Bringing Deliveries to the Skies

Maximiliano Palay

Millions of people around the world who request delivery orders for things like take-out food, groceries, or prescriptions are no longer looking out their window waiting for a delivery car or truck to come by. They're looking to the sky, where autonomous drones are making instant deliveries for consumers, business, and governments.

The drones are operated by Zipline as part of the world's largest autonomous delivery service.

Maximiliano Palay (MSR '24) played a role in getting some of those drones off the ground.

Palay was a mechanical engineering intern at Zipline during the summer quarter of his time in Northwestern Engineering's Master of Science in Robotics (MSR) program. In February, he was hired full-time as a mechanical engineer.

"The company is constantly pushing to accomplish objectives, performing tests, and learning from errors," Palay said. "This creates a super dynamic work environment."

Zipline flies two different types of drones. Platform 1 is designed for long-range deliveries for enterprise, business, and government purposes. Platform 2 is for home deliveries.

Palay focused on Platform 2 during his internship. His primary responsibility was to develop automation machinery for the manufacturing process of the platform.

"There was a preliminary design for the machinery, and I was asked to finish the design and bring these machines to life," he said. "The preliminary design was mostly mechanical, and I had to figure out how to make it work from an electrical and electronics perspective. My lead gave me a lot of freedom to source components and choose technologies to make this work."

Palay was part of a larger team at Zipline, but he had the freedom to create the machine in the way he felt would best accomplish the company's needs.

That meant extensive testing, talking with colleagues, and learning when things didn't go as expected. Palay credited his supervisor and fellow team members with helping him think through possible tradeoffs throughout the decision-making and building process.

"Having ownership over a project does not mean one has to make the right choices every time," he said. "It is important to identify the risks and make informed decisions, finding the balance between risk and reward. I didn't make all the right decisions, but the important part was reacting quickly when a mistake had been made to mitigate the impact of a not-great decision."

The internship was mechanical-intensive, but Palay still had some opportunities to apply specific technology skills he developed during his time in MSR. Work with Linux, Python, and Raspberry Pis was still part of his workflow, and he saw how high-level concepts taught in the program related to different aspects of the company.

Perhaps most importantly, the internship gave him a testing ground that wasn't inside in a lab environment.

"The internship experience is a great way to see robotics in the real world, and also a great way to see how a company thinks about robotics from the perspective of cost, clients, product, and a very long list of different aspects that we sometimes miss as students," he said. "It provides a broader outlook on all the things involved in a robotics project."