The Swiss are no strangers to innovating with their postal service.  Last year, for instance, I wrote about a new service that was launching in the country called Pumpipumpe.

The service is a low tech version of the sharing economy, with users encouraged to add stickers to their mailbox to alert passes by of items they are happy to lend out.

Interestingly, the origins of the site emerged from the cycling community.  The idea was for people to place a sticker on their mailbox if they had a bike pump in the house that fellow cyclists could use should they suffer a puncture.

A new form of post man

A slightly more high tech innovation was tried out this month in the form of drone based deliveries.

“The drone has an extremely light construction and is capable of transporting loads of up to one kilo (2.2 pounds) over more than 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) with a single battery charge,” Swiss Post said when launching the trial.

The drone flies autonomously along safe and clearly defined flight paths.  These flight paths are drawn up by Matternet, who manufacture the drone, using cloud based software.

The aim is to put the technology through its paces with a rigorous test over the course of July, before then hopefully rolling it out more widely.

“Until the time of their realistic commercial use in around five years, there are various requirements which need to be clarified,” Swiss Post say.

One of these hurdles is modifying the regulatory framework to ensure the unmanned crafts can legally operate in the country.  With a number of villages located in isolated and remote locations, there is a clear requirement for this kind of service, but nonetheless there are various stages that need to be gone through first.

Until then, it is likely that the drones will be utilized in various emergency situations, as we’ve seen with prototypes in Holland in recent years.

Of course, Swiss Post aren’t the only organization looking in this direction.  Amazon have made several statements revealing their plans to use drone based delivery for packages in the coming years, whilst I wrote earlier this year about the Bizzby service that is providing drone based courier deliveries in London.