Jani Talikka was a commercial pilot flying Boeing 717s but, after ordering a drone delivery as a customer, he decided to shift gears.
“I didn’t leave fixed-wing aviation because I disliked it – but drones are cutting edge,” he tells Guardian Australia. “It’s rare you get to be a part of something like this at the start.”
Widespread reliance on drones may seem years off but industries from food delivery to agriculture are already putting the unmanned aerial vehicles to work across Australia. As regulators prepare for new uncrewed traffic, technology companies are exploring ways around connection black spots, to prevent drones dropping out of the sky.
And, while the thought of skies filled with drones whizzing past may seem a world away, momentum is building rapidly. Already, the number of drones licensed to operate in Australia is greater than the number of existing airspace users combined, according to government figures.
When you run out of milk
Amazon already offers drone deliveries in a handful of towns in the US, and was announced as part of a trial in the UK this month, but Australians in certain trial areas have been able to order food and parcels by drone for more than four years.
Wing Aviation, a startup owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is among just two operators to gain approval from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Association (Casa) to conduct beyond visual line of sight piloting – where the pilot controls aircraft from a computer screen.
While the trial approval is thorough in Australia, and requires additional permission from local councils, Wing’s Jesse Suskin describes Casa as among the national regulators more open to exploring early drone use.
There are now about 1.5m drone flights a year in Australia, according to Airservices Australia, the federal agency responsible for managing airspace across the country. And operations continue to expand.
Last month Wing launched drone delivery in the Maroondah council area in Melbourne’s east, the first trial in Victoria but Wing’s third in Australia. The company operates in parts of south-east Queensland, where more than 60 drones are stationed, after its first attempt in the Australian Capital Territory in 2019.
Wing bases its fleets of drones on the rooftop of shopping centres in each of its trial areas.
Customers can order via the DoorDash app from stores inside. Workers from shops or restaurants then take orders to the roof, where a Wing employee loads specially designed foldable parcels into the styrofoam drones before they are flown to an address’s driveway or back yard. All that’s required is a space 2m in circumference at the destination to lower the package.
“The slowest part is generally the preparation [and loading],” Suskin says. “Once it’s on the drone it’s usually there in minutes. We don’t stop for red lights.”
Medications and freshly prepared food such as coffee, smoothies and burgers are popular on the service, which can still only support a 1.2kg payload – better suited to individual and smaller items than a weekly grocery shop.
“Up to 10km and back in urban and suburban areas is what we focus on,” Suskin says.
“When you run out of milk, when you need children’s Panadol: it’s the convenience of being able to send those things by drone instead of having to drive back to the shops through peak hour.”
Not like a video game
Whereas traditional aviation operations require at least one pilot in each aircraft and air traffic controllers to manage airspace, operators such as Wing are able to mostly automate deliveries.
One pilot can be responsible for flying up to 50 drones at a time, which Suskin says can make drone delivery cheaper than relying on cars.
“Where a business would previously need 50 cars and 50 drivers to deliver 50 cheeseburger orders, to deliver them by drone requires just one pilot,” he says.
The industry also provides a new employment horizon for traditional aircraft pilots – which, given the flexibility beyond visual line of sight piloting offers, could complicate the already tight global market for pilots.
While pilots at Wing must work from a remote operations room and don’t have work-from-home freedoms, they are able to avoid the gruelling schedules and intercity travel related to commercial aviation.
Talikka has now been a drone pilot with Wing for two years, and flies up to 50 at once. Because the drones are highly automated, he says, the experience is less about controlling individual drones and more about maintaining oversight of an entire delivery map.
“I don’t have any vision from the drone while it’s flying, so it’s not so much like a video game – my focus, it’s really on the big picture in our operating area,” he says. “What does the weather look like now, an hour from now? Is there helicopter traffic nearby that I need to account for? Do I need to communicate with the ground staff where the drones are taking off and landing to work on a maintenance issue?”
‘You never want to lose contact with a drone’
Amid a handful of trials limited to certain geographic catchments with pilots operating dozens of drones beyond their line of sight, regulators are working to prepare Australia’s skies for a surge in uncrewed aircraft and flying taxis.
Part of the task is ensuring the expected 60m annual drone flights in Australia by 2043 coexist peacefully with existing air traffic management of commercial planes in urban areas, with Airservices Australia – the commonwealth body that oversees towers at airports as well as 11% of the world’s airspace – now developing a system for uncrewed aircraft.
Meanwhile, Casa conducts safety checks for drones in the same way it does for airlines, to make sure they don’t drop out of the sky. “[Wing’s] approval followed a rigorous safety assessment by Casa, which confirmed that Wing’s operations meet all required aviation safety standards,” a spokesperson for the regulator said.
Wing’s main obstacle is extreme wind and rain, but its drones feature redundancies such as two batteries despite only needing one, and a navigation system which keeps drones hovering even when they lose connection.
Swoop Aero, the other operator with Casa approval, uses drones to deliver pharmaceutical products in regional areas.
Internet reception limited to urban areas has to date been a key barrier to drones delivering to disconnected rural communities where the method stands to bring the most benefit.
But companies are exploring technologies that mean regional operators and off-grid areas are less vulnerable to Australia’s patchy outback mobile reception.
Elsight’s Halo communication system effectively allows an operator to organise connection from a range of internet carriers, including from Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, to avoid dropouts when piloting long distances.
“Instead of relying on a single network, we can rely on them all – Telstra, Optus, satellite communications,” says Elsight’s chief executive, Yoav Amitai.
The technology is geared at operators in rural locations, as well as those who rely on constant high-speed internet, such as drones feeding video for monitoring of sharks, natural disasters or policing.
In Australia, where vast telecommunications black spots have been identified as critical weak links in infrastructure chains and bushfire and flood responses, Elsight’s Halo is in use by Sphere Drones, which runs agricultural operations including crop management, as well as in mining.
When an Optus outage in November caused cascading outages of critical infrastructure across the country, Sphere drones flying over a mine in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley stayed in the sky by automatically switching to a functioning cellular provider.
“They didn’t even notice the outage,” Amitai says. “We can kind of sniff and use all the networks.
“We thrive in the places where you can’t rely on that connection … you never want to lose contact with a drone.”
Elsight’s Halo is also used in Walmart’s delivery drones in the US. Amitai believes societal acceptance of drones will develop gradually but trust is required.
“In the late 1800s, with the first cars, people said: ‘Are you guys nuts? They’re noisy and dangerous, we already have horses, why do we need cars?’
“But for delivery, drones are a no-brainer, they will be faster, create less traffic.
“People shouldn’t be afraid you’ll see drones flying with full grocery carts in the sky. It’s less about replacing the shopping trolley, and more the delivery rider on a scooter.”
