for some band-aids a couple minutes ago,

and now they're four seconds away.

(drone whirs)

(bag plops on deck)

That is a nearly silent drone system that can

deliver a package from the sky right to my backyard

in as little as two minutes with dinner plate accuracy.

And as far as I am concerned,

that's basically teleportation.

This is the very near future

of package delivery from a company called Zipline.

It's been over a decade since we were first

promised drone delivery that looked like this.

And to be honest, I was never that stoked about it,

because I couldn't imagine that anyone

would actually want something that big and loud

with dangerously fast spinning propellers

landing anywhere near their house.

And that was a bummer, 'cause with the explosion

of people using Amazon or food delivery apps

like DoorDash or Instacart, billions of doorstep deliveries

are now happening every year.

But when your lunch only weighs a few ounces

driving it to everyone with these two-ton,

gas-powered vehicles is wildly inefficient,

bad for the whole planet, and not to mention

just really slow.

Drone delivery would not only

take a lot of cars off the road,

but it would be a lot faster than a car,

it would be fully electric, fully autonomous,

and it would cost pennies worth of energy per delivery.

And with Zipline, because the droid that lowers the package

can move laterally in any direction, it could make

a dartboard-sized precision landing even in high winds,

while the main drone can stay 400 feet up in the sky,

making the whole thing whisper quiet.

(drone makes high pitched whistle)

That is very quiet.

Also due in part to the clever design

of these really funky propellers.

As you all know, I only make about 10 videos a year.

And while most are just sort of ridiculous-

(cannon explodes)

- [Offscreen Speaker] What?!

(devices explode)

(horn beeps) (person screams)

(foam bullet whizzes)

(bell dings)

I like to dedicate one video to showcase

how clever people are using engineering

to change the world for the better.

And to be clear, the company I'm talking about today

is not sponsoring this or paying me in any way.

I'm just really impressed by the work that they're doing

and how they're doing it.

So we'll circle back in a minute

to exactly how they're gonna pull off deliveries

using these short-range drones in a city.

But it begs the question, if they can make it work there,

why not use gliding drones to cover longer distances

to deliver critical medical supplies

for countries with lots of remote villages?

Well, as it turns out, catapulting life-saving blood

through the skies is what they've already been doing

for over six years, which is why we need

to head out to Rwanda to understand where this all started.

And immediately after showing up,

we were right in the thick of it as drones were taking off-

Wow! (laughing)

And landing-

That was another one land!

Every 90 seconds.

They're coming from everywhere.

And as a newcomer, it felt a bit chaotic.

But if you're gonna rack up 40 million miles worth

of drone flights,

(launcher zings)

your team needs to be operating

with the efficiency of an F1 pit crew.

So here's a crash course on how it all works.

It all starts with an order coming in

from a doctor at a hospital, say for example,

for an emergency supply of blood.

Then once it's all packed up, it gets passed out

to be placed in the belly of the drone,

and then the whole thing is placed on the launcher.

At that point, they attach the wings

and secure the battery, followed by the nose cone.

Then after some pre-flight safety checks,

they launch the drone (launcher zings),

all within 90 seconds of the order coming in.

The catapult launcher takes the drone from zero

to 65 miles an hour in a third of a second

which is literally less time than it takes you to blink.

And it's a pretty clever design, too, because it means

the drone immediately starts at its cruising speed,

where it takes much less energy to stay airborne.

Then once it's in the air cruising at 70 miles per hour,

it navigates its way to the hospital,

and upon arriving, opens the trap door to drop the package,

which lands safely using a parachute.

Having now completed the mission

it continues making all its own decisions to

autonomously navigate back home

from as far away as 150 miles round trip.

Then taking inspiration from an aircraft carrier,

as the drone approaches, the military-grade GPS

broadcasts its position within one centimeter.

So these two poles know exactly when to swing up

at the last possible moment, snagging a hook

on the tail with the cable, which safely slows it down.

Then once it's settled to a stop,

the crew comes in to remove the battery and wings,

and it all goes back into rotation.

The whole thing is really impressive and incredibly robust,

which means it works in pretty much any weather.

And because there's no human steering it,

it has no issues flying at night.

So they run the operation 24 hours a day,

which is how in six years, they've managed to make

those half a million, often lifesaving deliveries.

That is the uppermost top of the iceberg tip

of how they're doing what they're doing.

But what you should know is six years ago

all the experts told them this was a hopeless cause

and failure was a near certainty,

and they kind of weren't wrong.

- Building an engineering product take time.

So you prototype, you know, you build it,

and then you fail, and then you try it again,

and you fail, and you try it again,

until you have this shiny product that you want.

This is a different type of aircraft.

This is not what we had.

The first one used to land on these inflated mattresses.

The vehicle had a hook on the back.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- By the tail. - Yeah.

- [Engineer] The tail would deploy like an aircraft carrier.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Engineer] And then the fishing pole would pull it,

and it would land on the mattress.

- [Mark] First of all, he's not saying that figuratively.

They were scrappy in the early days,

using actual fishing poles, as you could see here.

And secondly, this is Abdul.

And what you should know about Abdul is he grew up

in Rwanda, not far from where these drones are launching.

And while he would eventually go on to do graduate work

in robotics, attending both Stanford and Harvard,

he got his start in engineering from much more simple means.

- I remember that I would make cars from milk boxes

that, you know, was leftover.

You know, we would add tires then and use it as a car.

- Abdul was orphaned as a child when he lost both

of his parents and all three of his siblings

in the Rwandan genocide, narrowly escaping himself.

But he didn't give up on his passion for engineering.

And so as he got older, he would go around

to all the local hospitals, fixing their MRI machines

for free, using knowledge he gained

from watching YouTube videos.

Abdul's the very first Zipline employee in Rwanda,

and he really helped to pioneer so many

of the systems they have in place today

that are now used all over the world.

And so in an effort to test those very systems,

I wanted to see if it was robust enough

that even a total newb like me could send out an order.

Oh, we got one.

Panic!

- (laughs) Don't worry.

- Don't worry?

Okay.

Gloves, okay? (blows air into glove)

Good enough. (snaps glove)

This is where the blood is, right?

- O positive.

- It's O positive.

- [Worker] Yeah.

- I feel like I shouldn't be touching this.

Stay calm.

That's the number one rule.

- Now you scan it.

- Scan it?

(scanner beeps)

- Do six wraps.

- Like this?

- Two, three, four-

- Five, okay.

(rips paper and grunts)

(label snaps in the air)

(Worker chuckles)

Just out here saving lives.

And once I ring the bell, (bell dings)

it's the drone team's problem.

Okay, what do I do?

- Check if there's no tangles.

- [Mark] And push it here?

Out of my way.

I'm comin' through!

The wings.

How's that?

Battery?

Which one do we pick?

There's so many!

So after a final check of the drone's condition

little bit of look to the right and cough.

(instruments beep)

(propellers whir)

(launcher zings)

We had lift off.

Yeehah!

I'm a hero.

We did it.

I just like saved life basically.

Wow!

How do you guys do this all day long?

So now that I had a pretty good feel for the launch site,

we headed out to see where some of these drones

were actually flying to.

So we left the launch site like three and a half hours ago.

We're driving to this remote hospital

on these really windy roads.

And as we've been driving, we've been tracking

and seeing some of these Zipline drones

delivering blood and medical supplies to this hospital.

So since we're about a half hour out

I thought it would be fun to place my own emergency order.

Then it could meet us when we get there.

'Cause when you need extra ointment,

you just need extra ointment.

And sure enough, a few minutes after arriving

I got a notification for an incoming package.

This is wild, because we're like four hours away

on some really windy roads.

I got it!

(laughs) Close.

So close.

- And so after opening the package

and checking their handiwork,

I asked if I could speak to a few of the doctors.

When's the last time you delivered a baby

- In few minutes ago.

- A few minutes ago? (laughing)

That's pretty fresh.

- For the doctors, it was like a miracle.

- With Zipline, we are sure that in 15 to 20 minutes,

we're going to get what we need.

And you are sure that patient will be saved.

- But it wasn't just the doctors who were big on Zipline.

I also spoke with a handful

of patients who for various different reasons

are all alive today because of a Zipline delivery.