Testing
JD.com, China’s largest online retailer, announced the completion of Indonesia’s first government approved drone flight – a breakthrough for drone delivery in Southeast Asia. The successful pilot opens the door for future commercial drone use in Indonesia and the Southeast Asia region, subject to further regulatory approvals. Representatives
Business
Israeli drone logistics startup Flytrex, which specializes in food and consumer good deliveries via unmanned aircraft systems, has raised $7.5 million in a series B funding round led by Benhamou Global Ventures, with additional investment from Btov. The investment follows a $3 million Series A funding round in June
Testing
Drone delivery is the new frontier of customer convenience in Australia – but not everybody is impressed. A trial conducted by Google spin-off company Wing is taking place in Canberra, and some neighbours of the suburb of Bonython are not happy. Resident Neville told A Current Affair the drones sounded like
News
FPT Industrial and Forvola broke the Guinness World Records for the heaviest payload lifted by a drone during FPT Industrial’s Tech Day event in Turin, Italy, on November 23rd. Forvola’s megadrone, with its 16 propellers, lifted a box full of FPT Industrial spare parts weighing 101 kg to
Commercial
A Melbourne-based startup founded by a robotics engineer and former RAAF pilot has bagged world-first commercial contracts to ship vaccines via drone delivery for international aid. Swoop Aero CEO Eric Peck met his co-founder, mechatronics and robotics engineer Josh Tepper, while researching opportunities to start an air taxi service that
Commercial
Wing, an Alphabet company that graduated from the X moonshot factory in July 2018, announced that it will start a new pilot in Finland beginning in the spring of 2019 in Helsinki, delivering goods and packages of up to 1.5 kilograms (about 3.3 pounds) within a distance of
News
If the drone delivery scheme for Canberra takes off, there could be 11,000 flights a day, according to a scenario in a report written for the company behind the scheme. The economists at the AlphaBeta consultancy estimate that by 2030 there would be 5.6 million deliveries a year
News
ZF is the first company in Germany to receive official approval for automated drone flights over factory premises. A drone prototype has recently started flying spare parts such as sensors or control cards from the central warehouse to workshops. As soon as the test flights are complete and drones properly
Commercial
Japan Post Co. last week began transporting documents by drone in Fukushima Prefecture, the first operation of its kind in Japan, following easing of regulations to cope with labor shortages in the transport industry. The company said it will initially use drones to carry its own documents and advertisements between
News
Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. company, and Yamato Holdings Co., Ltd. announced their strategic collaboration for the future of civilian aerial logistics. Together they aspire to be a global leader in electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) logistics and plan to do so by collaborating to integrate innovative autonomous unmanned
Transport
DHL, the German government and the Darmstadt-based drone manufacturer Wingcopter have completed successfully a six-month trial delivering medicines in 40 minutes to an island in Lake Victoria that normally takes six hours by road. Following an invitation by John Mongella, the Regional Commissioner of Mwanza, a port city on Lake
Transport
Reno-based drone company Flirtey has completed the first multi-drone delivery demonstration with a single pilot under the Federal Aviation Administration’s Drone Integration Pilot Program. The successful test, which was performed in front of FAA representatives, puts the company on track to gain approval for its drone delivery program and