"This wasn't some UFO experience. This was a Zipline drone delivery, out in the real world, and that payload was my lunch. It was just one of the two million such deliveries this company has made since 2016, carrying everything from household supplies in rural America to lifesaving vaccines in remote Africa. And soon, those drone deliveries will be coming to even more places."
"Workers load four-pound payloads into the belly of these planes, then launch them into the sky via giant slingshot. Once in the air, the P1s plot their own courses, up to 120 miles round-trip, reading weather data along the route and finding their own way around storms."
"On a blustery afternoon late last year, on the lawn just outside City Hall in Rowlett, Texas, a strange-looking craft cleared the trees just before me. It hovered overhead for a moment before lowering a second craft on a thin rope all the way to a parched patch of grass. The little, white thing deposited a brown paper payload, then rode its tether back up to its waiting mothership, which turned and left. The experience lasted less than 30 seconds."
Zipline operates autonomous drone delivery systems that have completed two million deliveries since 2016. Operations began in Rwanda in 2016, delivering medical supplies and vaccines to remote locations with demonstrated lifesaving impact. In Africa, Platform 1 (P1) fixed-wing, uncrewed aircraft carry four-pound payloads, launch via giant slingshot, fly up to 120 miles round-trip while autonomously navigating weather and storms, deploy payloads by parachute, and return for reloading and battery swaps. Zipline expanded services to the United States by 2025 with more sophisticated autonomous delivery machines and also supports household-supply deliveries in rural America.
Read at The Verge
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