Wing Patents a Drone Pickup Stand With Barbs That Hold On in the Wind
A drone hovers, lowers a hook on a line, and picks up a package without ever landing. This patent application adds the piece that keeps a gust of wind from ruining the grab: small one-way barbs.
What Wing's drone pickup stand actually does
Every time a delivery drone hangs over a pickup spot, the wind gets a say. The drone lowers a hook-carrying capsule on a line, and one gust can swing that capsule around just as it is trying to slip into place.
Wing's patent application describes a pickup stand built for exactly that moment. The drone never lands. Its line gets guided into a narrow slot, and the capsule rides through a channel until its hook catches the handle of a waiting package.
The new twist is a set of small barbs along the slot. They let the line in easily, then refuse to let it back out. A sudden downdraft or a swinging capsule can't shake the hook out of the channel before it reaches the package.
a channel having a first end and a second end and first and second inner edges defining a tether slot therebetween, wherein the tether slot is configured to guide passage of a tether coupled to a payload retriever suspended from an uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) when the payload retriever is passing through the channel …
Translation: The stand uses a slotted channel to catch and guide the drone's hanging delivery line.
How the barbs trap the drone's line in the slot
The claims cover three things working together. First, a channel with a narrow slot along it, which guides the tether (the line hanging from the drone, tied to a hook-carrying capsule the filing calls a payload retriever). Second, a payload holder near the far end of the channel that holds a package in place. Third, a projection that sticks out from one inner edge of the slot, shaped to keep the tether from leaving once it has entered.
The filing's example sequence goes like this:
- The drone hovers near the stand, and its line touches angled arms (called tether engagers) that funnel it toward the channel.
- The drone moves forward or up, or winches the line in, pulling the line through the slot and the capsule into the channel.
- The capsule exits the far end, its hook goes through a hole in the package handle, and it pulls the package off the holder's pins.
- The drone winches the package up and flies off.
The claims name several forms for the projection: barbs, serrations (saw-tooth teeth), a leaf spring (a flat strip of springy metal), or a spring-biased lever. A second projection can sit on the opposite edge. The two can be offset to make a zigzag path, and they can be molded into the channel or bolted on. In the description, the barbs act like a one-way valve: the line slides in over them but can't back out.
… a first tether engager that extends in a first direction from the first end of the channel adapted to guide the tether towards the channel, a payload holder positioned near the second end of the channel that is adapted to secure a payload …
Translation: Funnels at the top catch the line and direct it down toward a mechanism that holds the package in place.
Why gusts matter for no-landing drone pickups
If you ever order something by drone, the pickup end matters as much as the flight. The filing says the old way, where a person clips the package to the drone, leaves the drone waiting, or leaves a person waiting for a late drone. A stand that lets the drone collect a package without landing removes that handoff, and the barbs go after the most obvious way it could fail: wind.
The description names gusts, downdrafts and a swinging capsule as the cases that can make the line go slack and drop the capsule out of the channel. The setup is also meant to be portable. The filing says it can fold up like an umbrella stand and fit in a single parking space, so it could sit at shops or pickup points rather than needing a permanent installation.
Google's 26th filing in the Robotics patents we cover since May follows drone charging pad mapping and plain-English robot commands.
The shortest route to a product here is short. Barbs, serrations and leaf springs are cheap passive parts with no software, no sensors and no new drone hardware. The filing even says molding them into the channel cuts the part count and assembly time.
What has to exist first is everything around them: a drone with a winch and a hook capsule, the pickup stand itself, and a way to load packages onto its pins. The filing describes all of that, but this claim covers only the slot detail, so it is one improvement inside a larger system.
Expect it to matter only if that larger pickup system gets built. If it does, this is a plain, sensible fix for a problem anyone who has watched a kite in a gust would recognize.
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The drawings
55 drawing sheets from US 2026/0347003 A1 · click any drawing to enlarge
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