By B.N. Frank
Drones, Drones, Everywhere Are Drones. When I think of delivery drones I immediately think about that insurance company commercial where a delivery drone crashes through the window of someone’s home. Unfortunately, drones crashing through windows has already happened.
From ABC News:
The workday was winding down in Cape Town, South Africa yesterday when David Perel heard a strange buzzing sound while sitting in his office. Before he could figure out where the sound was coming from, there was a loud bang and glass shattered all over him and something had hit him in the head.
“Initially, I thought a bomb had gone off,” Perel, 30, told ABC News today.
But it wasn’t a bomb. It was a drone.
It’s happened in New York too.
Regardless, in September Walgreens and another local business started testing delivery drones in a small town in Virginia.
Customers in the town will be able to order more than 100 Walgreens products through the Wing app, including cold or allergy medicine, first aid products and snacks. They are also offering specialty drone “packs” in certain categories such as kids’ snacks or pain relief.
“With this pilot, Walgreens will be in a unique position to capitalize on the convenience of drone delivery if and when it should expand, with approximately 78 percent of the U.S. population living within five miles of a Walgreens store,” Vish Sankaran, chief innovation officer at Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., said in a statement.
In addition to working with Walgreens, Wing also teamed up with the locally-owned small business Sugar Magnolia, a self-proclaimed “paper goods, gifts, chocolates and ice cream” establishment that has been beloved in the region for years.
Sugar Magnolia shared an article with the news on their Facebook page, writing, “The future of sweetness is flying high!”
CVS is also partnering with UPS and also getting in on the drone delivery action.
The drugstore run could soon be replaced by the drugstore flyby as the United Parcel Service follows rival FedEx in partnering with a major U.S. drugstore chain on drone deliveries.
Rival FedEx is already testing B to C drone deliveries with Wing, Google’s drone subsidiary, and Walgreens.
On Friday, FedEx made an express delivery via drone in Christianburg, Virginia, where the Department of Transportation has been working with the city to test drone delivery since 2016. The company says it is the first scheduled e-commerce delivery via drone delivery trial in the nation.
YouTube has a large collection of videos with drones crashing. Do you wonder how many drones will have to crash before businesses decide they aren’t worth using?
Activist Post reports regularly about unsafe technology. For more information, visit our archives.
Image credit: Pixabay
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