Dynamic UAV Transport Tasks

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) comprising:

• a payload compartment operable to hold one or more packages;
• an item identification device arranged in an interior of the payload compartment, wherein the item identification device is configured to identify the one or more packages held in the payload compartment;
• and
• a computer apparatus having one or more processors and memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to carry out operations including:
• receiving, from a transport-provider computing system, a transport task indicating an instruction to fly to a loading location to pick up a package from a plurality of packages located at the loading location;
• causing the UAV to fly to the loading location;
• at the loading location, causing the UAV to pick up a first package from the plurality of packages;
• causing the package identification device to scan, sense or otherwise interact with a unique identifier of the first package;
• communicating the unique identifier to the transport-provider computing system;
• and
• in response, receiving a task update from the transport-provider computing system.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon program instructions that when executed by the processor cause the computing device to perform a set of functions comprising:

• receiving an item provider request for transportation of a plurality of packages from a loading location at a given future time;
• assigning a respective transport task to each of a plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), wherein the respective transport task comprises an instruction to deploy to the loading location to pick up one or more of the plurality of packages;
• identifying a first package while or after a first UAV of the plurality of UAVs picks up the first package;
• and
• based on the identifying of the first package, providing a task update to the first UAV to update the respective transport task of the first UAV.