Archinect - News

Wing is setting up its drone delivery service in Dallas-Fort Worth

2021-10-21T16:54:00-04:00

Drones will soon be buzzing overhead in Dallas-Fort Worth, bearing small containers filled with Tylenol and Band-Aids. Wing, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, is bringing its drone delivery service to the Texas city, its first densely populated market.

Walgreens will be the first U.S. retailer to employ this new service. For now, just one Walgreens in the Dallas-Fort Worth area will be involved, making deliveries to the city of Fresco and the town of Little Elm. The drones will arrive in small containers that serve as hangars from where the aircraft will be deployed. Walgreens employees will be trained to process orders and load packages onto the delivery drones.

Along with the Walgreens location, Wing plans to establish another drone delivery facility in Frisco Station, an urban, mixed-use development north of Dallas.

According to Wing, this type of service in the U.S. has been limited to smaller towns, where land usage is less crowded and complex. The company attributes their automated drone delivery service’s ability to operate in more urban environments to their aircraft’s advanced flight planning and routing capabilities.

Airbus promises autonomous flying taxis in the (very) near future

2016-08-26T14:12:00-04:00

Airbus appears to be serious about its "Vahana" project, aimed at creating an autonomous passenger drone network, and thinks testing can begin as early as 2017. [...] Airbus is also working on a drone delivery service [...] and plans to start testing it at a Singapore university by mid-2017. The cargo-laden vehicles fly automated routes in "aerial corridors," then drop them off and send delivery notifications to customers.

Airbus engineers are dreaming up no small endeavor as laid out in the company's Future of Urban Mobility vision:

"Imagine landing at a major international airport after a long flight in an A380. Instead of suffering through a 90-minute taxi ride in the megacity’s gridlocked traffic, you hop into an electrically operated aerial vehicle from zenHOP, which brings you to your destination – landing on your chosen zenHUB – in just nine minutes. Too expensive? No, zenMOVE has found three other travellers who also want to get to the city centre. As a result, the flight costs no more than a taxi ride. On top of that, no need to worry about your luggage – zenLUGGAGE takes care of that – or your security, as zenCYBER protects your flight against hacker attacks."

↑ Illustration of Airbus' Skyways drone parcel delivery service, which will enter test mode on the campus of the National University of Singapore in mid-2017.

License and registration, please: new FAA regulations mandate drone registration

2015-12-22T19:09:00-05:00

Starting on Monday, individuals who own recreational drones will have to register their devices with the Federal Aviation Administration. The mandatory registration program applies to drones that weigh between 0.55 and 55 pounds.

According to the report, drones that were purchased before yesterday have to be registered by February 19th, 2016. If you buy a drone in the future, then you'll have to register it before flying it for the first time.

If you don't, prepare to pay a steep fine: up to $27,500. That being said, registration is only $5 and you can do it online. If you register within 30 days of the law going into effect (on Jan. 20), then the fee will be waived. It's pretty much a no-brainer.

For more info, check out the FAA's instructions. Happy droning!

Nasa and Verizon to partner to monitor drones in the US

2015-06-03T13:43:00-04:00

Verizon, the US’s largest wireless telecom company, is developing technology with Nasa to direct and monitor America’s growing fleet of civilian and commercial drones from its network of phone towers. According to documents obtained by the Guardian, Verizon signed an agreement last year with Nasa “to jointly explore whether cell towers … could support communications and surveillance of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) at low altitudes”.

Currently, the Federal Aviation Authority doesn't have recourse to adequate resources or personnel to monitor rapidly-increasing drone traffic. Nasa's new unmanned aircraft traffic management system hopes to be able to enable "safe low-altitude drone flights" soon. By partnering with Verizon, they would be able to take advantage of the nation's largest provider of cellphone service. As Missy Cummings, professor of aeronautics at Duke University states, "We can already track phones like crazy...[so the plan is] a nice alternative to saturating an already broken air traffic control system.”