Drone Delivery

Despite recurring announcements with significant fanfare at various stages of the service’s very long awaited rollout, it appears Amazon drones aren’t actually delivering much – or often ­­– in the two communities where they were finally put into operation last December.

The drone services division of UK delivery and vertiport company Skyports has announced it will be integrating the heavy payload electric vertical takeoff and landing UAVs by manufacturer Pyka into its fleet, thereby considerably expanding the goods its craft can haul in a single flight.

Drone delivery company Flytrex will soon be moving to expand its South Carolina and Texas operations across other US states, after it received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 Certification to offer unscheduled, on-demand aerial services through its longtime partner, Causey Aviation Unmanned (CAU).

Another phase of drone development activity has been initiated in the UK, with the Open Skies Cornwall program assembling nearly a dozen partners to test use cases and recruit additional participants to facilitate regular UAV services along the southwest England peninsula.

San Francisco Bay Area cargo UAV developer MightyFly has unveiled the second generation of its hybrid-powered vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drone, Cento, which it plans to produce and operate for end-to-end freight services on flights of up to 600 miles.

Swedish startup Everdrone has gotten the all-clear to extend its life-saving First on Scene Solutions activity using drones to speed automated external defibrillators (AED) and provide other support to first responders in Sweden’s vast Västra Götaland county.

For hundreds and thousands of people in the United States, 2022 was the year commercial drone delivery finally became a reality. Walmart expanded its drone delivery operations to 36 hubs spread across Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. Alphabet’s Wing began delivering to Texas’ Dallas-Fort Worth area. Heck, even Amazon‘s drone delivery program finally took off in a couple of cities in California and Texas before the year came to a close.

The latest from CES 2023 is that Mitsubishi Electric is putting together a drone-based logistics operations management platform called AnyMile. This open marketplace, we are told, will bring together shippers, drone manufacturers, drone operators, and ancillary service providers onto a single platform, allowing them to easily schedule and manage cargo deliveries via drones.

The US Navy has been working on ways to provision ships at sea with less costly alternatives to traditional marine vessels, planes, or helicopters – now it says it has successfully completed a trial using drones to fulfill those delivery requirements.

Amazon’s drone delivery program has finally taken off with the tech giant successfully delivering packages to customers in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas, on Christmas Eve.

An Avy Aera delivery drone, hovering between 50 m to 65 m above the ground level, lost control and crash-landed during a test flight in Scotland, a report says.

Sweden has taken a step closer toward regular drone delivery operations with UAV services company Aerit wrapping up a large-scale pilot project in partnership with Swedish supermarket chain ICA.

Nearly six months after they initially announced plans to launch new drone deliveries to an additional 4 million potential US households, Walmart and DroneUp this week initiated aerial services to eight cities in Texas – just in time for the run-up to Christmas.

Instant logistics and drone delivery specialist Zipline has announced a vast expansion of its operation across Rwanda – the country in which it launched an activity that has since spread across Africa and around the world.

Less than two weeks after Swoop Aero entered the third year of its healthcare and medical operation in Malawi, the Australian logistics and drone delivery specialist earned a grant from a US humanitarian group to scale that network across the southeastern African country.

Commercial delivery drone systems developer Matternet says it has begun trials on an aerial transport route in Switzerland connecting participating hospitals and labs in what it says will be the world’s longest urban network thus far.

Alphabet-owned drone delivery company Wing is lifting the veil on how it gets orders from retail and food company partners to clients faster than ground transport options with a peek into how its cutting-edge remote control centers function.

Ohio-based logistics company Drone Express is readying to manufacture a new version of its DE-2020 delivery drone, which would use Microsoft AI for in-flight navigation systems. “While our competitors are focusing on how to carry more weight, we are focusing on building a more intelligent aircraft,” quips Beth Flippo, CEO of Drone Express.

Japan Post, the archipelago nation’s mail company, has jumped on the easing of certain drone restrictions introduced only last week to announce its plans to prepare for aerial delivery of parcels starting next year.

Japan is relaxing its drone regulations from today to allow automated, beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone flights over residential areas. The idea is to boost drone delivery services since the logistics industry is facing a serious shortage of drivers.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has granted a production certificate to California-based Matternet for its M2 delivery drone. This makes Matternet the first and, at present, the only company able to produce certified delivery drones in the US.