Today, like other products, people like to order health supplements online from e-commerce sites. Reasonable prices, better quality and fast delivery are among those benefits. A good quality pro-biotics need to be delivered fast so as to keep the living organisms workable. But, most health supplement companies do not package with dry ice. Though, sometimes it comes with dry ice, the ice melted. To curb this Project Wing opens up a a lot of opportunities, from delivering medical prescriptions to emergency equipment, such as heart defibrillators. Project Wing not only makes shopping more convenient, but it could also potentially saves lives. Amid this technologies like IoT and Blockchain are also helpful is solving such issues as they possess the capabilities to transform the future of drone delivery systems.

Hurdles in the Path of Drone Delivery System and Blockchain 

A year ago, the FAA forecasts that around 452,000 commercial drones would be in use by 2022. However today it foresees the industry to swipe that figure around the starting of next year. According to the FAA, the commercial drone market will enhance 3 times over the next five years, swiping 835,000 aircraft by 2023.

Commercial drones, which are utilized for research, filming, pilot training, building inspection and a slew of other professional activities, are usually more costly and robust than the model aircraft used by hobbyists, but entertaining drones are far more numerous.

With huge companies like Google and Amazon working on launching delivery drone projects for public use, the sky may be filled with thousands of drones flying around sooner than we think. With thousands of drones in the sky, there will be both chances and challenges to take into consideration.

Without necessary auditing, tracking and security, drone technology could cause more harm than good. Now, every drone manufacturer manages each of its drones via their own proprietary protocols – they’re unable to communicate with other drones effectively and securely. For airspace guidelines, this could become a problem with many drones flying at a time.

Some corrupt people may also attempt to take benefit of drones through hacking and malware.

In a delivery, there are several stakeholders who demand some level of information transparency to defend their interests, namely the sender, recipient, regulatory agencies, and insurance companies.

Using blockchain technology, one can alleviate many of the pain points for drone delivery, and provide solutions for the aforementioned problems and also bring out the true meaning of IoT through a fully distributed, resistive and fault tolerant solution. A multipurpose, miniature and blockchain enabled IoT device will be responsible for facilitating all drone to blockchain interactions.  This IoT device communicates directly to the blockchain without intermediary servers to ensure full security.

Why Blockchain?

Blockchain unites different aspects of a goods, back-end solution: decentralization, redundancy, fault tolerance, security and scalability. Besides being architecturally sound, blockchain acts as a verifier of all information that’s sent to it.

The project blockchain usually in particular has many built-in features, such as mult signature access, metadata, atomic smart contracts and special “rules” (Restrictions) that one can assign to accounts on-chain. Catapult can also be used via a standard REST API interface eliminating the need for mining or staking for IoT devices.

Using Blockchain to Secure Drone Deliveries

As the IoT device is already configured to work directly with the blockchain, it simply needs sensor input from an outside source. In this case, the drone will supply all information to the IoT device, including flight telemetry, trip, geo-spatial and other ToF (Time of Flight) data.

DJI also has a powerful OnBoard SDK, which will essentially give us full right to use to all of the drone’s capabilities, sensors and internal flight controller. Combined with a compatible IoT device, DJI drones are ready to be configured to be fully blockchain enabled delivery drones out of the box!

In every delivery, there must be concerned sender and receiver. The drone manufacturing company, sender, receiver, insurance provider and potentially a regulatory body may need to be able to access drone trip data.

The blockchain can also move as a form of distributed communication for drones. Messaging with other drones can occur publicly for the purpose of coordination. On Catapult, one can tag drones as being within certain zones on-chain via a token.

Today, thousands of drones are active around, therefore accidents can be expected. Insurance companies will require admittance to information to conclude accident reasons and conditions. Delivery drones can record flight telemetry and environmental conditions before a crash or break down using the IoT device’s onboard tracking solution (similar to a black-box on an airplane)

As each delivery being verified on-chain, this also opens up potentials for more of a peer-to-peer approach to drone deliveries. In our example, If one wants to rapidly transfer a package from one home to another, they could ask for a drone to pick-up the package. In the meantime, funds to pay for the delivery are put in escrow on the blockchain. The drone knows the delivery to the requested address, then mark the transaction as complete. For higher value packages, the IoT device on the drone can even communicate to another IoT device inside of a home to open a garage or window for the drone to deliver the goods.

Once a peer-to-peer delivery happens, funds are sent to the drone’s delivery company, and the whole trip is recorded on-chain. At this time, the previous security measures are being followed, and each party is updated every step of the way. After the trade being settled on the blockchain, it allows a more trust less communication between the sender, receiver and delivery service.

Since drones will most probably be using the airspace of public roadways for these deliveries, it’s feasible to make trips more competent by using the airspace of private properties. To achieve this, land owners can be given incentives to automatically earn tokens as drones fly over their respective airspace.

Conclusion

As drone deliveries are quickly becoming a truth, the requirement for security, coordination and a proper logging is necessary for the future.  Use of blockchain can help resolve these problems enormously, and, united with an IoT monitoring device that allows for several inputs from the drone, will let any drone to become a more secure flying aircraft.  It’s vital to be able to protect drones from malicious parties, make a verified track of auditability, and overlay the way for the future through proper communication and procedure standardization amongst different manufacturers and operators.