Written by: Beijing Youth Daily
Posted on: July 24, 2018 | 
| 中文
The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
Since the beginning of 2018, people of Weicheng Township, Guiyang City, a mountainous area of Guizhou, often see an unmanned aerial vehicle traveling around the town. It carries a box under its belly that reads “China Post.” Local people were eventually informed that it belongs to the local post office, and is used for sending mail in the villages of the mountainous area. It flies twice every week and will be promoted for further use if all goes well.
Early in the morning, Wang Hua, who works at Weicheng Post Office, takes his aerial vehicle to an open area to send newspapers and mails to five villages nearby.
The postman Wang Hua used to send mails 3 times a week riding his motorcycle around the villages. Though it wasn’t very distant, the roads were rugged, so it took a whole day to deliver all the mails. Starting from early January this year, Wang has this new task of sending mails with an aerial vehicle.
Talking about the aerial vehicle, Wang says, “The economy here isn’t developed and many people have never seen such a thing, so it attracted many people in the beginning. Some old people even inquired about its schedule and came to see it a few times.”
Wang also says that he is not responsible for the completion of the actual operation, although he “flies” it. What he is in charge of is to put the mails into it and checking its batteries. The flying routes have been set by the company that designs and makes the vehicle, so Wang only needs to scan the QR code on the vehicle and press the button before it flies according to its routes.
“It used to take me a whole day to send all the mails to these villages riding my motorbike. Now, it only takes an hour for the vehicle to cover all its routes,” says Wang.
Chen Zhongxiang, head of Weicheng Post Office, says that currently they only have one aerial vehicle, so they choose Yingyan, Yinqiao, Maixiang, Xingguang, and Lianhua Temple as test areas. Chen says that they choose these 5 villages because they are so distant that it takes time to send mails to these places by post, and it’s also quite dangerous.
Chen notes that the diameter of the vehicle is 1m, and it has 6 propellers which are designed to carry 7kg of goods. However, considering safety, the post office puts a 5kg capacity limit and a 10-minute flying time limit. Therefore, every time it arrives at a village, somebody needs to change its batteries before sending it to the next destination. The whole process acts like a relay.
Chen, while talking about its batteries said, “It can only fly with fully-charged batteries. Once we checked the battery, which was 82% full and thought it could complete one delivery but it couldn’t. Maybe it is designed this way because of the company’s consideration about its absolute safety.”
According to a staff member of the company, the vehicle needs to land on a blanket in red and blue, so it is equipped with a vertical sensor to help it land accurately after it locates the blanket.
Chen says that the choice of an aerial vehicle was not made by local post office but the higher authorities that chose Wecheng as the test area, and that it will be promoted in other places if it works well.
“Many villagers were amazed the first time they saw the vehicle. Every person in charge of flying it in each village is in our Wechat group, and we inform each of them about its flying and landing time in the group.” Zhao Quan, a member of the village community of Xing Guang Village, is one of the people in charge of the machine. He changes its batteries every time, after collecting all the mails brought by it. “It does not fly if it isn’t fully charged, so we always remind each other to charge it fully.”
Chen also says that their postman, who used to go into the mountainous area 3 times a week, now only needs to go twice since the vehicle flies twice every week with the frequency set to increase if the delivery process is smooth. “However, due to its capacity limit, it cannot replace the postman entirely, and the fact that people need to change its batteries at every destination is quite troublesome. We all hope that someday all this work can be shouldered by the machines.”
Translated by Zhu Siyu
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