Drones Delivering Domino’s Pizzas To Customers

Domino’s Pizza has started to deliver pizzas using drones in the town of Whangaparaoa in New Zealand and the company is planning to make it available at more New Zealand stores in the future, writes Mike Murphy in an article for Quartz.

Right now the drones have a delivery radius of 1.5 km (about one mile) from the Whangaparaoa store, but the company is aiming to expand that to about 10 km (roughly six miles), according to the article. “The drones travel at 30 kmph (18 mph), and the goal is to be able to eventually provide 10-minute deliveries for pizzas sent by drones for that 10 km radius.”

To order a pizza with a drone, you have to opt into the service and then order online or through Domino’s app. Your “pizza will be placed in a regular pizza box, and then loaded into a sturdier cardboard box that connects to the bottom of the drone,” as reported in the article. Once the drone arrives at the customer’s house, it “lowers the pizza box down by a tow cable, which detaches.”

“The technology behind Domino’s drone deliveries was created by Flirtey, the drone company that completed the first government-sanctioned drone-delivery test in the US in 2015. Flirtey has been delivering goods in New Zealand for years, and has been working with Domino’s there since the summer,” as reported in the article.

Article Source: Quartz, Mike Murphy, November 16, 2016

Image Source: Twitter – UnmannedAerialOnline