Shopping in the sky. Google and Walmart will deliver parcels by drones
The Walmart supermarket chain and the Google-owned company Wing announce the imminent launch of shopping services with drone delivery. The machines will soon deliver packages to over 60,000 homes around one of the largest US cities.
Drone deliveries may become the future of online shopping and even significantly change the entire logistics industry. Two well-known companies are already experimenting with aerial deliveries and are announcing a breakthrough project.
Walmart and Wing will deliver groceries using drones
The popular supermarket chain Walmart in the USA does not need much introduction, even in Poland. In a new initiative, the food industry giant joined forces with Wing – a company belonging to the Alphabet holding, a family of companies that owns, among others, Google.
As part of the announced project, Walmart will use Wing drones for automated package deliveries by air. The service is expected to launch “in just a few weeks” and will currently cover approximately 60,00 homes in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) metroplex region of Texas.
The first deliveries will go to users’ homes from the Walmart Supercenter in Frisco. The second distribution center with drones is to be launched before the end of 2023.
How do drone shopping deliveries work? Walmart translates
According to official information, deliveries will include locations located approximately 6 miles (less than 10 kilometers) from the sales center in question. Drone delivery covers selected products, such as ready-made lunch sets, basic food products and even over-the-counter medicines. Interestingly, the company is not afraid even of delicate products such as eggs or ice cream desserts.
The main assumption of the combined service of Walmart and Google is to save time, because a large number of residents have to make a special trip to a larger store by car (and potentially wait in traffic jams). Drones will deliver products that we are currently running out of, quickly and practically to our doorstep.
The drones fly at about 65 mph (or almost 105 km/h), and the company promises that each order will be delivered to the customer in 30 minutes or less. Everything is also speeded up by the fact that drones do not have to land to pick up an order or hand over purchases to a customer. Everything is done using a clever system of retractable lines.
