User:Tancheekiang/sandbox/SingPost Alpha Drone Mail Delivery Trial

SingPost Drone Mail Delivery Trial To Pulau Ubin

Singapore Postal Service Limited (SingPost) started looking for other other mail delivery options to the island Pulau Ubin when their one and only Postman who is in his 70s were going to retire. However, hiring a replacement Postman proves to be difficult because mail delivery to the remote outlying island is a job few wants to do. Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (also know know as UAV or Drones) became one of the possible technology options. In order to explore the technical viability and the safety regulatory boundaries, SingPost partnered IDA Singapore (Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore) to develop a prototype that could provide an end to end last mile mail delivery solution to Pulau Ubin.

On 27 Sep 2015, SingPost successfully applied flight permit from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), Maritime Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), Singapore Police Force (SPF) and Ministry of Transport (MOT) to conduct a test flight to deliver a T-Shirt and a Letter to a resident living in Pulau Ubin. The UAV took off at 1005 hours at Lorong Halus a wet land area north-east of the main island and landed successfully on Pulau Ubin after covering 2.3km of open waters, travelling at a height of 45m and speed of 8m/s. The whole flight took around 5mins to complete.

Similar trials where conducted by Finland Post, Swiss Post and US Postal Services however SingPost's trial involves a mobile application for users to schedule their delivery to a pre-designated landing area. The mobile application also allows user to authenticate themselves when the drone arrives. Only upon successful authentication using a PIN code then the UAV will land for the user to retrieve their package. If the UAV could not achieve proper authentication within 3 minutes with the user upon arrival, it will automatically return back to it's home location.

The UAV is named SingPost Alpha One (新邮一号) and is customized by IDA Labs (a research lab of IDA Singapore). It is developed using the Open Source Pixhawk Flight Controller and the frame of the UAV is from the Steadidrone Flare (A UAV built by a company called Steadidrone in South Africa).

Technical Specifications
UAV Frame: Steadidrone Flare

Flight Control: 3D Robotics Pixhawk

Payload: 500g

Flying Height: 45m (software cap)

Flying Speed: 8m/s (software cap)

Parachute: Mars 65, can be deployed manually or automatically should any of the safety parameters are breached.