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- Drones and electric vertical takeoff and landing

or eVTOL aircraft aim to be common modes

of transportation and delivery.

- Electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

have the potential

to completely change how we live and work.

- Small drones can deliver packages

that can have life-changing effects,

like medical supplies and medicine.

- Today, we essentially have flying laptops.

The possibilities of what they can do are limitless.

- With drones,

DroneUp has changed the way Walmart is able

to deliver its packages in a fraction

of the time of traditional methods.

- It's access.

We are going to democratize speed

and that's where drones come into play.

- I'm Dawn Zoldi, a former military attorney.

Even then I knew that drones were gonna change the world

and today we see this coming to fruition.

It's so incredible to be a part of history in the making.

It's time to go "Behind the Wings."

Think about hailing an Uber or a Lyft.

Well, instead of getting into that car,

you're gonna hop in one of these.

Instead of possibly sitting an hour in traffic,

you're gonna get there in 10 minutes.

We're here at Archer's headquarters in Palo Alto, California

for two big things today.

First, the flight test of The Maker.

In fact, it's the first transitional flight we're gonna see.

We're also gonna get a sneak peek

at Archer's Midnight aircraft,

that's their commercial model.

And the vision here is for it to be a ride share.

It's gonna change the face of transportation.

We're here inside the lab and behind me is The Maker.

- [Dawn] We're gonna see this aircraft fly later today.

It's a demonstrator and they're doing flight testing.

- So what they're gonna show today

for the first time is transitional flight.

- [Dawn] That means taking off vertically in a hover

to forward flight where the wings are providing most

of the lift.

- So to understand better how this thing flies,

we're gonna hear from the chief operations officer here

at Archer, Tom Muniz.

- So I was a young engineer doing airplane design work

and had the opportunity

to start working on new exciting electric airplanes.

And back 10, 12 years ago, that was like a crazy idea.

Electric airplanes, like what does that even mean?

Right? - Right.

- But batteries are continuing to get better.

Motors are continuing to get more lightweight and so,

actually you could make a new type of airplane

to do some really cool stuff,

putting all the technology together.

So that's kinda what you see behind us here today.

- [Dawn] What's different about it

than designing just a conventional aircraft?

- One of the unique things about the aircraft

that we're developing here at Archer is

that it's not just electric,

but it also takes off and lands vertically.

So it doesn't need a runway, takes off like a helicopter.

But unlike a helicopter,

it doesn't have one big rotor system.

It actually has many small propellers all

around the aircraft.

And the way you can do that is by having electric motors,

which you can scale down,

and then you have this inherent redundancy in the system,

meaning any of the motors can fail

and the aircraft still flies safely.

That's only enabled by electrification, super cool.

- I imagine the lower cost for things like maintenance could

also translate into savings for consumers.

Like someone wants to fly on this aircraft,

like how does that translate?

- We envision these airplanes flying in networks

where they're kind of hopping one flight to the next,

doing lots of trips per day.

And what that translates into is really low operating costs

and that translates into low ticket prices. In the future

you'll be able to get out the Archer app and you'll be able

to say, "Hey, I'd like to go to this destination."

And then that'll reserve a seat on a flight like this.

Then you'll be able to go to the verti-port

and then you'll take your Archer to wherever you want to go.

- So, think about hopping on a plane,

virtually from anywhere,

whether it's from a dock, a rooftop, or a parking lot.

And once you start cruising,

they rotate down and fly like propellers on an airplane.

Here we are at the tail of the aircraft.

Now on a normal airplane,

this is where the exhaust would normally come out.

Notice, there is none.

So what's so special about electric?

A couple of things, quieter, safer,

more sustainable, and accessible, those are all bonuses.

On the downside,

batteries can have limited lifespans and can be heavy.

We are at the airport right now.

We're getting ready for the flight test demo.

It's gonna be awesome.

So we made it to the Salinas Airport.

This is an active airfield and we're getting ready

for the flight test of The Maker.

It is an uncrewed aircraft.

That's about 80% of the production model

that Archer is putting out for urban air mobility.

They've gone through a small drone demonstrator

to the larger Maker,

80% demonstrator to what we're gonna see later,

their big production model for urban air mobility.

So the future is here.

(radio chatter)

We've been cleared for takeoff

and what we're seeing now is the plane

is lifting vertically, it's gonna hover.

As it starts, the rotors are facing down, right?

And so when it gets up there in that hover,

they start tilting forward and that's

where you see the transition to forward movement.

This vehicle is uncrewed, right?

So there's nobody on board, there's no pilot up there,

but you've got about six folks in a trailer,

making sure that everything's on track.

This is a a real live flight test.

So they're proving their concept here

and they're well on the road to FAA certification.

Really exciting times to see this in action here

with The Maker.

We've seen the demonstration model called Maker.

In fact, we've seen it fly.

And now this is the production model called Midnight.

This is the one that's gonna fly you around New York City.

There are some similarities to the demonstration aircraft.

- [Dawn] Just like The Maker,

this also has six rotors that tilt.

So that's what's gonna create the vertical lift.

- And this one's bigger.

The Maker is a literally 80% solution.

This is the full scale model that can fit four passengers

and a pilot.

The vision is urban air mobility or UAM.

And this is flying people around cities, short distances.

- Great to meet you. - Nice to meet you.

- You're well on the path to certification with the FAA.

In fact, today's flight demonstration with The Maker,

can you explain the significance of that?

- The industry has largely been focused

on research and development.

While the technology is really cool

and we could build really fast, high flying planes,

we want people to be able to use them

and use them on an everyday basis.

We recently showed a flight test

of our demonstrator aircraft Maker

and that showed the capabilities

of what these vehicles can do.

It shows you how fast they can fly,

but importantly, it shows you how quiet they really are.

That was a big step in helping the public see

that these vehicles are coming to market really soon.

We've recently partnered with United Airlines.

They've been a great partner to Archer

where they're buying aircraft from us

and helping us stand up this entire industry.

Electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

have the potential

to completely change how we live and work.

So if you can imagine not just driving to work every day,

but potentially flying to work every day,

not just going long distances to take vacations,

but flying somewhere locally

and doing it on a more regular basis.

That's the world that I wanna live in.

- That's the world I wanna live in too.

And thank you so much for helping create it.

- [Dawn] As one example of many that we're seeing now.

- That was so amazing learning about these aircraft

and also getting to see one fly.

You know the FAA always talks

about a crawl, walk, run approach.

Well, guess what, everybody, we're flying.

- Small drones can have big impacts.

While electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft

can carry people,

small drones can carry packages that can be life-changing

like medicines and medical supplies.

About 60 million Americans or one in five live

in rural areas.

And drones can be the difference between hours to minutes

to get those folks the urgent medical equipment

that they need.

The Choctaw Nation's reservation in Oklahoma occupies

about 11,000 square miles.

They are doing medical deliveries

that are gonna change the world.

So James, what's at stake in terms

of medical drone deliveries?

- Well, in terms of medical drone delivery,

we are looking at solving that disparity that we have

between urban and rural communities.

There's a lot of things that have happened with technology

that have equalized the quality of life and quality health

between urban, rural areas.

But transportation is the last part.

And that transportation challenge being a long way

from medical clinics, medical services,

being a long way away from emergency response personnel,

those things impact health outcome.

Unfortunately in the 21st century,

in the United States of America,

we still have health outcomes that are determined a lot

by your zip code.

Drones we believe are gonna help equalize that.

We represent what most rural communities look like.

Our reservation looks

like other Native American reservations.

We look like other rural communities.

- Tell us a little bit about the medicines or the equipment

that drones can bring to people in a quicker manner

that can save lives.

- We looked at a simple case of access to EpiPens

and potential for saving lives.

There are dozens and dozens of people every year that die

because they don't have access.

Well, that's a very small, simple item,

but getting it to somewhere quickly is the challenge

in rural areas.

A lot of things that in the right situation,

you need immediately, you can't wait 45 minutes or an hour.

Drones are perfect for that.

- So James, we're gonna see a demo

of a medical drone delivery,

but this package you're holding is something

that could be used in a real world scenario.

So tell us a little bit about this.

- Yeah, it's surprising, in emergency situations,

a lot of times it doesn't have to be very big packages

or very much equipment.

And it's amazing what we can pack

into these small packages like this.

- Well, let's see what we got here.

- We've got quite a bit.

There's multiple situations that we can deal with

with this type of a kit.

But you could imagine something like this could

also be packed with insulin,

we could have it packed with EpiPens,

we could have anti-venom,

all sorts of things that to face situations

that we might see in a rural area like this.

- So what you're gonna see is this drone that's going

to have a five pound package loaded on it.

It's going to have bottles in there that are filled

with liquid, which basically simulate either medicines

or critical medical samples that need to get

from one location to another.

We're gonna see it take off

and then we're also gonna see it land.

- [Dawn] This test flight illustrates one

of the hardest use cases

where there are liquids on board, about five pounds.

The conditions are windy.

So the key here is to show the stability and reliability

of the drone so it can fly and get these medicines

to where they need to go safely.

- This is one of those examples

where you're basically gonna simulate the hardest use case.

- We're gonna try to do the worst case scenario

and that's what the FAA likes to see as well

'cause whenever they're testing they say, "Okay,

what's the worst case of this situation

and how are you gonna demonstrate you can do that safely?"

- Well, you did some of these flights,

so could you give us a real world kind of example

of if this was driven by car,

how long this would've taken versus

how long it actually took you to do the same delivery

with a drone?

- Even if you're only flying at 30, 35 miles an hour,

if you look at putting a car on the ground

from the initial point to the destination

and then compare that with the drone flight

and we cut the time almost in half.

- That's significant,

especially if we're talking about life and death situations.

As part of the Federal Aviation Administration

or FAA's Beyond Program,

companies can come to the Choctaw Ranch

and safely test out the most difficult use cases,

whether drone delivery beyond visual line of sight flight

to make sure that they're doing this in a place

where the air and ground risk is minimal and

to inform decision making.

While the testing and experiments occurring here

in the Choctaw Nation

for drones and medical delivery are unique,

the impacts they're going to have will be universal.

In Baltimore, Maryland, MissionGo is pushing the envelope

even further for medical drone deliveries.

In 2019, they delivered the first organ

by drone successfully to a transplant recipient.

- We see drones as a tool of the future.

Medical transport is critical.

Time is always of the essence.

Nobody wants to be waiting around for blood.

Nobody wants to be waiting around

for their organ that they need.

Now, I'm not a doctor, I'm a pilot.

But what our doctors do tell us is that

for every minute an organ is outside of the body,

it's essentially degrading, it's dying.

The organs don't want to be outside of the body.

They want to be inside of the body.

Our organ transport and procurement transportation

across the country, they do a really good job.

But that's not to say that it can't be better.

Uncrewed aircraft have a really unique role in making

that whole process better

and making the recipients on the other side,

their quality of life better.

In 2019, Dr. Joe Scalea

with the University of Maryland Medical Center came to us

with a absolutely wild idea of transporting a human organ

on board an unmanned aircraft.

What is the art of possible?

But we were up for the task and the challenge

and we did just that.

- The long game with these technologies is

that we'll be able

to limit the amount of time that expires

between explant and implant.

We'll also be able to reduce the cost of the shipment

of organs, we'll have access to immediate transportation,

certainly be more efficient.

And I think there are a lot of upsides.

In this initial series,

just trying to organize the logistics I think,

is really critical to moving forward.

So this is really about getting it right, working as a team,

a group of surgeons, engineers, drone folks.

Yeah, that's a big group of people to bring together,

but we've been able to do it at least here today.

So that's exciting.

- It's clear for launch, let's make some history.

- [Speaker] Launch.

- The night came of April, 2019

where we flew the first human kidney for transplant

over the city of Baltimore.

Now mind you, the task of doing that was monumental.

It was not as easy as just somebody showed up with a kidney,

we put on the aircraft, and pushed a button.

There was more than 400 people involved to make that happen.

It was a literal village to make this a success.

And in the end, while it was a short flight,

it was around three miles in length.

The fact is, is that we did it and it was successful.

- Confirming hummel's active, temperature's appropriate,

organ doesn't appear to be injured at all.

Looks like a perfectly transplantable organ.

- And it proved that uncrewed aircraft could be used

for more than just taking pictures or flying around for fun.

But it could literally be used to save lives

and transport a human organ in a safe manner

to somebody who needs it and they need it right now.

It's an excellent tool that we can have in the box

to supplement a huge endeavor that we're trying

to create better quality of life for patients in the end.

- With medical delivery by drone,

small packages can have a massive impact.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic,

drone delivery has really taken off, why?

Because they're the ultimate social distancers.

- In a small town in Arkansas,

a revolution is taking place in the world

of last mile delivery.

We all know the traditional way of shopping,

you have to get in your car, drive to the store,

pick up whatever it is you're looking to buy

and then head on home.

But with drones,

I could get any of this delivered right to my backyard,

even a rotisserie chicken.

- As one example of many

that we're seeing now across the country,

Walmart has teamed up with DroneUp to bring a number

of their products from the store to your door

by drone more conveniently and quickly.

- Each one of these Walmarts becomes distribution centers

with products that are custom fitted

for the audience around them.

Being able to deliver from the Walmarts to those residences

within that range allows us to serve millions

of customers every day.

- Tom, how would you describe this moment in time

in terms of the drone industry?

- If you think about where we are in the evolution

of the drone industry, specifically related

to drone delivery, prior to the pandemic,

there were no drone delivery operations going

on in the United States.

Today, in addition to what others in the industry are doing,

we have 34 locations delivering to 4 million customers.

That's happened in just a few years.

And now with the FAA regulations evolving

and the technology evolving

and the community's realizing this is really happening,

we had mayors of cities all over the country asking

if we would come into their cities

and do the very same thing.

You're seeing partnerships like the one we have

with Walmart, I can't even imagine

what you're gonna see over the next two to three years.

- From those initial days when you were doing these tests

with Walmart for Covid-19 test deliveries to today,

your operation has evolved so much.

How has it evolved?

- It's evolved a lot.

In those early days,

there were no off the shelf drones designed for delivery.

Today we've got drones that are custom built and designed

with all kinds of safety protocol,

autonomous software, integrated with airspace management so

that we can deconflict and maintain safe airspace.

Today looks nothing like it looked even two years ago.

- What is your vision of the future for drones?

- My vision of the future is that we're gonna be,

within 10 years, we're gonna be delivering

about 5 billion packages a year.

If you think about that,

that's probably 25% of the total delivery market.

And that's from a technology that was not even being used

just a few years ago.

When we talk about the last mile,

we recognize drones aren't the final solution

to the last mile.

Over the next 10 years,

you're gonna see the last mile revolutionized and we believe

that it's gonna be autonomous aerial,

autonomous ground, and electric vehicles.

We know the part that we play in it and we know

that we're gonna change the last mile

over the next 10 years.

- DroneUp continues pushing the boundaries

of drone delivery.

Its partnership with Walmart is gonna change the way

we all receive packages.

It was so great to meet you.

- Prathibha, what kind of impact do you think drone delivery

can have on everyday people?

- Our customers have told us that convenience

and saving money is really important to them.

They want to have express delivery for things that they need

in a pinch and that's where drones come into play.

It's access, we are going to democratize speed.

If somebody lives in rural America and wants access

to prescription drugs and regulations allow us

to deliver prescription drugs, we are able to do that.

And the third one is sustainability.

So drones mainly operate through electricity

and it prioritizes planet

and making sure we are being sustainable

in how we use our resources.

- How do drones fit into your last mile delivery strategy?

- We've talked about Walmart's footprint.

4,700 stores within 10 miles of 90% of the US population.

So 120,000 SKUs or items are available

for express delivery for our customers.

The maximum weight that we can deliver

right now is 10 pounds.

But we are working with FAA, local state, regulators

to expand that.

It's not about the technology itself,

but what problems the technology is going to solve.

- So, in your experience,

what are the top items that people are ordering

for drone delivery right now?

- The top items are Cookies and Cream ice cream,

paper towels, lemons,

and then rotisserie chicken.

Isn't it fun that we are delivering rotisserie chicken

to people's backyard?

- I personally can't wait

to get my rotisserie chicken delivered to my backyard.

I mean, think about it.

With drone delivery, chickens really can fly.

- This sounds like it's gonna be in the future,

but it's happening now in Bentonville and coming

to a town near you.

Now that you both have explained

how Walmart drone delivery works,

I'm so excited to experience it for myself.

I'm getting s'mores drone style.

I'm here with Ken,

he is the hub manager here at Bentonville, Arkansas,

store 100 for Walmart.

And you're gonna show me how to place a delivery.

- Absolutely, it's easy as any web order you've ever made.

- Alright, let's do it. - Alright.

- All you gotta do is click in your address.

- All right, here we go.

Okay, super easy.

I put in my address and now here's all the different things

that I could order,

but I wanna order stuff to make s'mores.

So what do I do?

- You just scroll to the items you want.

So in this case, you want s'mores.

So you just click on the item and add it to cart.

- Adding it to cart and it looks like we're good to go.

So then I go to my little cart.

- Yeah and then once you hit submit,

the order process begins.

- Ken, that was so easy.

That took me less than two minutes.

- Yeah, nothing's different than any other order

except how it gets to you.

- So I placed the order, Walmart got the goods,

and now what happens next?

- Now we just load it up in the box and get it ready.

- Okay, very good. - You wanna load it?

- Sure, all right.

In go the grams, in go the chocolates, and the mallows.

- All right, all that nice and centered in our box.

And close it up and that's it, let's get it flying.

- [Dawn] Package is loaded, what's next?

- Ready for takeoff.

- So Ken, we're up on the roof here of the hub,

but what is this behind us?

- That's our remote pilot in command.

He's the one that manages the flight.

The aircraft is completely automated,

but he still supervises all operations.

- [Dawn] Safety is job number one.

- [Ken] Of course.

- Good 'cause I sure hope that my s'mores arrive safely.

(upbeat music)

There go my s'mores.

- [Dawn] In the air,

we see the drone flying with precision and reliability

to its ultimate destination.

On the ground, we got to witness firsthand the delivery

by drone of goods right to the customer's doorstep.

- So here we are at the landing site

to tell us what we're gonna see.

- It's gonna travel for us here at this hub.

We fly at 115 feet.

It'll fly in and it'll descend down to 80 feet,

which is our safe delivery altitude.

And then it will repel down on a line your box.

- I think I see it coming right now.

- Yep, there it is.

It actually it is because there it is. (laughs)

- [Dawn] And the package is descending.

Well, that comes down pretty fast.

- Puck captured.

- All right, here it is, the big reveal.

And there they are fully intact.

So when you are at home and you do not want to go out

but you have a hankering for a s'more

drones are gonna make that happen for you.

So I got to experience this myself today.

Absolutely unbelievable,

from order to delivery less than 30 minutes.

I can't wait until this comes to Colorado Springs.

- We look forward to visiting.

- From flying taxis to drone deliveries

of groceries and even human organs,

we've seen how drones

and eVTOLs are transforming everyday life.

- There's a real opportunity here to be able

to move a lot of people into the air and allow them

to not only just save time,

but actually figure out what they want to do with that time.

- Today people are using drone delivery as a convenience.

In the future, it will become something

that people simply can't live without.

- Not only will we see our health benefit from it,

but we'll see this convenience

that will make our lives much more enjoyable.

- Flying is really not new.

We've been doing it for a long time now.

Artificial intelligence,

sensors are all getting integrated today

to make these flying laptops even smarter

and more efficient than they ever have been.

- These technologies increase access, increase speed,

and efficiency in ways we've never seen before.

They're on the way to becoming a huge part

of our daily lives.

As this technology continues to mature,

keep an eye in the sky for a drone near you.

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