Walmart patent details floating blimp warehouse for drone deliveries

Walmart is working hard to keep pace with increasingly dominate competitor Amazon, which itself has been working on drones to deliver goods to customers. We've seen the same technology in play at Walmart, though the extent of its progress isn't clear. Yet another patent related to drone deliveries has appeared from the retailer, this one detailing a warehouse for drones that floats in the air via a gigantic blimp.

The idea here seems fairly simple: drones are flight-based and so having a warehouse located in the air would be more convenient as far as landings and take-offs are concerned. If the idea of a warehouse that floats in the air on the back of a blimp sounds familiar, that's because it is. We first saw this idea appear in a patent by Amazon, and the two look largely similar.

The patent application details a blimp warehouse that would operate between 500ft and 1000ft above ground, one that contains multiple bays from which drones can arrive and launch to make deliveries. Both human-piloted and remote-controlled drones are detailed in the patent, though if past news is any indication, it seems autonomous drones are the big end-goal for this type of delivery system.

Whereas a regular (that is, a land-based) warehouse is limited to one particular region, a blimp-based warehouse could be moved around as necessary to optimize orders to customers. This would help save time and money when it comes to delivering items to consumers, though ideally consumers would prefer to pick up their products directly at Walmart stores, as is currently offered.

It seems that in the case of Walmart's warehouse, the blimp could be sent to a fixed warehouse where it is loaded with a particular set of goods. The blimp would then be deployed to an area where the customers who ordered those goods are located. Workers would place the products on the drones, then send them off to the customers who ordered them. This would cover the so-called 'last mile' of the delivery journey, the most important one as far as logistics are concerned.

Walmart still retains an advantage over Amazon in that Walmart has physical retail stores located throughout the U.S., whereas Amazon does not. Amazon does, however, have a huge number of distribution centers, and it has been expanding its service with smaller, more regional programs and delivery options like AmazonFresh. The company also plans to introduce a smart grocery store of some sort, and we've seen a patent detailing a kind of drive-thru pick-up store.

Even that business plan, though, will be challenged by Walmart. The latter company is testing its own drive-thru pickup destinations, which are basically large boxes at the end of Walmart parking lots. Customers who order ahead of time drive up to the box and enter a code. The machinery inside then retrieves the package and delivers it to the customer, who can then put it in their car and drive away.

SOURCE: Bloomberg