by investing in research and development. The growing competition among startups, technology companies, and logistics organizations significantly drives the market revenue.

Rapid Urbanization: Rising urbanization leads to increased deliveries, surging the demand for drones to meet consumers’ desires. Drone delivery offers enhanced delivery solutions to attract end users’ attention.

Consumer Expectations: The increasing demand for convenient, fast, contactless delivery options is stimulating the adoption of drone delivery services.

Emergency and Disaster Relief: Drone delivery is widely adopted for disaster relief and emergency response teams to enhance rescue operations and natural calamities.

Challenges in the Drone delivery service market

Legal Hurdles and Regulations: Several countries imposed stringent safety, security, and airspace management regulations. These regulations may face challenges and decline the global market growth.

Safety Concerns: The growing number of mid-air crashes and collisions may decline the market growth.

Payload Limitations: The restriction on long-distance deliveries may decrease the demand for drone delivery.

Weather Conditions: The adverse effects of climates, including storms and wind, limit drone delivery services.

Air Traffic Management: Integration of drone delivery services in air traffic management is challenging due to its complexity.

Limited Use Cases: The acceptance of drone delivery for limited usage, such as medical and small-quantity deliveries, may restrain the growth of the global market.

Noise Pollution: The demand for drone delivery services is restrained due to generated noise. The growing concerns about noise pollution are limiting the adoption of drone delivery services.

Country-wise Insights

Advanced Technologies are Shifting Towards Drone Delivery in Canada

Canada is estimated to record a significant CAGR of 35.9% during the forecast period. Canada is prosperous in developing smart drones with strict regulations and heavily invests in research and development. The increasing demand for efficient delivery in remote areas is increasing the adoption of drone delivery.

Canadian companies are focusing on developing specialized drones with weather-resistance drone technology to improve deliveries. Various sectors such as food & beverages, healthcare, cosmetics, and others are significantly increasing the adoption of drone delivery during cold weather, expanding Canada’s drone delivery service market. The country frames regulations for effective and smooth drone delivery for various operations, fueling market revenue.

Sustainability Facilitates Suitable Growth in the German Market

During the forecast period, Germany is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 34.1% through 2033. Germany is a prior leader in technology and is developing a wide range of drones for smooth and efficient delivery with sustainability. German companies are actively developing smart integration of drone delivery with urban air mobility plans for better delivery services.

Key companies collaborate with research institutions, government bodies, and adjacent companies to innovate innovative drone technologies fueling the German drone delivery service market. Germany involved universities in developing new technologies with research activities to contribute to significant growth in the market.

Quick Medical Deliveries by Drones Propel the United Kingdom Market

The United Kingdom market is projected to register a CAGR of 35.4% during the forecast period. Increasing demand for drone delivery services for transport-safe and packed deliveries in the medical field, such as organ implants, is boosting the United Kingdom drone delivery service market. Growing innovations, urbanization, and robust healthcare settings are advancing the market share.

Growing initiatives toward universal traffic management systems encourage drone operations to foster cooperation and airspace management. The increasing demand for safe and efficient drone deliveries is surging the country’s demand for drone delivery services.

Growing eCommerce Sector Uplifts the China Market

During the forecast period, China is anticipated to capture a CAGR of 36.7% during the forecast period. Rising advanced technologies and industries are increasing the demand for drone delivery services for quick product deliveries to enhance consumer experiences. The rapidly surging eCommerce industry is fueling widespread drone delivery adoption for last-mile deliveries. China is adopting swarm technology for scalable and efficient product services through smart drones, attracting end users’ requirements.

The growing population is increasing the demand for products delivered at home office premises and the adoption of flexible drone delivery solutions. Increasing environmental issues, heavy traffic, fuel prices, and complex urban areas focus on drone delivery to enhance speed and reduce workloads, driving China’s drone delivery service market.

Expanding 5G Technology Brings Lucrative Opportunities in South Korea

The market in South Korea is expected to progress at a CAGR of 35.3% during the forecast period. The expanding communication sector, 5G networks, and advanced technologies are increasing the demand for drone delivery services for efficient deliveries. South Korea is expanding the agriculture sector by increasing the wide acceptance of drones for crop monitoring, spreading pesticides, and spraying.

The government of South Korea is shaping the market by collaborating with key players, and research institutions are expanding the market growth. Drone manufacturers are collaborating with e-commerce and logistic companies to promote drone delivery services nationwide, which are surging the demand for drone delivery. Drones transfer goods to rural and remote areas without hassle, and reducing vehicle transportation is booming in South Korea’s drone delivery service market.

Competitive Landscape

The global drone delivery service market is highly competitive due to the presence of critical international players. These players are essential to developing unique, advanced drone delivery systems to satisfy end users’ demands. Key players are adopting various marketing tactics such as mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, product launches, and agreements.

The key players bring lucrative opportunities through their new ideas, technologies, and expertise to drive market growth. These players heavily invest in research and development activities to expand the market revenue by offering cost-effective solutions to end users. The essential players are promoting their products at exhibitions, trade shows, and online platforms to reach more audiences, boosting sales.

crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing, Drones and Why I’ll Never Buy a Bugatti

Amazon has taught me I don’t have to wait for my next two-pack of ravioli cutter stamps, so if you can’t get them to me in under two hours, I know someone else who can. It’s 2019, and customers want what they want, when they want it. According to a recent report, the global last-mile market is now expected to hit $55.2 billion by 2025, up from $30.2 billion today – and it’s no wonder. Amazon’s deep investments in delivery continue to fuel a surge in e-commerce; meanwhile, customer expectations and the entire supply chain have been completely upended.

The good news is that the more retailers invest in delivery, the more their e-commerce revenue grows. For businesses who’ve made supply chain a top priority, it’s huge validation.

So where does that leave us in the race to the doorstep? Companies are throwing cash at everything, from drones to self-driving robots to crowdsourcing. Who’s got the best chance of success? How can each one lower costs, increase speed and mitigate risks? Can they disrupt the industry without being, well… disruptive?

Drones: The droids you’re looking for?

Drones entered the mainstream about five years ago as a cool photography gadget. Thanks to falling prices, they’re a hot item on every kid’s Christmas list this year, but they’ve also generated a lot of buzz about their potential applications for logistics.

In rural areas, drones have huge promise for parcel delivery. They’re already supplementing human workers in large warehouses – flying to far-flung corners to pick goods on high-up shelves. And they’re working out in the freight yard, too, helping to track and manage trucks, trailers and containers.

Companies like UPS, Amazon, Google and even Dominos are experimenting with drones in the last mile. One popular model uses a carrier van on the highway as a hub for an armada of drones that fly out of the back to deliver small parcels to nearby homes. It’s an impressive, futuristic version of hub and spoke. Can it work? At what cost?

Just like commercial aviation and the automobile, drones have major hurdles to navigate, especially when we think about how they’ll work at scale. We’ll need major regulatory oversight to address safety, noise and privacy concerns. We’ll need to build control towers, write better algorithms, improve GPS, and figure out what to do about the weather. But these challenges will likely all be worked out, given enough in time and investment.

Autonomous vehicles and robots: Bots with brains.

What about autonomous cars and robots? Are they more viable in the near term?

McKinsey predicts autonomous vehicles could slash last-mile delivery costs in urban areas by as much as 40 percent. And companies from FedEx to Bosch have made bets on sidewalk delivery bots, deploying prototypes in San Francisco office parks, where they’re tightly controlled.  Long-term, the potential is clear, and companies with the deep pockets to make early bets could save a lot of money in the long run.

Both autonomous cars and bots cost thousands of dollars per unit to manufacture, though, and depend heavily on human supervision and maintenance. When it comes to flexibility and scalability, is a sidewalk droid really that different from a truck? Both are rigid, asset-heavy systems that require a big capex investment upfront with even higher maintenance and upgrade costs over time.

Think of it this way: earlier this year, actor and comedian Tracy Morgan from Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock bought himself a sweet new supercar: a Bugatti. He forked out a cool $2 million for it. But later that day, he was sideswiped by a driver in a Honda CR-V. It was just a minor fender-bender, but it turns out fixing a scratch on a Bugatti costs more than the entire value of the car that hit him – somewhere to the tune of $32,000.

The truth is, even if I had the cash to buy a Bugatti, I could never afford to maintain it. Will a fleet of delivery droids be the same?

Whether it’s drones or robots or some other yet-to-emerge autonomous technology, asset-heavy logistics strategies will always suffer from the same Achilles heel: whether it’s changing wiper blades or switching from lithium batteries to solar – hardware is expensive. And if a new hardware solution can’t solve for the demands of flexibility in the last mile, there will still be a need for something that can.

This doesn’t even take into account all the regulatory hurdles, infrastructure dependencies and real-world obstacles from bikes to baby strollers, pranksters to potholes, larcenists to labor unions.

But what folks aren’t talking about, and what I find most interesting, is the inherent limitations that come with any fixed-asset system.

Drones and robots may well be efficient, and hopefully one day safer. But what happens when a last-minute order comes in and the customer needs delivery now? How do you adjust a pre-planned droid route at the last minute – when the droid has already left the store?

Crowdsourcing: Using an infrastructure that’s already there.

Robots may well be our future, but how do we solve the delivery challenges we have today? That’s where crowdsourcing comes in.

Crowdsourcing lets retailers leverage existing resources already on the road to make delivery faster, more efficient and more flexible. While others are making big bets on drones, our Roadie drivers are delivering gigantic garden gnomes. We’re delivering temperature-controlled medicine that won’t be ready for pickup until 9 p.m. We’re working with Walmart to save busy parents a trip to buy groceries. We’re returning your lost luggage from the airport, and bringing you the ladder you bought online at The Home Depot this morning.

Some of the biggest brands in retail are investing in crowdsourcing. Today, we’re partnering with SMBs and Fortune 100 retailers to deliver everything from makeup to mattresses, paint to puppy food. Businesses across virtually every industry are solving today’s delivery challenges with an asset-light strategy that allows them to experiment and learn. They’re addressing delivery demand today, without making new capital investments or locking themselves into a futures bet with complex hardware systems. And most importantly, they’re not disrupting their existing supply chain in a way that can’t be undone without a huge cost if and when the autonomous tech winners begin to emerge over the next decade or two.

And that’s really the point. Retailers need optionality. Customers want to personalize their delivery for each and every purchase at the point of sale. A great customer experience means having a delivery solution for every customer delivery problem, whether you’re scheduling a sofa delivery on Sunday or sending a rescue inhaler right now. Making that work in the real world means having an arsenal of tools in your delivery toolkit.

We’re solving the problems retailers are having today, at scale – not iterating on solutions that may work at a required scale years in the future. Crowdsourcing is a sustainable solution that ensures we’ll all be around to see what delivery looks like in the future.

______________________________________________________________

Don Pancho_University for Peace Visit

Marc Gorlin is the Founder and CEO of Roadie, a crowdsourced delivery service that works with consumers, small businesses and national companies across virtually every industry to provide a faster, cheaper, more scalable solution for scheduled, same-day and urgent delivery. With over 150,000 verified drivers, Roadie covers 89% of U.S. households — the largest local same-day delivery footprint in the nation.

ups flight forward

UPS Flight Forward Boasts First-Ever Part 135 Standard Certification

Drones continue to make news headlines with the latest announcement from UPS Flight Forward, Inc. confirming the first-ever government-approved Part 135 Standard certification awarded by the FAA earlier this week. This certification – which is known as the highest level, supports the UPS subsidiary to further opportunities in drone deliveries including operating drones beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS).

“This is history in the making, and we aren’t done yet,” said David Abney, UPS chief executive officer. “Our technology is opening doors for UPS and solving problems in unique ways for our customers. We will soon announce other steps to build out our infrastructure, expand services for healthcare customers and put drones to new uses in the future.”

UPS Flight Forward deployed the first BVLOS drone delivery to WakeMed’s hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina shortly after receiving the certification. The government-exempted BVLOS flight was carried out by Matternet’s M2 quadcopter. UPS partnered with drone creator Matternet earlier this year to expand supporting healthcare delivery operations specifically for WakeMed’s hospital campus. These operations further reiterate the demand for efficient, speedy deliveries for the medical industry and its patients.

“UPS Flight Forward is benefitting from our knowledge as one of the world’s leading airlines. The Flight Forward organization is building a full-scale drone operation based on the rigorous reliability, safety, and control requirements of the FAA,” Abney said.

The Part 135 Standard certification carries significant advantages with minimal restrictions to UPS, such as no limits on the scale of operations, unlimited numbers of drones and remote operators, cargo weights exceeding 55 pounds, and more. By obtaining this certification, common barriers associated with drone deliveries are eliminated.

“This is a big step forward in safely integrating unmanned aircraft systems into our airspace, expanding access to healthcare in North Carolina and building on the success of the national UAS Integration Pilot Program to maintain American leadership in unmanned aviation,” said U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao.