Drones now used as a courier service

With developing technology, now drones would be used in logistics as courier services to transport foods and goods. However, the service is limited to Iceland for now.

Drone logistics startup Flytrex partnered with Iceland’s foremost online retailer AHA for initiating a courier drone service in Reykjavik. The drones transport food across a river in the city which reduces the delivery time to 4 minutes from 25.

The drones are not yet used for carrying large packages (carries up to 3kg) thus, making it easier to manage a normal-sized city. These robotic fliers can prove to be helpful for merchants in situations where ground-based deliveries are difficult, notes Engadget.

“We're making delivery as instant as ordering,” expressed Yariv Bash, company’s CEO and co-founder.

Flytrex raised a $3 million series A earlier this year for its drone technology. The company believes that it’s the first one to launch a completely operational on-demand drone delivery service in an urban area. As per Bash, the city of Reykjavik marks an ideal place for testing the efficiency of the drone deliveries because parts of the city are separated by a bay.

Tech Crunch informed that not only the deliveries are faster but are also more cost-efficient. Bash informed that because of their deliveries by drones, AHA has already seen a 60% reduction in drone delivery cost as compared to land and sea delivery systems. Being able to fly up at approximately 50 meters in air, the drone can clear most of the obstacles.

The first part of the program will include the drone making 20 deliveries per day for AHA. However, it further aims to make hundreds of deliveries per day directly to the customer’s yard within few months.

In future, Bash also plans on making the service available for other countries and is currently looking for approvals from regulators in European, South American and Central American countries.

Bash said, “In high-rise environments like Manhattan, the most likely scenario is to have drones deliver packages at the entrance to buildings or on rooftops, which our system is already capable of doing technologically speaking. We believe that regulators approving city-wide drone delivery in high-rise urban environments is just around the corner.”