China’s internet giant, Meituan, has completed a 2-year pilot trial successfully using drone delivery of 19,000 meals to 8,000 customers across Shenzhen, a city with about 20 million people. The drones delivered to streetside kiosks. Full service across all of Shenzhen starts in 2022. AliBaba and JD.com offer similar services.

Show full article

FedEx Express is working with China’s Neolix to test autonomous delivery vehicles in China, using electric-powered vehicles with a range of 100 km and maximum cargo capacity of about 500 kg.

Show full article

Delivery drone manufacturer Zipline has moved from using drones to supply medical supplies in Africa to teaming up with Walmart to launch an instant, on-demand delivery service in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, with customers being able to select from a wide range of health and wellness consumable items.

Show full article

The secure DroneDek smart box has been optimized for tethered, dropped, manual, and automated deliveries. It is weatherproof, climate-controlled, Bluetooth-enabled, and comes with GPS and a two-way speaker system for real-time communication.

Show full article

Tortoise’s two-year strategic partnership with KRS will result in 500 sidewalk delivery remote-controlled delivery robots being used by convenience store chains across the U.S. to offer affordable, same-day last-mile delivery.

Show full article

The Starship Technologies robots — cooler boxes on six wheels — travel at walking speed along pavements using GPS to guide them on pre-set routes. They need wide pavements and towns with low traffic levels. They were tested in Milton Keynes, Bucks, are now being rolled out across the UK by Co-op, with 500 on the streets by the end of 2021.

Show full article

Drones will be used in 2022 to transport vaccines, blood units and other medical supplies between healthcare facilities in Abu Dhabi, using a state-of-the-art delivery network of drones at 40 stations.

Show full article

Wing, the drone delivery company operated by Google-parent Alphabet, has completed 100,000 deliveries, operating in Australia, the US, and Finland. Its biggest success has been in Logan, Australia: a suburb of Brisbane. Users can download the Wing app and order a small selection of goods, with deliveries generally made in under 10 minutes.

Show full article

Amazon has patented a local delivery system in which a delivery van drives to a neighborhood and releases several small robotic vehicles to make the home delivery. Drones may substitute for the robots.

Show full article

In 2020, Walmart started a trial to launch hundreds of drone deliveries of at-home COVID-19 test kits. The test showed that Walmart could offer shoppers delivery in just minutes and not hours.

Show full article

The UK’s Royal Mail, like the Swiss Post, will trial drone flights. They will deliver up to 100 Kg of mail 70 miles to the Scilly Isles (off the Cornish coast). The twin-engine drone can carry up to 100kg of mail, a typical delivery round.

Show full article

Dronamics Airlines, working with companies in Ireland, Australia, and Canada, will offer same-day cargo deliveries using the company’s proprietary cargo drone, the Black Swan, capable of transporting up to 350 kg (770 lbs) at a distance of 2,500 km (1,550 miles).

Show full article

Starting April 2021, some Domino’s customers in Houston can have a pizza delivered without ever interacting with a human. After ordering on-line, they’ll get texts to let them know where the robot is and what PIN they’ll need to access their pizza via the bot’s touchscreen.

Show full article

Wing, a Google subsidiary, working with the Virginia Tech Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership, has launched a trial project delivering packages by air to the general public in Christiansburg, Virginia. This is a first in the US.

Show full article

German startup Wingcopter has launched a new autonomous delivery drone capable of making three separate deliveries per flight.

Show full article