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Trials
A lot of company tried to imagine how they can deliver products using drones and how this system could implement. Some of them imaged a big drone centre in the city, some of them just a small point of delivery, and some directly home delivery, without intermediary delivery points.
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Facts about Drone Delivery
- In the United States initial attempts at commercial use of UAVs, such as the Tacocopter company for food delivery, were blocked by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) regulation. As of 2015, delivering packages with drones in the United States is not permitted. On the 13th March 2015, in Sheffield, FPS Distribution completed the first commercial delivery using a UAV.
- In July 2015, the FAA approved the first such use of a drone within the United States, to deliver medicine to a rural Virginia medical clinic in a program called "Let's Fly Wisely"
- Drug smuggling - Drug cartels have used UAVs to transport contraband, sometimes using GPS-guided UAVs
- Prison smuggling- From 2013 and 2015, UAVs were observed delivering items into prisons on at least four occasions in the United States while four separate but similar incidents occurred in Ireland, Britain, Australia and Canada as well.
In November 2013, four people in Morgan, Georgia were arrested for allegedly attempting to smuggle contraband into Calhoun State Prison with a six-rotor remote controlled helicopter. - "probably about one or two pounds of tobacco rolled up". In 2014 a quadcopter crashed into an exercise yard of Wheatfield Prison, Dublin. The quadcopter collided with wires designed to prevent helicopters landing to aid escapes, causing it to crash.
- Paparazzi using drones — the - so-called “dronerazzi” — are using them to learn whether celebs are home, what time they take their kids to school, and when they walk the dog. Not long ago, Miley Cyrus videoed a paparazzi drone as it flew over her Hollywood home. Actress Jennifer Garner complained about drones flying above her back garden.
- The Tacocopter is a taco delivery concept utilizing a smartphone app to order drone-delivered tacos in San Francisco area. It was created by MIT graduate Star Simpson and its website went live in July 2011.
- An independent British franchise of Domino's Pizza tested a remote-controlled drone, called DomiCopter, to deliver pizzas.
- A German-based restaurant on Anna Maria Island, Florida is testing a remote-controlled drone delivery service. The delivery is called Old Hamburg Schnitzelhaus AIR, to deliver Schnitzel#Wiener Schnitzel to the nearby beach. It is currently pending regulatory approval. It was developed in-house with DJI drone parts.
- Burrito-by-drone deliveries to be tested at the Virginia Tech campus by Chipotle and Google as per articles from September 2016. There used to be the "burrito bomber" in 2012.
- Pizza deliveries via drone are now being trialled in New Zealand by Domino's. The concept can be traced back to 2012 to a Free University of Berlin student project. Other pizza delivery drone attempts include the DomiCopter from Domino's (UK, 2013), Francesco's Pizzeria (India, 2014), Dodo Pizza (Russia, 2014) and Vero Verde Pizza (Brazil, 2014).
What is a delivery drone?
A delivery drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) utilized to transport packages, food or other goods.
Delivery drones are being widely developed as a potential way to deliver packages, but their rapidly developing technology and lack of precedent pose challenges to understanding the potential societal impacts. As policymakers sort out their available policy levers, simple city-scale models can help provide a preliminary understanding of the issues. This study develops a series of analytical expressions (equations) that can be used to compare the scale of these challenges and the various trade-offs that exist for city planners, policymakers, logistics companies, and drone designers. These equations can be used to explore the effect on energy consumption, infrastructure requirements, aerial congestion, privacy, and noise for a range of cities and operating conditions.