Drones have been a growing trend from a simple gadget and a cool toy, to a whole industry that has many applications in every sector. However, one thing was always constraining drones, battery and payload management, that had to be managed by humans. It’s a process that is currently manually done by humans that have to swap batteries and payload by hand costing companies a lot of money to employ them and is far less effective than it could be.
However, Airrow, an LA startup has emerged with its take on it. IT works in a similar way to a 3D printer, in that it has the X, Y and Z axis on which it operates to swap the batteries for charged ones and put the out-of-juice battery to charge.
The system is in a very early stage, and the same goes for the company. However, the solution seems to be working for batteries, and the company says they are ready to develop a similar process for payloads.
The solution was shown during this year’s Amazon re:Mars conference and gathered a lot of interest. The company says the system will cost around $80’000-$100’000, which is not cheap. Though the bundle also includes a drone that would work in a closely knitted fashion with the autonomous changing station.
Unfortunately, the conference happened only a few days ago, and the company is so new, that there are no publications on how this system operates exactly (ideally with videos) available on the internet. Once I spot something, I will update this post with videos and photos. For now, I gathered these from the firm’s LinkedIn:
Reference:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/airrow/posts/?feedView=all
Airrow is automating battery and payload swapping for drones