In the age of automation and same-day delivery, the race for companies to develop widespread, reliable package dropoff via drones has only just begun. With years of development tucked into the design and testing grounds, drone services are finally being implemented and utilized by the public. However, these tryouts have been met with varying degrees of success.

Reporter Timothy B. Lee in a piece for arstechnica.com states, “Earlier this month, Google’s sister company, Wing, began offering a drone delivery service in the Dallas suburbs of Frisco and Little Elm. Wing drones take off from ‘nests’ in two Walgreens parking lots to deliver things like health products or ice cream to nearby customers. Wing describes it as ‘the first ever commercial drone delivery service in a major US metropolitan area.’”

So far, Wing’s drone delivery service has been an all-around victory. With successful safety measures, impressive speed both in flight and trade-off, and a high demand for the service, it’s no wonder that the company recently crossed their 200,000 delivery mark.

“Wing has obtained [a Federal Aviation Administration (FFA)] waiver allowing it to fly beyond the visual line of sight. That allows Wing to offer deliveries as far as four miles away from a drone’s home base. Wing’s waiver also allows flights over people. This allows drones to pick up a new package by hovering about 23 feet (seven meters) in the air and extending a tether down to the ground.”

From order to drop off, interaction with delivery workers or the drone itself is never necessary on the patron’s part, meaning service is quick, easy, and pandemic-approved.

Walmart’s “DroneUp” has seen similar success in its startup. Though the drones are slower and heavier than the ones from Wing, and the company has a harder time obtaining waivers from the FFA, their safety and satisfaction rate has been stellar.

“FAA regulations prohibit a drone from flying over people or moving vehicles. [Tom Walker, founder of DroneUp] says that DroneUp’s aircraft have ‘the ability to dynamically route around areas where [people and moving vehicles] might be, and also have sensors that let us know where people are on the ground.’ The drones also have multiple redundancies to help ensure that the failure of any one component won’t cause it to crash.”

Fast, smart, and safe, DroneUp is customer-approved and ready to grow their services. Walmart plans to expand the operation from 200 to 600 people this year, with a significant percentage of that new workforce being comprised of drone operators.

Despite the success of Walmart’s DroneUp and Google’s Wing, not all big-brand drone delivery services have had the same smooth sailing with their debuts. Amazon has yet to create an approved drone, much less implement a widespread system. Heavy and unsafe, the online retail giant’s drones have not been able to meet FFA standards.

“An article in Wired last year described the turmoil in the UK branch of Amazon’s drone project. Amazon started testing delivery drones in the UK in 2016, but by 2021 people were telling Wired that the program was “‘“collapsing inwards,” “dysfunctional,” and resembled “organised chaos” run by managers that were “detached from reality,”’” recounts Lee.

Even if a widespread rollout of delivery drones hasn’t become reality quite yet, there is no doubt it will be soon with our rapidly evolving technology. And when those billion dollar retail giants call for skilled experts to design, built, test, and operate their drones, will you be ready?

Capitol Technology University offers many opportunities in unmanned systems, where you can learn indispensable, industry-ready knowledge and prepare to answer the call for skilled aviation experts.

To learn more about these programs as well as our wide breadth of other STEM fields of study, visit captechu.edu and peruse the various courses and degrees offered. Many courses are available both on campus and online. For more information, contact admissions@captechu.edu.

Amidst the race for clean energy output, electric vehicles (EVs) are taking a favorable spin around the globe. As a greener option compared to diesel and gas powered engines, a new generation has popped up, preferring to drive solely on electrically charged engines.

However, the day to day maintenance of such an engine can be cumbersome. According to reporter Martin M. Barillas in a newsweek.com article, cars “may take as long as 10 hours to fully charge at home, while even superchargers at charging stations take 30–40 minutes to provide a full charge.”

With such a long wait paired against minimal driving time, the curve towards drivers who prefer electric vehicles remains stunted. However, brand new battery technology may soon put EVs back on the leaderboard as keys to a green future.

“Scientists at Korea’s Institute for Basic Science (IBS)… [have discovered] new quantum technologies that can quickly charge batteries. They drew inspiration from a 2012 study, which proposed the quantum battery concept and theorized that quantum resources such as entanglement may charge batteries at a vastly faster rate by charging all cells in a battery simultaneously,” the Newsweek article explains.

Currently, electric car batteries cannot be charged all at once, and the need to refill them one at a time is the main source of pacing issues. With the quantum batteries, not only would this issue be erased, but charging would be exponentially faster.

“A team of scientists from the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems at IBS… found that unlike classical batteries (e.g., lithium-ion batteries), where maximum charging speeds increase according to the number of cells, quantum batteries with global operation may achieve quadratic scaling in charging speed.

“[A]s quantum batteries increase in size, charging times become faster. For example, when going from 1 to 2, instead of increasing by a factor of 2, it increases by a factor of 4, and when going from 1 to 10, it increases by a factor of 100.”

With this supercharged factoring, a normal at-home charge would be reduced from double digit hours to just a few minutes, while wait times at public charging stations would go down to mere seconds. And if such technology succeeds, it could be utilized for purposes outside travel.

“Quantum charging may be used someday in consumer electronics as well as in fusion power plants, which need large bursts of energy for instant charging and discharging. However, the researchers caution that quantum technologies still need years of research before they can be introduced to revolutionize energy use and green technologies.”

It may take some time yet for quantum technology to be thoroughly researched and approved, but if enough dedicated people join the team to make it a reality, these batteries could come sooner than we hope.

Capitol Tech offers many opportunities in engineering, where you can join the pursuit to make electric car batteries sustainable and quick to power.

To learn more about these programs, visit captechu.edu and explore the various fields of study offered. Many courses are available both on campus and online. For more information, contact admissions@captechu.edu.

According to Gartner, spending for enterprise cloud platforms will increase 14% by 2024. One reason is that, especially for small to medium sized businesses, cloud computing is proving to be 40x more cost effective than having in-house IT systems and data centers. The public cloud (as opposed to a private cloud) is easy to use, cost-efficient, and scalable. Yet migration is not a simple task and success is not a given, especially when organizations encounter unanticipated obstacles.

Pranav Kondala, solutions architect for Hughes, identified some of the most common challenges enterprises experience when it comes to cloud computing and connectivity in a recent discussion. These include:

1. Lack of knowledge and expertise. Many businesses launch cloud computing initiatives without realizing they do not have the right talent available in-house to support their digital transformation. Additionally, Mr. Kondala notes, “with cloud architecture expertise in high demand, finding talent in this market has challenges of its own.”
2. Visibility. Moving workloads to the public cloud means losing many of the controls an enterprise once maintained with on-premises solutions. Cloud providers do not grant their customers direct access to shared infrastructure and traditional monitoring infrastructure will not, in many cases, work in the cloud. While cloud providers may provide log files detailing workload activity, without also having access to data packets, analysts or operations teams can’t use these log files to investigate alerts, identify root causes and remediate threats. Lack of packet data will also limit their ability to investigate performance issues in complex cloud environments.
3. Data protection and privacy. When it comes to securing data in the cloud, it is important to understand subtle differences between on-premises versus cloud security approaches. It is a myth that the cloud is always more secure than on-prem capabilities. Even though the cloud service provider may assure data integrity, it is always the enterprise’s responsibility to understand what the provider is doing to protect against intruders and keep up to date on the latest security fixes, as well as the steps they’ll take in the event of a breach. “Having the right security posture from Day 0 is critical for any cloud migration effort,” stressed Mr. Kondala.
4. Secured connectivity into the public cloud. Especially for the distributed enterprise with hundreds of locations, secure connectivity to the public cloud is complex and relies on so many different providers – all of which have unique infrastructures, capabilities and costs. It is also time and resource intensive for IT teams to manage multiple providers.
5. Performance may vary. As with any scenario involving service providers, an enterprise may experience performance variances between or within vendors. Yet when network performance suffers due to cloud connectivity, so does the user experience. Mr. Kondala advises paying careful attention to network issues, such as latency, packet loss, and congestion, which can undermine cloud application performance.

One of the greatest ways to mitigate these and other challenges is to invest in training and certification for the IT team members responsible for managing the cloud strategy and implementation. Another option is to turn to a Managed Network Services Provider (MNSP), like Hughes, that offers deep bench expertise to address these and other challenges and optimize cloud performance once the shift is complete. An MNSP can lead transition efforts or supplement an internal IT team’s activity, providing the resources needed to efficiently grow a business’ capabilities.

“The cloud environment and data center are incredibly different footprints. It is important that your teams are trained to embrace and understand what is required of a realistic cloud strategy. Whether you are just starting off with cloud computing or are in mid-migration, finding the right talent is critical and can save a lot of money and trouble in the long run,” Mr. Kondala said.

Watch the full TechTalk interview between Mr. Kondala and Tim Tang here.