A demonstration of heavy-cargo parcel delivery using a drone. [Korea AeroSpace Administration]
A demonstration of heavy-cargo parcel delivery using a drone. [Korea AeroSpace Administration]

A next-generation delivery system in which drones carry parcels weighing up to 40 kilograms and autonomous robots handle the final leg to a customer's door is moving toward full commercialization.

Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) announced Thursday that it had completed a field demonstration in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, of a drone-robot collaborative heavy-cargo contactless delivery system developed jointly with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

The system's core concept is a handoff between a drone and an autonomous robot. A drone carrying cargo of up to 40 kilograms flies to a station near the urban delivery destination, where a robot takes over the load and navigates indoors and outdoors to reach the customer's chosen final destination.

Conventional drone delivery has faced limitations in getting packages directly to customers due to constraints on landing space and access range. The new system overcomes those limitations by combining the drone's heavy-lift capability with the robot's precise last-mile delivery.

The project has a total budget of 14.91 billion won ($10.6 million). It aims to build a contactless urban delivery network for cargo of up to 40 kilograms and establish a commercial foundation through real-world field demonstrations.

KASA has been building confidence in the technology by running pilots across varied environments — starting in the Naepodaejeon new town in South Chungcheong Province last December, then moving to Jeju and Sacheon this year.

At the South Chungcheong Province site, drones transported books from the South Chungcheong Provincial Library and robots carried them onward to Naepodaejeon Middle School, completing 40 deliveries in total.

During the March–April pilot in Jeju, drones flew everyday goods from the Geumneung Port drone delivery center to Biyangdo island, where robots received the cargo at a docking station and delivered it to 56 drop-off points across the island. A total of 89 demonstration runs were completed.

In Sacheon, drones departed from a private logistics center and flew parcels to the Sacheon City Hall parking lot, where robots took over and delivered them to three points inside the building — a parcel storage area, a public service counter and one additional location. A total of 60 demonstration runs were conducted.

The pilots included flights carrying heavy cargo for 15 or more days under challenging weather — strong winds and extreme heat — while also accounting for regional terrain and communications environments. The tests verified the performance and safety of both the drone and robot systems across a range of scenarios and identified risk factors and technical limitations encountered during actual operations.

A docking station linking the drone and robot delivery systems. [Korea AeroSpace Administration]
A docking station linking the drone and robot delivery systems. [Korea AeroSpace Administration]

Additional demonstrations are set to begin in Jinju later this month. Building on the domestic pilot experience, KASA also plans to pursue overseas field demonstrations in stages as it looks to enter foreign markets.

KASA expects the technology to prove particularly useful not only for standard urban parcel delivery but also on islands, in mountainous areas and in other locations poorly served by existing logistics networks. The system's capacity to carry up to 40 kilograms means it can handle a wide range of industrial cargo beyond everyday consumer goods.

"We will faithfully carry out field demonstrations focused on areas with potential demand in order to build trust in the drone-robot contactless delivery system, which is still in its early stages," KASA chief Oh Tae-seok said. "We will spare no effort to resolve the remaining technical limitations."


nbgkoo@heraldcorp.com