Drone Successfully Delivers Doughnuts In Denver

doitvoluntarily (77) in technology • 7 years ago (edited)

The Denver city police and the mayor received a special delivery of doughnuts this week.

Drone Dispatch, a Texas based company, along with LaMar's Donuts, worked together in order to deliver 4 boxes of doughnuts via drones to the mayor and law enforcement.

Perfecting timing seeing as “National Doughnut Day” is this friday (the first Fri of every June apparently).

Organizers of the project insisted that they had followed all of the necessary rules in order to carry out the endeavor. And the FAA said that they were investigating in order to be sure of it.

Aside from the doughnuts. . .

Drones have also been successful in testing deliveries for all sorts of other products: pizza, mail, medicine, and more. There is even a 711 in Nevada that has been experimenting with drone deliveries, their operation is headed by Flirtey which is a commercial drone service provider.

It's clear that many companies are interested in this delivery method and there are a great deal of consumers out there as well who are open to ordering their products this way. Apart from the drones, there are also robot deliveries taking place in many areas around not only the U.S. but around the world.

The only reason that these technologies are appearing to make their way slowly to the market, if ever, is thanks to the spider web of regulation that they first must pass in order to try and serve and bring value to their fellow man.

It isn't clear how long it will be until drone deliveries might become much more frequent and prevalent within society, but there are multiple endeavors going on around the world to try and make that happen.

If Amazon has their way, it might not be very long before your package is delivered to you via drone with a shipping label that transforms into a parachute.

UPS is also looking at drone deliveries and there is no doubt that this technology will help to lower costs and enable more efficient deliveries when it comes to getting packages out to rural communities.

There are very strict rules currently surrounding commercial drone deliveries such as:

drone needs to be less than 55 pounds
drone can't go more than 400 feet in altitude
drone can't fly more than 100 mph
deliveries are only permitted during the day

among other possible restrictions, like registration and age restrictions for the drone operator.

There have been numerous polls conducted in order to get an estimate for just how many people in the U.S. might be eager to embrace this delivery method and they've given somewhat mixed results. In a nationwide survey from 2016, it was estimated that about 44 percent were in favor.

Pics:
Pixabay
imgflip/Matrix/ Silver Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures,
Flirtey/Recode - recode.net/2016/12/20/14026396/7-eleven-drone-delivery-flirtey-first-retail-us-reno-nevada
Warner Bros. Entertainment
Amazon Illustrations via USPTO

Sources:
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/doughnut-delivery-by-drone-in-denver-is-a-peek-at-the-future/
https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/20/7-eleven-delivers-77-packages-via-drone-in-first-month-of-routine-service/
https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/31/amazon-drone-shipping-label-parachute/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-conducts-first-commercial-drone-delivery-1481725956
https://www.geekwire.com/2017/amazon-patents-shipping-label-built-parachute-dropping-packages-drones/
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/29/faas-new-drone-laws-go-into-effect-monday-allowing-us-companies-to-innovate.html
http://www.govexec.com/management/2016/10/poll-americans-want-drone-delivery-not-yet/132291/