Walmart has partnered with on-demand drone delivery company Flytrex on a pilot program to determine the feasibility of using automated drones to deliver select goods to local shoppers.
The pilot launched this week in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Walmart said it hopes to gain valuable insight into both the employee and customer experience, from packaging a shipment all the way through to delivery.
Tom Ward, senior vice president of customer product at Walmart, said they know it’ll be some time before they are delivering millions of packages via drone. “That still feels like a bit of science fiction, but we’re at a point where we’re learning more and more about the technology that is available and how we can use it to make our customers’ lives easier.”
The capabilities of the technology itself are currently limited. The drones can fly at speeds of 32 mph, travel distances of 6.2 miles in a round trip, and only carry up to 6.6 pounds, which isn’t conducive to substantial grocery hauls. The drone will then lower the package to the ground from an 80-foot altitude as opposed to having to land.
The company received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to test this program under the condition that their drones only fly during the daytime and over unpopulated areas.
Amazon popularized the concept of using drones to deliver products when CEO Jeff Bezos teased the idea during a 60 Minutes interview way back in 2013. Progress has been made in the nearly seven years that have since elapsed, by Amazon and others, but as Ward correctly notes, it still kind of feels a bit like science fiction.
This isn’t the first time that Walmart is experimenting with drone technology. They first started testing them for customer deliveries in 2015, while in 2016 they were planning on using them for inventory checks in their warehouses.
