Enter JDrone and JDrover for Navigation of Difficult Terrain and Deliveries

American technology company Nvidia has partnered with retailer JD.com to develop drone and robotics technologies. The duo will be developing drones to navigate difficult terrains for rescue operations and other uses and also make deliveries.

JDrones can fly up to 100 kph and deliver packages weighing up to 30 kg — with others being tested to carry as much as 200 kg.

JD’s innovation called the JD X has successfully tested and created two new robots called the JDrone and JDrover. These two unique models are autonomous and the JDrone is an aerial vehicle that would help the user to navigate through inaccessible terrain with ease. It can fly at around 100 kilometers per hour.

JDrover for last-mile deliveries on campuses

The JDrover on the other hand is a ground-based drone. It would be using the Nvidia Jetson platform and the embedded artificial intelligence (AI) based information on navigation to help the other move around in difficult regions. The JDrover would also help make the last-mile deliveries to these areas. At present it is being tested at college campuses across China.

Yuqian Li, head of JDrover team at JD X while speaking to the press said that, “Complex outdoor situational awareness requires a platform that delivers unprecedented capabilities for deep learning and visual processing in a small form factor. The high performance of Jetson combined with its low power consumption and cost was the reason why we selected it for all of our logistics and delivery initiatives”.

The duo can help deliver packages weighing up to 30 kilograms and according to the JD X, they are testing the drones to deliver packages weighing as much as 200 kilograms! JD X says that they would be releasing 1 million of these drones in the next five years is all goes according to plan. Nvidia and JD X believe that these drones can help deliver stuff to rural areas with poor infrastructure that are usually difficult to cover. They hope that these advanced delivery systems can save the present case logistics fees by up to 70 percent. In fact these drones are already helping farmers by delivering them materials. They have used these drones to spray over 500 hectares of land with pesticides in China’s northeast Liaoning province. This took 20 drones five days that would have taken a farmer 50 people and 200 days going by standard procedures.

The JDrover being ground based would travel on streets to deliver packages on the basis of facial recognition and AI. They would navigate through crowded and congested streets easily speculate the makers. It would be essentially a driverless delivery vehicle that would use Nvidia Jetson AI.