AIRBOUND: Drone Delivery Fleet Management
Team - Kanupriya Yadav (Individual)
Tools - Figma
Timeline - 16 November 2022 - 5 December 2022
I worked closely with Airbound's research and development team, exploring the details of drone delivery processes. My key role was to integrate a robust flight management system to optimize operations. Airbound's mission revolves around elevating last-mile medicine delivery services in India, a critical endeavor for improved healthcare accessibility.
Brief
Design a comprehensive ecosystem for the secure drone fleet management of medicine and first aid deliveries, enabling operations Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS).
End-to-end system designed for last-mile delivery.
Adding drones to your fleet
Seamlessly add drones to their existing fleet, configure various settings, and set up docking stations for efficient management and operation of the drones. It simplifies the process of integrating new drones into an existing fleet, and provides an easy way to customize settings according to specific requirements.
Drone Settings
General Settings:
Set preferences, modify drone controls like Flight Speed- vertical and horizontal, and set maximum flight altitude.
Failsafe Settings:
Set failsafe actions to be performed by the drone in case of any emergency.
Precision Landing:
Enhances accuracy, safety, and efficiency. It enables exact package drop-offs, reduces human intervention, complies with regulations, and broadens delivery capabilities.
Collision Safety:
Enable horizontal and vertical vision detection systems to ensure safety from collisions.
Pre-flight checklist:
Complete the pre-flight checklist post the manual flight checkup, ensure required permissions have been taken, the weather is optimal for delivery, finish actions are set up in case of emergencies and the drone has the battery life to complete the mission.
Set up docking stations
Add/ delete/ modify dedicated facilities for drones to autonomously take off, land, recharge, and undergo maintenance.
Upcoming Orders
View all the upcoming orders, with essential order details. The operator has the option to reject/ create a mission depending on the stock availability.
Mission Creation
Create delivery missions by assigning drones, setting up route settings, finish action and grid layout with UTM safety, followed by pre-flight checks, package loading, route verification, and initiating the drone's takeoff. The ATC software continues to monitor and guide the mission for safe delivery.
Assigning Drones:
Assign drones from the available list of drones or assess the ETA of busy drones to be assigned for the mission.
Geofence
Set up a required geofence for each mission to prevent the flying away of drones due to connection loss. You can set up a circular/ polygon geofence depending on the drop location and no-fly zones.
Circular Geofence
Polygonal Geofence
Essential Notifications and alerts
Actionable notifications are sent to the operator where manual intervention might be needed for better health and safety of the mission. Failed delivery alerts notify operators and recipients when a delivery cannot be completed. They offer real-time information to address issues and enhance operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Emergency Situations:
The operator is notified in case of any emergency situation, where he is provided with options for manual control, letting the drone execute pre-set failsafe action, or override with a new failsafe action depending on the situation. For manual control, the operator can either control it via keyboard controls or joystick/remote control.
Product Demo Video
Why Drones?
Research and Process
Operators need to monitor various drone missions together, flight paths, sensor states, and statuses throughout the mission. The operators need to intervene during emergencies to swiftly handle any unusual situation that might arise and switch necessary drones into manual override mode.
Background Study
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Drone deliveries provide an excellent opportunity to address healthcare industry supply chain issues, minimizing stockouts and wastage. Through quicker responses, higher-quality products, and better availability, deaths from diseases like dengue, conditions like postpartum hemorrhage, blood loss from accidents, and even races against time in organ graft cases can be addressed.
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By implementing cutting-edge logistics systems in the sky, health system flaws, particularly those felt in rural communities suffering from a lack of infrastructure and projected growth that outpaces investment, can be addressed and lives can be saved.
The Drone Ecosystem
"It is extremely important for the operator to be aware of drone/s flight route flying outside of their organization."
Drone Navigation and Technology
Drone Logistic Use Cases
Delivery Journey Overview
User Taskflows
Mission Creation
Precision Landing
Failsafe- Low Battery/ Critical Battery
Failsafe- GPS Connection Lost
Failsafe- Drone Collision
Failsafe- Drone outside Geofence
Operator Persona
Usability Testing
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The prototype was tested with the Research and Development team of Dronaid to understand their perspective and their expectations from the design and task flows. the following are the observations recorded post conducting a usability study with 3 R&D team members.
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The drones initially designated for the mission were integrated into the primary Create Mission interface, offering the capacity to incorporate additional drones as required. During testing, user feedback indicated confusion related to the drone addition process.
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The chosen drones for the mission were equipped with a contextual side pop-up menu, offering the functionality to modify the selected drone configuration and incorporate additional drones as required.
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Missions were categorized using color codes to visually represent their real-time status. In response to feedback, a filtering option was introduced to isolate in-progress missions, aiming to alleviate cognitive demands on the drone operator.
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In its initial design, the emergency pop-up interface offered the drone operator the choice between manual control during emergencies or the execution of predetermined failsafe protocols. Later, an override capability was introduced, enabling more flexible and situation-specific emergency handling.
Styles and Components
Reflection
I learned
so much about drones, apart from aerial photography how can I use them to help humankind. This project was outside of my comfort zone, but as the process progressed, I was able to deliver to my team's expectations by learning the functionality of drones, understanding their capabilities, and using my knowledge of designing the user experience.
I would change
Currently, the SaaS is in the first version, as I learn more about the company goals and operator needs, there would always be a scope for improvement with every version. In the future, I see great improvement in every task flow once I will have enough time to focus on each one separately.
