Written by: Ewan Strydom

It certainly feels like there is a new story about drones everyday. Well, it’s not far off because these nifty little sky hungers are really becoming part of our daily lives! We have seen the rise of delivery services here in SA like Checkers 60 60, Bolt, Uber Eats etc. Most of these using small motorbikes or even better, more recently, very fancy e-bikes with electronic advertisement screens on the back of their boxes! But the next step….a fully functioning drone delivery service!

Order online and wait on your ‘stoep’ for the electronic ‘stork’ to drop you your shopping baby.

I think this is very exciting, but, we are still a bit far off from a service like this to become an everyday thing. Luckily, it is now being fully testes in the US! Google’s parent company Alphabet has been testing Drone delivery Tech in Australia for the past while, for good reason as they have huge wide open spaces just in case something went wrong. So far all the tests have been a huge success and now they are going to start with drone deliveries in the US with Walgreens in Dallas, Texas! This is going to be a first for delivery drones going “live’ in a big city like Dallas, and it will be very interesting to see how it will handle all the day to day obstacles.

For those who are not familiar with Walgreens, well, its pretty much on par with a DisChem or Clicks here in South Africa.

Now this delivery drone is not your ordinary looking drone, instead of the usual 4 propeller version we are used to flying around in our back yards, this one has got 8 blades in a row on either side, and in the middle of these row of propellers, a box in which you prescription medicine or favourite bath soap will be housed! Looking at it, it does look like a little Cessna airplane that spent a lovely evening with a traditional drone.

The reason why it’s designed this way is to make it much more stable in the air with all kinds of elements thrown at it, knowing that it will indeed reach it’s destination safely.

When is something like this coming to fruition in South Africa? I think we have a long wait ahead of us, but it is nice to know that sometime in the future, we will be able to press a button, and await your air cruiser to hit you up with your order!

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