UAV Station Segmentation for Residential Parcel Delivery
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing UAV stations are limited in their ability to facilitate UAV use in areas where residential buildings cannot accommodate wellhole-style structures or where UAVs have insufficient flight range for long-distance parcel delivery.
Innovation Solution
A comprehensive UAV station design that includes a takeoff-landing unit, parcel receiver, parcel deliverer, storage for parcels, a replenishment hangar for UAVs, a parcel transporter, and an aircraft transporter, allowing for efficient storage, switching, and reordering of parcels and UAVs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a wellhole-style UAV station is installed in a residential building, then UAVs can take off and land for parcel delivery, but the station cannot be installed in areas where residential buildings cannot accommodate such structures or where UAVs have insufficient flight range
Solution Approach 1:
The system is divided into separate functional modules: a UAV station for takeoff/landing operations and a parcel delivery device for parcel handling. This segmentation allows the UAV station to be deployed in locations without requiring integration into residential building structures, thereby increasing adaptability while reducing structural complexity requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
A parcel receiver acts as an intermediary component between the UAV station and the parcel delivery device. This intermediary enables the system to function in locations where the UAV station is separated from the final delivery point, allowing deployment in areas where direct integration would be structurally complex or impossible.
2Productivity
If multiple UAVs and parcels are stored and managed at the station, then the station can serve as temporary housing and switching station, but the system complexity increases with multiple transporters and hangars
Solution Approach 1:
The aircraft transporter and parcel transporter are merged into a single integrated transportation system that can handle both UAVs and parcels. This combining of functions reduces the total number of separate components while maintaining the capability to transport multiple UAVs and parcels efficiently, thereby improving productivity without proportionally increasing system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The replenishment hangar serves multiple functions: housing UAVs, replenishing their energy, and storing spare parts. This multi-functionality allows a single structure to support multiple operations, improving the station's productivity in managing multiple UAVs and parcels while avoiding the need for separate dedicated facilities for each function.
Data Source
AI summary
An unmanned aerial vehicle station includes a takeoff-landing unit for an unmanned aerial vehicle to take off and land, a parcel receiver, a parcel deliverer, a storage that stores a plurality of parcels, a replenishment hangar that houses a plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles and replenishes the housed plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles with energy, a parcel transporter that transports the plurality of parcels between the parcel receiver and the storage and between the parcel deliverer and the storage, and an aircraft transporter that transports the plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles between the takeoff-landing unit and the replenishment hangar.