Amazon’s been the front runners with wanting to use drones to deliver packages to consumers, but Google’s also working on a drone delivery system in the Australian outback for over 2 years. Google unveiled their moonshot project through a YouTube video, no surprise, and along side a long form story via The Atlantic.
The Google X project, the same crew that’s worked to build driverless cars and more notably Google Glass. The companies using the Australian outback because the remote area and the possibility that its not illegal out there. The projects not near completion, but Astro Teller notes it might not take as long as you might expect. ”Working together we can get to this future, I think, surprisingly quickly,” he says in the short video.
The Google drones look more like airplanes then the traditional quadrocopters that we have accustomed to from Amazon. The Google drones take off vertically and then level out to a horizontal position to fly quicker to there set location. And unlike the Amazon drones the Project Wing doesn’t land to deliver the package. The drone lowers the package via a cable as it hovers high above. This idea could prevent the fear that many had that drones would end up hitting people as it landed, but the same time these drones could drop boxes onto you.
Even if Google can finish these drones in the next year they won’t be delivering packages across a city near you because of the FAA’s restrictions of flying drones. Now that more then one company is experimenting with drone deliveries we could see lobbying for the legalization of flying drones across the skies in the United States.
Tell us what you think about Project Wing compared to Amazon’s drone delivery system they’ve been working on.