Drone Delivery

Life must be pretty damned boring in the Oklahoma town of Moore. Otherwise, why would someone be placing sex toys around the wintry burgh, reportedly using a drone to drop the libidinous aids in elevated spots to increase their visibility?

Canadian UAV transport specialist Drone Delivery Canada has effectively fused two different operational authorizations it had earned from regulators in past into a unified approval to fly beyond visual line of sight missions (BVLOS) while carrying medical payloads classified as dangerous cargo.

Global drone leader DJI has announced the international rollout of its much-anticipated FlyCart 30 delivery UAV – marking the company’s full-fledged entry into an activity gaining momentum across the US, and expected to scale rapidly around the world.

Mitsubishi Electric US says the full suite of its AnyMile drone-based logistics and operations management platform is now available for use by drone operators, corporate shippers, and transportation and logistics companies. The platform was first announced at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Walmart has announced the dramatic expansion of its drone operations in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, tapping existing UAV service partners Zipline and Wing to spread that aerial coverage to 1.8 million additional households – a likely landmark development in the scaling of aerial deliveries across the US. 

It would appear that medical drone delivery company Spright has become a victim of owner Air Methods’ recent financial crisis, which evidently resulted in the Denver-based aviation services firm closing its fledging UAV unit under terms of its Chapter 11 rebound agreement.

Cargo drone transport specialist Silent Arrow is looking to extend the dramatic innovations behind its 2019 heavy-lift GD-2000 transport glider through its new project developing a UAV capable of carrying similarly massive payloads up to 345 miles for the US Air Force.

Like the state itself, everything is really, really big in Texas – including the distances separating remote towns from teeming urban areas. Now Texas Tech University is moving to bridge those gaps that often undermine healthcare in more isolated locales by testing drone deliveries using Australian UAV company Swoop Aero craft.

Global instant logistics leader Zipline will initiate its medical drone delivery activity in the UK by assuming a central role in an aerial network planning to serve over 30 hospitals and other healthcare facilities operated by northwest England’s regional unit of the National Health System (NHS).

Wing Aviation, one of the world’s leading operators of drone delivery services, has received additional authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allowing the company to considerably broaden its use of beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights without ground observers in the Dallas-Ft. Worth, TX area – and, eventually, in scaling across the US.

Commercial drone systems developer Matternet says it has been selected to operate medical deliveries between Berlin hospitals and laboratories in a project that will involve the first ever beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) UAV flights over the German capital.

Efforts by Amazon to fulfill founder Jeff Bezo’s decade old vision of swiftly dispatching customer orders with a fleet of speedy, efficient delivery drones is facing yet another unexpected challenge with the news that the primary interlocutor in its contacts with the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), Sean Cassidy, has left the company.

The Texas city of Arlington is preparing to launch a trial using drones and robotic ground vehicles to deliver packages from a local food bank to recipient homes in a bid to reduce the number of vans – and emissions those produce – in transporting the vital parcels where they’re needed.

FlyCart 30, the first-ever delivery drone manufactured by DJI, now boasts a Remote ID Declaration of Compliance approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The tech giant had filed paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to bring FlyCart 30 to North America a few weeks ago.

Australian drone delivery company Swoop Aero has returned to sector headlines after a long period of maintaining a relatively low profile by playing a critical role in the recently completed trial of Ethiopia’s first UAV medical distribution system.

What at its launch was hailed as the UK’s first permanent UAV postal delivery operation has been temporarily suspended after a Skyports Drone Services craft encountered a technical glitch, leading an observer to abort a routine mission linking Orkney Islands destinations for the Royal Mail.

Dromamics, the world’s first drone delivery airline is setting an additional air transport precedent by partnering with Qatar Airways Cargo, forging the first global network linking the longer-haul routes of a major carrier with the smaller, more local destinations that the middle-mile UAV startup plans to serve.

He isn’t old enough to obtain a driver’s license, but can legally pilot a drone – which he did (after getting a ride to takeoff destinations) to most illegally fly repeated delivery missions of drugs and other banned items into prisons in southwest France.

Innovative UK drone startup Inteliports says it successfully completed a trial run of its GO UAV delivery concept, which is designed to group all functions of the takeoff, landing, flight navigation, and payload handling process into compact, automated modules that fit neatly into urban landscapes.

Leading global instant logistics and drone delivery specialist Zipline revealed it has set another precedent by conducting its the first beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight in the US without any ground observers.

Toronto-based aerial services company Drone Delivery Canada announced that it completed a medical transport trial in Michigan, where its UAVs were tested for use as reinforcements to habitual ground options rather than as immediate replacements.