On January 18, 2016 Yahoo! Tech did an exclusive interview with Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of global public policy. Misener explained that Amazon Prime Air will carry 5-pound (2.27 kg) packages – 86% of Amazon packages are less than 5 pounds – over 10 miles (16 km) in 30 minutes or less. Misener also said there will be different designs of drones for different environments. Yes, the technology is nearly here. But the regulations of how unmanned aircraft will share the air with manned aircraft are still unclear.
On the other side, DHL Parcelcopter (“Paketkopter” in German) is already using drone or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) delivery in Germany. DHL has also explained about UAV in comprehensive way with its logistic insights. For now, DHL just deliver medicines and urgent goods but DHL will widespread its UAV delivery service in near-future. On January 19, 2016 DHL demonstrated the potential shipping with drones but unfortunately it had to cancel a public display due to the bad weather.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeWjnKfpXq4
There are also another stories of UAV delivery service project from Domino’s Pizza, Alibaba and also Alphabet Inc., parent company of Google. Domino’s Pizza launched world’s first unmanned vehicle delivery service on April 1, 2015 which is called “Domi-No-Drivers”. Since 2013, Domino has tested “DomiCopter”, UAV for its pizza delivery. In the same year, Alibaba, a giant Chinese e-commerce also has started to test its UAV for its parcel delivery with a 3-day pilot program. Alibaba confirmed to TechCrunch that in this trial, 450 packets of ginger tea will be delivered to the three of China’s biggest cities within one hour. There is a different story with Google’s “Project Wing”. This project will focus on disaster relief, which deliver supplies during emergency situations. Google said that “Project Wing” will launch in 2017.
What do you thing about UAV? Are we ready for UAV’s invasion?!