Eyes on the Skies! Google Wants Drone Deliveries by 2017.
Waiting for FAA regulatory framework is the pits.
I am looking forward to the day where parents can convince kids that Santa Claus is real by having drone deliveries literally drop toys down the chimney. If only people had chimneys anymore.
Anyway, we know that drone deliveries are coming, eventually, once the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gets it act together on regulations (if you were expecting a light touch there, you're a much more optimistic person than I). Amazon has previously announced its plans to get drones dropping merchandise on people's doorsteps (for those who have doorsteps). Google today said it wants to get drone deliveries hammered out by 2017.
"Our goal is to have commercial business up and running in 2017," David Vos, the project lead for Google's Project Wing, told an audience at an air traffic control convention outside Washington.
In August of last year, the company officially announced that it was testing delivery drones in Queensland, Australia after The Atlantic published a report outlining the secretive program. A glimpse of one of the drones in action made its way onto the web in late October when a venture capitalist tweeted a short video from a Google event in Arizona.
It will be interesting to see this experiment play out, and to see where in America drone deliveries would be more efficient than truck deliveries. And also whether anybody tries to shoot them down.
Below, Reason TV on commercial drone use: