Google plans to start offering drone delivery in 2017. (NYSE:WMT), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), and many others regarding the futuristic drone delivery services. The announcement was made by Vos at an air traffic convention organized in Washington. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) reveals its “Project Wing” plans which will involve drones to deliver packages to consumers by 2017.
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Google introduced “Project Wing” in August after two years of research at the company’s Google X labs.
The BBC News article noted that those drones were thought to be for disaster relief or delivery of urgently needed medical supplies.
In the video from past year Astro Teller, “Captain of Moonshots” at Google [X], predicts (with a smirk) the sooner-than-we-all-expect reality of drone delivery.
“Working together we can get to this future I think surprisingly quickly”, he tells the camera. Sensing the industry trends, in 2014, FAA had relaxed the norms for the commercial use of drones.
All three companies have thrown their weight behind drone development, and will formulate their recommendations for how the system would work, and which kinds of drones should be exempt, by November 20.
Wal-Mart WMT, +0.52% also announced its own drone delivery test program in October. The proposed system would use wireless telecommunications and Internet technology to govern and coordinate drone flight paths under 500 feet (152 meters).
Google would like to see a carved-out section of airspace reserved for drones, but such options are unlikely to become established until the FAA finalizes a set of rules for businesses using drones to follow, expected in early 2016. Since then, Google and others have also been rapidly working on this technology. “There is a Walmart within five miles of 70 percent of the US population, which creates a few unique and interesting possibilities for serving customers with drones”.
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Amazon has called for air space to be designated specifically for commercial drones, and its chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, said this year that he believed seeing drones would one day be “as common as seeing a mail truck”.
