Uber has demonstrated trials of its food-delivery drone service and announced its plans to launch a pilot project with McDonald’s in California by this summer. Drones will fly to a designated landing zone or a car from where couriers will pick up the order and deliver it to the customer.

“The last mile” or a stage when the order is delivered to the customer is considered to be the most expensive. The matter is that at this stage the company can no longer use wholesale deliveries of multiple products and it has to assign a separate currier for each package. This is why companies increase their focus on autonomous ways of delivery capable of reducing the cost. Robot couriers that can drive along sidewalks and even public roads have become the most widespread option, though so far as a small scale or test services. Moreover, there is a great number of drone delivery projects that can potentially provide deliveries at a higher speed due to no obstacles in the air.

Uber with its Uber Eats food delivery unit announced its intention to test drone deliveries already in 2018, however no details about such service have been unveiled until recently. At Uber Elevate Summit the company demonstrated tests of various delivery drones and shared details of the upcoming public test program.

The company selected a quite unusual approach when drones will not fly directly to the customer’s front door. Instead, there will be designated safe landing zones to drop off the food from where an Uber Eats courier will pick up the food container. Also, the developers demonstrated tests during which the drone with a container had landed on the roof of a car. It is expected that the company will be able to employ its taxi unit and use its cars as landing zones. During such tests the Intel Falcon 8+ octocopter was used as a delivery drone.

Uber is gearing up to start a pilot program to offer food drone delivery in San Diego, California - one of the 10 cities selected by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to test commercial drone delivery. The company selected McDonald’s as an early partner for this program. In Uber’s video one of such tests of the service in San Diego is demonstrated. Once the order is put together, it gets packaged in a special cardboard container with a holder on its upper part. Then the container is attached to the lower part of the drone. During the flight the drone moves autonomously according to the preset route. In the tests the engineers used the Air Robot AR200 hexacopter with a maximum payload of 6.6 pounds (3 kg). The FAA representatives were present during the tests. Uber expects to obtain the FAA’s approval for its pilot delivery program in the nearest future and launch its service during this summer.

Apart from Uber, Alphabet’s Wing (Alphabet also owns Google) is testing food drone delivery programs. The company has already opened a public program in Australia and also plans to launch similar programs in Finland and the U.S. within 2019. Further, Amazon is known for its developments of drone deliveries, but the company is going to use drones to deliver goods from its own Internet shop. Recently, the company unveiled its new drone with vertical takeoff and landing that can tilt while in flight and use parts of its body as wings for effective horizontal flight.

Source: nplus1

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