- Amazon teased the idea of packages delivered by autonomous drones 10 years ago; today it is reality.
The utopia around drones and their participation in package deliveries seems to be already an initial reality in some cities in the United States.
Drone deliveries, first touted by Amazon more than a decade ago, are slowly taking off in some parts of the US. This Thursday, Matternet, a drone delivery startup, successfully launched its service in Silicon Valley.
“After years of advancing drone delivery in healthcare, we are excited to launch our first home delivery operation in the heart of Silicon Valley,” said Andreas Raptopoulos, founder and CEO of Matternet, in a blog post. “We are entering the next phase of scale in drone delivery: building a new layer of ultra-efficient logistics infrastructure that will become an essential utility for every home.”
The announcement adds to signs of growth for drone delivery. In Fort Worth, Texas, which recently became the first major city in the United States in offering commercial drone delivery, they are being used to deliver WalMart groceries.
In College Station, Texas, Amazon’s drone delivery service has become common enough that what the residents see the service as a noisy nuisance. Y, with recent FAA approvalthe company appears poised to expand drone delivery operations across the city and beyond.
Experts say many of the obstacles to drone delivery, especially technology and regulations, have been resolved.
“I think after what has been about a decade of a slow start, drone delivery appears to be accelerating both in its technological capabilities and in the political and regulatory environment in the United States,” said Costa Samaras, director of the Scott Institute. for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon, to NBC News.
Samaras said the drones, which are powered by electricity, will primarily be used to transport light, time-sensitive deliverables, such as medicines or groceries. It’s an attractive innovation, he said, because most of those deliveries are still made by combustion engine cars that are polluting and inefficient.
“If you forgot something in the store, or need something quickly, having it delivered by drone is easier and faster than taking your vehicle, and it’s much better for the climate,” he said.
Samaras said his research indicated that drone delivery, compared to fossil fuel truck delivery, consumes up to 90% less energy per package.
But the regulatory framework and autopilot technology have only recently caught up with the hype.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that it is focused on enabling beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, which would allow drones to fly without needing a pilot to remain in sight.
Zipline, the world’s largest drone delivery service, is among the companies that have received that permit in several states. The company plans to go all over the country with the delivery of drones in 2026.
“A lot of the risks have been removed, and I’m super excited about how much progress we’re going to be able to make in the next few years with a lot of this uncertainty behind us,” Eric Watson, head of engineering at Zipline, told NBC News.
Watson said the company expects to deliver tens of thousands of packages per day by air in the coming years across the country, and is already making deliveries in Arkansas and Utah, with plans to expand to Dallas later this year.
A spokesperson for Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery program told NBC News that it expects to deliver 500 million packages a year by the end of this decade.
The FAA told NBC News that there are currently more than 383,000 drones registered for commercial purposes. By 2028, the agency predicts that number could exceed 3 million.
Yanfeng Ouyang, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, agrees that the technology is close to mass availability, but hopes that some of the potential negative consequences can be reduced.
“It’s just around the corner, and we will see very rapid development in the next year or two,” Ouyang said.
“But several challenges still need to be addressed,” he added, such as the potential for an expanded surveillance state, as well as whether communities will be okay with large numbers of drones buzzing overhead at all times.
“I’m optimistic, but I don’t think there are enough regulations yet, and I think the government will have to play a very significant role in the future,” Ouyang said.
NBC News
