We have been building a custom delivery drone that will be able to bring deliveries of things like food, packages, medicine, and anything else that you might need or want to be delivered to your Pod. The drone will stay at its home base where it will be loaded with the delivery and then autonomously fly to your pod, drop the package, and return to shore, all without the need of a drone pilot.

One of the challenges for this concept is finding a safe and reliable mechanism for releasing the payload when the drone lands at your Pod. We have tested some different methods such as using an electromagnet, but we feel that this new concept that we have come up with will be easier and more reliable.

The new mechanism is very simple which is good in terms of reliability. It has a metal rod that will go through an eyelet on the package so that the package will hang from the bottom. When the drone lands, a simple servo will activate to retract the rod and drop the package and then return to the original position.

The servo and rod are mounted on a 3D printed part that will fit the exact dimensions that we need. The ability to 3D print this piece and the other custom pieces on the drone saves us time and money since we don’t have to have them machined or custom ordered, we can simply make them as we need them.

We have seen good results from this mechanism so far and we hope to continue seeing good results as we continue testing in the near future. We have more updates on the drone project coming so be sure to keep an eye out!