Drone Delivery

Trailblazing instant logistics company Zipline — along with its government partners in Rwanda and Ghana – is being honored later this month by the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) for its contributions to global aviation innovation by its medical drone delivery work in Africa. Zipline’s go-to-market director Daniel Blay talks to DroneDJ about being chosen to receive the David Morrison Innovation Award and the company’s broadening, diversifying UAV activities around the world.

Swiss drone manufacturer and services company RigiTech has continued pushing the boundaries of its activities by staging a long-distance beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) aerial delivery over Lake Geneva, linking two medical labs.

Wing continues to build on its drone delivery momentum in its Australia – its most vibrant market thus far – with the launch of what it calls the first store-to-home service in the Gold Coast area in partnership with supermarket chain Coles.

In the third and last installment of DroneDJ’s interview with Bobby Healy, the irrepressible Manna Aero CEO pivots from his plans to introduce drone delivery around Europe to discuss his strategy for launch in the potentially enormous US market. That involves certification of Manna’s proprietary UAVs; introduction and expansion of drone transport through widening suburban “cohorts of scale”; and raising the considerable capital that will require with, most likely, a Wall Street flotation. Should he get the company there, Manna might well have reached the solid, advanced state of growth to allow Healy to move on to his next challenge.

Spright, the drone division of aerial medical service provider Air Methods, is now one step closer to launching the first bidirectional American medical drone delivery network. The company has set the record for completing the longest beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone flight by a commercial entity in the US.

Drone delivery company Wing is moving to bolster activity in what’s already its most vibrant Australian market by taking a new approach to flight and logistics center location, beginning with trial services in the Queensland city of Ipswich.

Manna Aero CEO Bobby Healy is preparing to nearly quadruple the company’s current potential client base in Ireland with the start of drone deliveries in a large Dublin-area town in a few months. From there, he plans to launch activity in European Union nations he considers ready for aerial services. Healy tells DroneDJ in the second part of our interview why he believes its regulations put the EU in particularly strong position to take the global lead in emerging UAV-based services; how Manna’s full-stack drone manufacturing and operation model gives it a business advantage; and why a trained programmer who successfully built two tech travel sector companies decided drone deliveries would be his next challenge.

Tech entrepreneur Bobby Healy’s objective is as simple as it is enormous. He wants to use the momentum he’s created establishing Manna Aero as Ireland’s hottest aerial tech business to transform it into the biggest and best drone delivery company on the planet. And to do that, he’s readying its launch across the European Union in the coming months, with the US following hard on that.

International logistics and drone delivery company Swoop Aero is launching a new service in its home market with aerial transport of lab samples from the Moreton Bay islands off Australia’s east coast city Brisbane.

StrixDrones, under the eyes of local and international agencies, received its first delivery to its DroneDrop box in Israel just a few weeks ago. We spoke with the company’s CEO and founder to get the rundown on how it went and what the future entails for them.

Leading instant logistics company Zipline is launching drone delivery of prescriptions and other medicines to the households of Intermountain Healthcare patients across Salt Lake City – an anticipated rollout that will eventually be capable of serving over a million people in Utah.

Europe’s middle-mile drone delivery specialist Dronamics is moving to make its flagship Black Swan UAVs entirely carbon neutral through a linkup with UK company Zero Petroleum to supply fossil-free fuel for future aerial cargo transport.

A precautionary landing of a Wing delivery drone caused electricity to be cut to around 2,000 homes in an Australian town Thursday after the craft accidentally came to rest on power lines. The good news, according to one report, was utility workers arrived to find the food order payload still nice and hot.

Drone delivery specialist Flytrex has announced further expansion of its aerial activities with the launch of services in Durham, North Carolina, flying orders from its new partner, Charleys Philly Steaks.

Add Ireland to the list. Like a growing number of countries around the globe, Irish authorities say they’re now working to detect and thwart drone deliveries of contraband to the nation’s prisons, and have introduced anti-UAV technology into jails as a part of that.

Chicago-based Valqari, which offers drone delivery stations and smart mailboxes, says it has acquired UK’s IDU Group to further “last-inch” logistics with drone technologies.

Europe’s middle-mile drone delivery specialist Dronamics has announced a strategic partnership with Cotesa, a German composite fiber components producer, which will produce the aviation transport group’s flagship Black Swan automated UAV.

Three months ago today, Amazon announced that customers in Lockeford, California, will be the first to see Prime Air drones delivering packages in their backyards. The company is currently awaiting a decision from the regulators on the possible environmental impact of its operations. But, in the meantime, here’s a lowdown on how Amazon plans to operate its commercial delivery drones in California.

The M2 drone delivery system by Matternet has achieved type certification by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This is a major step forward for the US drone delivery ecosystem because it’s the first time the FAA has approved the design of a drone built specifically for package deliveries.

Spright, the drone services division of air medical service provider Air Methods, says it is joining forces with an Israeli drone technology company to include a mailbox component into its drone delivery operations.

A research unit of Virginia Tech specialized in UAV traffic management (UTM) is leading a second phase of trials under Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) aegis aiming to advance work establishing effective, safe, and reliable systems for orchestrating flights of numerous drones sharing the same airspace.