Five minute restaurant delivery is one step closer to becoming reality – at least in some parts of the county – thanks to sweeping new federal approvals for nascent drone exploration programs. The groundbreaking rules, called The Integration Pilot Program, are described as a “wide-reaching commercial test program” giving permission to some of the biggest names in tech to try out all sorts of new ideas in the hope that something might stick.
Uber, Alphabet, Intel, FedEx, and Qualcomm were among the biggest names awarded new drone rights last week. One notable name absent from the list however is Amazon, whose Amazon Prime Air has been among the most headline-grabbing of all initiatives operating in the burgeoning space. For now at least, Amazon’s dreams of same-day delivery by drone remain grounded.
A company called Flirtey won permission to explore delivering defibrillators by drone to heart attack victims in Reno. Fedex won rights to patrol Memphis International Airport, making sure runways are clear of debris. Alphabet’s Project Wing may touch a bit closer to home, as Virginia homes and communities will be a testing ground for delivery by drone. And Uber won the rights to begin exploring battery powered flying taxis in San Diego – though the project is still years away from being a reality.
But what exactly does any of this have to do with you getting your dinner delivered to you lightning-quick from a tiny sky robot? Well, Uber’s San Diego program isn’t solely testing transporting people from one point to another via air taxis. Much of the company’s business revolves today around delivering meals, and not people. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi laid out skyhigh Uber Eats ambitions to Uber Elevate Summit-goers in Los Angeles, telling the crowd:
“Uber can’t just be about cars. It has to be about mobility. It’s my personal belief that a key to solving urban mobility is flying burgers, in any city. We need flying burgers.”
Let that one sink in. The key to urban mobility is flying. Burgers.
San Diego won’t be the first city in the world to begin enjoying burgers and burritos delivered by air drone. Grubhub-esque Israeli company Flytrex began air-dropping orders via drone in Iceland in August of 2017. The country’s capital, Reykjavik, surrounds a large bay, and had previously been something of a delivery headache on an international scale. The city’s unusual topography however proved to be no match for Flytrex’s airborne shippers, which have shaved about 20 minutes off average delivery times. In some cases, the company says it has turned what would have been (perfectly reasonable) 25 minute fulfillment times into just four minutes.
So will super speedy drone deliveries be coming to your neck of the woods? Well, it depends on where you live. Drones are proving to be most efficient and cost effective in two types of places. Dense, urban cores where traffic can turn travel across relatively short distances into long waits are an obvious fit. But the other is quite the opposite. Remote, unpopulated areas with miles of undeveloped land, and few roads in between neighbors is the other.
So your best bet for scoring supper by drone is to move to a busy city...or the middle of nowhere.
