A drone recently delivered a package of parts to the Allseas’ Pioneering Spirit construction vessel, the world’s largest vessel by gross tonnage, making it the first drone delivery of its kind. The pilot project is looking at the usefulness of drones to increase the transport efficiency at the Port of Rotterdam.
Today we have a lot of deliveries by vans in the US and a small but growing smattering of deliveries by drones, such as new trials by Wing, Zipline, and Flirty. Researchers at MIT have proposed
marrying the two technologies: deploying vans to neighborhoods that would launch drones to make the last part of the delivery.
Zipline‘s medical delivery drones have made their first US delivery late last week in North Carolina—six months ahead of schedule. The first drone delivery was pushed forward in response to COVID-19, delivering protective masks.
It can take six hours to get from a hospital in Oban, Scotland, to one on the nearby Isle of Mull, just 10 miles away. But a drone delivery can cover the distance in only 15 minutes, allowing it to bring urgently needed medical supplies on demand.
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Wing, owned by Google parent company Alphabet, is doing a brisk drone delivery business around the world. The company operates in Australia, Finland, and Virginia in the US, and has seen its deliveries double month after month globally.
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Rotterdam in the Netherlands has the busiest port in Europe. And now it’s getting just a tad busier with the arrival of drone deliveries.
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COVID-19 is pushing society to get creative with how we do business and use technology. That’s included calls to expand drone use for contact-free deliveries. Now two senators are calling on the FAA to waive rules that slow down development of drone delivery services.
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Delivery drones may be having their springtime, thanks to the pressure of the coronavirus. The need for contact-free delivery and the urgency of innovation are helping to push this nascent business forward. Now drone delivery company Flirtey has obtained a key patent for tech that makes deliveries safe.
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Everdrone has announced today that it will begin to use autonomous drones in Sweden to deliver automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to the scenes of cardiac arrests. The drones will serve over 80,000 residents in the city of Gothenburg. They can be in the air within minutes and have a flight radius of 6 km (about 3.7 miles).
The bars may be closed, but the skies are open over the town of Rathdrinagh in Ireland. That’s where McKeever’s Bar & Lounge has turned to new technology to serve its customers: drone beer deliveries.
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Last month we brought you news of a proposed drone program to deliver medical supplies to the Isle of Wight in the UK. On May 9, the first successful test flight of the Windracers Ultra drone occurred.
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The UK is slowly moving forward with drone services to address the COVID-19 crisis. With a medical delivery program set to start in the English Channel, news now comes of a drone delivery trial way up north in Scotland.
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Another week, another COVID-19 inspired drone delivery service seems to launch. A startup called Dive Delivery has just announced a backyard drone delivery program for two Bay Area counties: San Mateo to the south of San Francisco, and Contra Costa to the east.
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To see the future of drones, just visit Africa today. That’s especially true in Rwanda, which is likely the most drone-friendly country in the world. So it was a fitting place to host the African Drone Forum and its public service drone competition earlier this year, before COVID-19 made such gatherings impossible. The winners were just announced this week.
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Since 2016, Rwanda has been leading the world in using drones to serve its people. Now that work continues with a new program delivering chemotherapy meds in the era of COVID-19 social distancing.
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Ireland’s Manna Aero had a plan—to deliver fast food by drone. And it was about to start a trial for college students in March when the coronavirus hit–one of so many plans changed by the pandemic. Now it’s pivoted to a new role as a delivery service for pharmacies.
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Always be wary when you see two technology buzzwords in one sentence. But the US Department of Transportation (DOT) makes some interesting cases for why the secure ledger tech of blockchain could help make drones safer and more accountable.
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After a very slow start in recent years, the drone delivery business is taking off in 2020. The latest news comes from Singapore, which just got its first drone delivery service. This one is unique because it’s entirely over water.
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Another day, another story of new drone delivery services spurred by the COVID-19 emergency. Today, Bloomberg Law reports that UPS will begin its first paid residential drone delivery service, catering to The Villages retirement community in Florida.
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With a population of over 140,000, the Isle of Wight is a small island in the English Channel. It relies on ferry service for its connection to the rest of the UK, and those ferries have been cut back during the COVID-19 pandemic. Soon drones may soon help fill the gap.
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Before the COVID-19 era, drone delivery services were almost as rare as unicorns. There were believers, but not a lot of sightings. That’s changing quickly as the need for social distancing is inspiring ever more test programs.
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A drone delivery study performed by Thomas Kirschstein at the University Halle-Wittenberg has found that drones are often less efficient than today’s delivery methods. The drone delivery was compared with both diesel-powered and electric-powered delivery vans.
Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) has been awarded its second US patent for its proprietary drone delivery technology. The United States Patent Office granted DDC’s latest Patent 10,625,879, which concerns the company’s take-off and landing technology.