Safety is Lentola’s number one priority in all development and operations. The industry standard for a delivery drone is to go into hover and winch the package down to the customer. However, the risks of hovering a drone increase rapidly as wind strength increases. Given the accidents that have occurred worldwide in such situations, Lentola’s system supports the use of a parachute instead of hovering, which we consider a significantly safer operating method.

The drone drops the package onto the customer’s property by parachute with great precision. Lentola supplies its customers with parachutes suitable for their operations. Our relatively inexpensive parachutes are suitable as disposable products, especially when the advantage over other forms of transport is particularly great. Alternatively, the operator can charge the customera deposit for the parachute, which they will get back when they return the parachute.

For safety reasons, the drone must drop heavier packages using a parachute.The drone can drop light packages and newspapers to the customer without a parachute. If necessary, waterproof wrapping protects the cargo, so exposure to water/moisture is not a problem. Since the wind can be strong and its direction can vary at the time of drop, an algorithm improves hit accuracy by taking wind direction and strength into account. Ensure sufficient free space in the drop area.

Lentola’s flight planning software allows operators to draw flight routes in advance. The Lentola VTOL Cargo delivery drone uses satellite positioning for navigation, and RTK (Real Time Kinematic) refines the position information.
However, the drone may have weak GNSS connection or lose it completely. Lentola’s system is prepared for a variety of exceptional situations, which allows the operation to continue even without a GNSS connection. If conditions become too difficult, the system can independently make a decision to abort the operation.

Despite meticulous preparation, unforeseen events can occur, for example, due to an unexpected change in weather conditions. A large delivery drone poses risks in the event of an accident. Therefore, we recommend setting up the ground station some distance away from crowds. A sufficiently safe operating model involves the drone taking off from the company premises after loading and landing in a quieter location a little further away.
In the simplest case, the ground station can be a small office container with electricity, and the area required for drone operation is located at the far end of the parking lot. If the landing area is frequently windy, we recommend a tall fence around it. The costs for setting up a landing site are usually quite low.