The Drone Logistics Service Point project, led by Oulu University of Applied Sciences, is investigating how unmanned aerial vehicles can improve the efficiency of transport in different urban areas. The goal is to build a smart and scalable drone logistics infrastructure and lay the groundwork for the development of future drone logistics services in Finland.  

“We want to make mistakes now so that companies can succeed later,” summarizes senior researcher Jussi Kangasoja from VTT. VTT is one of the partners in the EU-funded project.  

Food from the air in a matter of minutes 

One of the project’s concrete experiments was carried out at the Housing Fair in Oulu, where drones transported food from the city center to the fairgrounds. The flight distance was less than three kilometers, and it passed partly over water and the city. The usual route by car would have required traveling several kilometers via bridges, but with the drone, the delivery took only about three minutes. 

“The pizza was warm when it arrived. It left the city center from the roof of a store and was in the customer’s hands in a few minutes,” Kangasoja says. 

The deliveries were carried out in collaboration with Manna, a company that has made hundreds of thousands of drone deliveries in Dublin. In Finland, Manna operates in Niittykumpu, Espoo. 

“The drones fly partially autonomously along a predetermined route. The flight is not controlled manually but monitored in the same way as industrial processes in factories. One operator can monitor several flights at the same time,” says Kangasoja. 

Technology and safety are a cause for concern 

Drone logistics is not just about flying – it requires special technology and high-level operating licenses for operators, which are not always easy to obtain. Demanding operations, such as transporting people or construction materials in urban areas, also call for experience, sufficient flight hours, and specific types of technology. 

Read the full story in Positio Magazine.

Would you like to see in practice how state-of-the-art drone test environments in Oulu can contribute to the development of your business? Join the Location Innovation Discovery Day Oulu in October. The event will showcase the drone logistics infrastructure in the Oulu region and explain its business opportunities. Learn more and sign up.