Launching Drone Delivery

Published Mar 17, 2022, 4:05 AM

Keenan Wyrobek is the co-founder of Zipline. His problem: How do you fill the skies with delivery drones and keep them from crashing into each other?


Zipline’s drones already make hundreds of deliveries a day in Ghana and Rwanda. But to expand to the U.S. he has to solve a fundamental problem. Americans’ love of freedom and the open skies makes it hard to build a drone business here.


If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts be sure to subscribe to our email list.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Pushkin. I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where we talk to entrepreneurs and engineers about the future they're going to build once they solve a few problems. My guest today is Keenan Wirobek. He's the co founder of the drone delivery company zip Line, and he has a message for the world. The drones are coming. There's going to be more planes and flying cars flying the airspace in twenty years by a factor of one hundred than there are aircraft flying in the air today, flying taxis, aerial pizza delivery. It could all be coming. In fact, Keenan's company, zip Line is already doing hundreds of drone deliveries a day every day in Rwanda and Ghana. But the company has come up against a really interesting, kind of surprising problem as it tries to expand the US. It's not really a technological problem. It's more a problem about the way America thinks about airspace, about the way we regulate the sky itself, and this problem it goes back to the early days of flight, but it also has a huge impact on the present right now. Keenan's a robotics engineer by training, and by the time he co founded zip Line back in twenty fourteen, he'd already worked on a few successful projects. So he was at this moment when he could really think hard about what his next big thing should be. And he told me he went around looking for a problem to solve, kept coming up with ideas, but when he went and asked experts in the real world, is this a problem, they'd be like, actually, no, that is not really a problem for us. Finally, his wife pointed him in a new direction. My wife's an epidemiologist, and she was telling me to see these stories about health campaigns, you know, vaccine campaigns, they just get stuck on logistics, and so of course the wheels are turning. It's like, okay, maybe drones and that actually that that seems like maybe there's a there's a real problem to solve here that people are going to really care about. Um. But at the same time, I will learn you I'm a very skeptical person, so it's like, Okay, I'm gonna dig into this, We're gonna go learn about this, and I'm just sure there's gonna be a thousand reasons why you know, they're never gonna work. We can't ever solve this problem. Uh, And so we spend a bunch of time and intential America, where my wife is from. In Africa, we visited this one medical supply warehouse in Tanzania, and outside the warehouse as far as you could see, you know, football fields of palette stacked, you know, two stories high in places. We're just outside this warehouse. We're like, what's why do you have all these medical supplies you know, vaccines, pharmaceuticals, other things. Why are they outside? And you know, one of the people in the delegation sort of quietly because they were kind of embarrassed about it, they're like, yeah, that's all expired medicine. That was one of those like moments where it clicked of like, Okay, supply is actually not the big problem. There's actually something much more practical around around how to run, you know, how to get this supply from you know, point a these warehouses to these doctors. That was one of the experiences that kind of just like the bit flipped in my head from like this is probably not a problem we can solve to like, holy shit, we have to solve this problem. And it just became really clear you could leap frog over all these factors by doing this with drones in an on demand way. So this is the rare instance where a robot can solve a big important problem in the world that the people dealing with the problem actually agree is a big important problem exactly. And I'd say that that people agreeing it's important problem was another big part of my concern. Right, Like in Silicon Valley, we like to use the word disruption as a good word. Right, you walk into a health system, a national health system of a country and say, let's disrupt this, Like nobody is exciting. Yeah, everybody's like, here's the door. We're busy. You're like, go' disrupt somebody else, Like we have a job to do. I was very worried that there just wasn't going to be an appetite for change in these health systems. But really the opposite happened, where we got started getting to know these health systems and the ministers of health in these countries. And I still remember the first interaction with the Minister of health in Rwanda. She said, Okay, you've got two weeks. You know, we've got all the data, like you've been modeling how a drone system, like this could work in a health system. Put together the case, what's the health impact, what's the economic impact, and then we'll go from there, and that was just like amazing. The rest is of course history. The case was really compelling on the health side and the economic side, and they became our first customer. And specifically, what is the ask, what is the job? The job from Rwanda is deliver blood on demand. The obvious answer in the early days like, okay, cool, which drone are we going to buy? So went out to all the drone companies they could make a drone that could do what we wanted. And this was an incredibly frustrating journey because the best quote I got for a drone was two hundred thousand dollars per drone with a two hundred flight warranty if I didn't fly it in the rain. And it was like and obviously the economics of that are just like don't work at all. And you know, the customers want delivery all the time when it's waning or this was all really clear and it just became this is one of those wake up call moments of like, oh, you gotta do this yourself. Um, and getting this first product service off the ground for this customer is going to be a much bigger lift than than you thought. So you realize you're going to have to build your own drones from scratch. And one of the things that's interesting to me about this part of the story is is it right you wind up basically using iPhone parts. So the sensors, many of the sensors that make the drone fly, Um, you know, these are the same sensors that are in your phone. Uh, And that the tech like whether or not you know what orientation your phone is started for your video is like, so your phone knows the videos should be sideways, are playing those which way is up? And how to fly without you know, falling out of the sky. And it's truly the same basically the same sensors. Oh yeah, made by the same companies. Like yeah, what if there are others? Can you just like rattle off like, oh, sure, what sensors that are in my iPhone more or less are in your drones? Yeah? So GPS, Uh, the cell modems that are in your we have in our drones. Even the basically the processors that are in your phone, we use very similar technology processing cheap more or less similar exactly. That they're so power efficient and they're so capable. It's amazing to me. I guess in part because you know, I've gotten used to thinking about giant businesses like I don't know, Uber or Instagram that like, okay, I guess that those you couldn't have without the iPhone, right, that is intuitive to me. But the idea that, like, you know, a company sending drones across sub Saharan Africa to deliver blood, that that is also built on the iPhone is wild. Like you needed the cell phone the smartphone revolution. You needed the iPhone to have come along and made all these components super cheap, super reliable, super smart exactly. So I want to try. I want to just talk through in some detail, how like one on what do you call it delivery? I guess how one delivery works. So some doctor or nurse needs something in their hospital. What happens? Yeah, so a doctor or nurse needs something, they place their order right And by the way, we're really flexible there. They can use an app, they can use their phone, they can use WhatsApp, they can pick up the phone and call us, whatever's easy for them. So our team they're they're gonna get the unit of blood out of the freezer or fridge. They're gonna get the unit off the shelf, they're gonna pack it up, put it into one of the drones. The drone gets put into a launcher. And I'm gonna pause you there because we have a video and I know we're like watching videos on a podcast is a questionable move, but let's try it, because like I do want to see it. Right, it's a it's yeah, it's cool. So you ready, I'm gonna you push play too, Okay, ready, go all right? Okay, So, so somebody is loading it looks like a plane, a plane about the size of a person, onto some kind of a launcher right onto like a ramp exactly. Well, there's propellers. The propellers are spinning, I like your narration. And then there's a guy. What's the guy there doing? Oh, it just launched. He just launched it. Yeah, wingspans about ten feet so picture. Yeah, it's like a big RC plane. Okay, a big remote control plane. And by the way, I mean, it's not in fact remote controlled, right, Like what does it is? It actually just flying on its own? Yeah, so it is flying it's flying automatically all the way out to the delivery site. Does that mean there are people whose job is to sit somewhere at the warehouse fan in office and like look at what a camera from to basically do air traffic control, to look at what all the drones are doing and make sure that exactly So we call our drones zips, and we call those people ZIP controllers. Their job is very similar to air traffic control. And do they generally have to do anything or do the drones take care of themselves? The drones take care of themselves. Okay, so here, let's keep watching. So now now that drone is going to make the drop. First of all, you have to picture a package. So picture a cake box, right size package with a paper parachute on it that's in the belly of this drone. And so the drone flies over the delivery site and when it drops it, that paper parachute will inflate and the package drifts to the ground a little bit like a cartoon, is how I That's how I'm watching it right now. Yeah, it worked, It worked. It looks kind of fast, it's coming down kind of fast. Yeah, yeah, it's it does come down fast. It's a This is the fun of the engineering challenge here. If you come down really slowly, that accuracy that basically goes gets worse because the wind can blow it to the side. More basic, exactly exactly if it hit you on the head, it looks like it would hurt. I have been a test subject of this intentionally to make sure someone who has to do it under it. So it hit you on the head. Is that what you're telling me? You know what's happening. I live to tell the tale. So okay, I'm more seriously, has anybody ever gotten hurt by one of your drones? No, No one's gotten hurt by one of our drones. But there's a lot of engineering work that goes into really minimizing the chances that you can get hurt by a drone. Okay, tell me about the end of the flight. It doesn't land in the way one would think of a little plane landing. It doesn't land it. Yeah, So there's like two arms sticking into the air. There's two poles sticking into the air, and those poles are on motors. Okay, so they move up and down, but basically you know they're on motors. Between those two poles. Is a string, okay, really small string okay. And basically what's happening is our drone flies between these two poles and at the last second, look the last fraction of a second. Yeah, if everything looks good, those poles, the motors on those poles will snap those polls up, so the line flings into the tailhook of the plane, capturing the plane and that's how it lands. That is amazing in a minute, the truly surprising reason that it's harder to build a drone business in the United States than in Rwanda. Now, let's get back to what's your problem. Zipline expanded from Rwanda to Ghana a few years ago and now delivers lots of medical supplies across both countries. It's like a normal routine thing there, hundreds of flights a day every day. But the company is just starting to expand into the United States. So far, ziplanes work in this country is limited to a few pilot projects. They're delivering medical supplies for a hospital system in North Carolina. They're also flying stuff like bandages and over the counter medicine to Walmart customers in rural Arkansas. And in their work in the United States, Zipline is facing one particularly hard problem. A lot of the challenge comes down to the regulatory environment. In the US, our airspace is very old fashioned. We have a philosophy here in the US and the airspace where we kind of grandfather everything in so not absolutely everything, but mostly everything. A lot of things you could do in the forties you can still do in the airspace today, and that makes things very complicated. Most other countries, basically the way they talk about it is, say we have modernized our airspace. We've required things like transponders so all planes can tell by radio where all the other planes are. We don't require that here in So you're telling me there's some device that you can put in a plane that allows all other planes to know that plane is there, and in the US you don't have to have that in your plane. That is correct and as crazy as it sounds. And so in terms of like regulating airspace, like Ghana and Rwanda are doing sort of sensible modern things that the US is not doing. That's exactly right, and that makes their airspace essentially much simpler to integrate drones into versus here in the US. Tell me what other problems are you trying to solve what's a technical one that's interesting when we're working on that that's extraordinarily hard, which is, this comes down to operating in airspaces like the United States, where you have planes flying around that don't have you know, a radio transponder that tells you where they are, and so you have to have sensing on the drone that directly senses where these other aircraft are hard to avoid. Okay, and this is something that's very hard to do for a bunch of reasons. We tried radar and radar that can see in all directions. It just you literally need hundreds of pounds of radar equipment to see far enough in all directions, which of course there drones don't weigh hundreds of pounds to begin with. And camera is the same problem. So many cameras with so many lenses and so many you know, pixels if you will see that, you know, that speck in the air, and of course cameras they just don't work when it's cloudy, which is you know, a big deal. So basically you've had to do a sensor technology development from the ground up for this, and it's it's something that's been really challenging and really really exciting because if we can solve this problem, it'll enable scaled operations for drones, you know, around the world. So how do you solve it? Are you getting closer? We're getting a lot closer. And this is I have to tease here because the actual thing I can't talk about quite. It's a secret because of like intellectual property, because you're going to try and plent it, literally because of intellectual property, because we're gonna because we're trying to patent it. So let me ask a question. If you haven't solved this problem yet, how are you able to fly in the US? Yeah? So in the US, and this is true of all drone operators in the US. Even even everybody who flies drones in the US is doing exactly this thing I'm gonna describe, which is not sophisticated. There are people along those routes looking at the sky. Wow. So wherever your drones flood, you have people who are your employees. They are getting paid by the hour to look at the sky and what text or something if they push a button, if they see exactly they have a special app that they can communicate with our controller. If they see something and then there's a whole protocol around what do And just to be clear, you don't have to do this in Rwanda or in Ghana because all of the planes flying there have transponders, so the drones automatically know when there's another plane. Yeah, and you know, we feed our data there into basically their literal air traffic control, so they have a view of their whole airspace, including all the aircraft with people and all of our drives. So wild to me that we don't have that. Maybe I'm super naive, I guess obviously I am super naive to be surprised by that. Like is there any broader lesson from that, Like, is there anything I can conclude about the way the United States works, the way regulation works here? I don't know. I mean it is some of it is a philosophical thing, right like here we sort of we sort of romanticize and cherish like sort of the old ways of flying, and so we cowboys cowboys in the sky and their little cessna or whatever exactly. They are pilots I've met who have told me to my face, I'm never going to put a transponder because that means people know where I am, and some of it is also just uh, you know, I think this is one of the things I think a lot about with this country, right, where As we kind of mature, if you will, as a country, right, A lot of these countries like Rwanda and Ghana, these are literally young countries. Their whole mindset is around growth and becoming, you know, and becoming the economic power they want to be in the future and things like that, and they're very willing to sort of make decisions that are very future focused. And I think more and more I see, you know, as a as a society right at the balance between clinging to the past and and focusing on the future and how do you do both in the right way? So we so we actually you know, stay who we want to be and become who we need to be. And that's a that's a tricky thing to do. And I see when I sit in a room of the fa leadership and they're literally debating this kind of thing, like in these kind of terms, the FAA has more old as regulations that makes it harder for you to do what you do. You're working closely with the FAA, and like like where does that sort of land like, is there some I know there's no endpoint, but if there's some big like step that's going to happen where they're going to say, Okay, you can delivered hospitals all over the country and like what problems do you have to solve for that to happen. Yeah, So the journey with the FA, Yeah, it's incremental rights. It's all about taking the right next step that leads you to the next step that leads you to the next step, both for them to get comfortable, for them to learn, for us to get to know each other. Literally, there's a lot of trust that has to be built between a company like Zipline doing something very new and a regulator like the FA who you know, to their credit, right, the advent of autonomy in the airspace is like the biggest change to the airspace literally since flight began. Yeah, right, and I mean that in every sense of the word. Right. There's going to be more planes and flying cars flying in the airspace in twenty years by a factor of one hundred than there are aircraft flying the air to It's that big of a change. And you know, to their credit, like they can't you know, they can't be reckless here, this is going to be hard to do, and do it safely in a minute, The Lightning Round, including Keenan's tips for solving hard problems and the biggest misconception most people have about drones. Okay, let's get back to the show. We're gonna close with the Lightning Round. Are you ready? I'm ready. What is one piece of advice you'd give to somebody who is trying to solve a hard problem. If it's a hard business or customer problem, start with real human customers before you do anything else. If it's a technology problem, focus on the hardest part of the technology problem, ignore all the rest, and then go on to the next hardest and then go on the next hardest. What's your favorite app on your phone? My favorite app on my phone. I'm sure I have such a positive relationship with my phone. Actually, you know, recently I I got Nebula. I really like Nebula. I don't know Nebula. What is it? It's basically a bunch of the more wonkier YouTubers got together and made an ad free YouTube for to cheat sidestuff to YouTube algorithm, and they just make some great content. Oh great, Yeah, that's a good tip. What's the biggest misconception people have about drones? Biggest misconception people have about drones. I have a good friend who's now worked at SpaceX and zip Line, and he likes to joke that rockets are easier than people think, and drones are harder than people think. Good. A lot of people they look at the little you know, they look at a drone that you play with as a hobby, and they're like, what's the big deal. Let's put a package on the bottom and deliver stuff. And I'll be honest, I was a little guilty of that too when I started zip Line two, two or three more favorite trait and a co worker, Oh easy, someone who has a lot of fun when ship gets hard. Yeah, it's actually this actually the main thing I interview for. It's sort of funny because they're so much fun because startups so just like it's one hard thing to the next, right, and and people who really are going to enjoy that, And are you're gonna have fun with through that? You know? People who love the problem? Yeah, exactly. Um, what would you do if you couldn't do what you do? Oh goodness, I've looked. Yeah, this this is this is interesting if I carbon sequestration, how will you know when it's time to retire that I have? I have no idea, you know. I think the you know, zip Line today is the biggest company I've ever worked at by a lot. How big is it? Going on? Seven hundred folks? Yeah, um and um yeah. You know, if you had asked me eight years ago, if I'd still be here when were seven hundred people, I would have been like, Nope, that doesn't sound like me. So it's a painful growth for sure. I work hard at it, and I have a lot of awesome people around me who don't hesitate to give me feedback, which is, you know, the only way to grow, right. So, but at the same time, like it's hard to imagine that I can keep up the zip Line forever. Keenan Wyrobek is the founder of Ziplan. On the next few episodes of What's Your Problem, I'll be talking to people about artificial intelligence. What problems do we have to solve to get to self driving cars and to chatpots that we can actually chat with chatbot's good enough to teach us a new language. Today's show was produced by Edith Russelo. It was edited by Kate Parkinson Morgan and Robert Smith, and it was engineered by Amanda kay Wong. Theme music by Luis Garra. Our development team is Lee, Tom Mulad and Justine Lang. A huge team of people makes What's Your Problem possible. That team includes, but is not limited to, Jacob Weisberg, Mia Lobell, Heather Fame, John Schnars, Kerrey Brodie, Carli Mcglehory, Christina Sullivan, Jason Gambrell, Brand Hayes, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Morgan Ratner, Nicolemrano, Mary Beth Smith, Royston Deserve, Maya Kanig, Danielle Lakhan, Kazia Tan and David Clever. What's Your Problem is a co production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. To find more Pushkin podcast listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or where I'm Jacob Goldstein and I'll be back next week with another episode of What's Your Problem,

What's Your Problem?

Every week on What’s Your Problem, entrepreneurs and engineers talk about the future they’re trying  
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 144 clip(s)