Drone delivery service Wing, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, is expected to surpass the 100,000 delivery mark before the end of this month.
More than half of those deliveries were made in Logan, Australia. Business is booming in the South East Queensland neighborhood, where Logan residents ordered almost 4,500 deliveries in the first week of August. “The city has laid a strong claim to be the drone delivery capital of the world,” according to the Wing Team, which celebrates its second anniversary in Logan next month.
The live, automated, and on-demand service performs 15 million simulations each day, analyzing changes in weather and terrain, stress testing delivery systems, and improving routing to consumers’ homes or offices.
“This technology has enabled our customers in Logan to start their days with more than 10,000 cups of fresh barista-made coffee in the last year, delivered right to their homes,” the company blog said. “As their kids transitioned to remote learning, parents have ordered more than 1,700 snack packs to keep break times interesting. And we’ve made more than 1,200 hot chooks (that’s Australian for roasted chicken) fly just in time for dinner.”
The experimental Google X division unveiled Project Wing in 2014, teasing a delivery system that can “transport goods more quickly, safely, and efficiently.” Five years (and thousands of trial drop offs) later, Wing gained approval for a public drone delivery service in North Canberra, Australia.
It also became the first drone delivery company to receive air carrier certification from the Federal Aviation Administration in the US, where the firm in 2019 began ferrying products from FedEx and Walgreens to consumers’ homes in southwest Virginia.
Logan’s success, Wing hopes, will allow the company to expand into similarly sized cities (think New Orleans, USA; Manchester, England; or Florence, Italy) and larger metro areas around the world.
