The experimental drone delivery service has just achieved a major milestone in becoming a reality.
Project Wing, Google’s (technically, Alphabet’s) experimental drone delivery service, has just achieved a major milestone in becoming an everyday reality.
Nearly a year after getting the US government’s approval, Project Wing staff announced they just completed a major test organized with the help of the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA.
Project Wing’s challenge involved three separate drones operating within relatively close proximity to each other, flown by a single operator. The drones then performed basic deliveries in the testing range while dodging buildings, terrain, and especially each other.
Having multiple aircraft working near other is critical because, as Project Wing co-lead James Ryan Burgess puts it, there could be “fleets with thousands of [unmanned aircraft systems] in the air at any one time, ” should mail-by-drone become the way of the future.
With multi-drone testing completed, Project Wing says the next step is refining its platform to support a larger number or more complex flights, while also making sure it can be used in conjunction with other air traffic control systems.
Though it appears Google has some work left to do, its most recent success with Project Wing means we might be getting our next Google Pixel delivered from above sooner than we thought.
