Investigations about the feasibility of delivery systems with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones have been recently expanded, owing to the exponential demand for goods to be delivered in the recent years, which has been further increased by the COVID-19 pandemic. UAV delivery can provide new contactless delivery strategies, in addition to applications for medical items, such as blood, medicines, or vaccines. The safe delivery of goods is paramount for such applications, which is facilitated if the payload is embedded in the main drone body. In this paper, we investigate payload solutions for medium and small package delivery (up to 5 kg) with a medium-sized UAV (maximum takeoff of less than 25 kg), focusing on (i) embedded solutions (packaging hosted in the drone fuselage), (ii) compatibility with transportation of medical items, and (iii) user-oriented design (usability and safety). We evaluate the design process for possible payload solutions, from an analysis of the package design (material selection, shape definition, and product industrialization) to package integration with the drone fuselage (possible solutions and comparison of quick-release systems). We present a prototype for an industrialized package, a right prism with an octagonal section made of high-performance double-wall cardboard, and introduce a set of concepts for a quick-release system, which are compared with a set of six functional parameters (mass, realization, accessibility, locking, protection, and resistance). Further analyses are already ongoing, with the aim of integrating monitoring and control capabilities into the package design to assess the condition of the delivered goods during transportation.

Today's students enter engineering colleges with different technical backgrounds and prior graphics experience. This may due to their high school of provenience, which can be technical or non-technical. The prior experience affects students’ ability in learning and hence their motivation and self-efficacy beliefs. This study intended to evaluate the role of prior high school graphics experience in first-year engineering students' self-efficacy beliefs in an introductory engineering graphics course. It also intended to evaluate the relationship between such freshmen's self-efficacy beliefs and their performance. Two assessment instruments were used in this study. The first is the eight-item Course Interest Survey (CIS) Confidence subscale, which was used to assess self-efficacy beliefs. The second is a multiple choice questionnaire designed on the course topics, which was used to assess performance. Ninety-nine students of the University of Brescia (Italy) participated in the experiment. Significant differences in self-efficacy were found between engineering freshmen from the technical high school versus engineering freshmen from the non-technical high school. A significant relationship between self-efficacy and performance was found only for engineering freshmen from the technical high school.