 On a blueberry farm outside of Tampa, Florida, on Monday, UPS tested the use of drones for residential delivery for the first time. The octocopter delivered its payload at a home on the property and then flew back to the truck, which had moved down the road to allow its driver to make another delivery. The company says it successfully tested the HorseFly drone yesterday in Lithia, FL, along with the company that built both the drone and the electric UPS vehicle that launches it, Workhorse Group. A cage suspended beneath the drone extends through a hatch in the truck, where the drone can be lowered down and loaded up with another package. “It has implications for future deliveries, especially in rural locations where our package cars often have to travel miles to make a single delivery,” said Mark Wallace, UPS senior vice president of global engineering and sustainability. The battery-powered HorseFly drones recharge during docking, and have a 30-minute flight time limit, carrying a package weighing up to 10 pounds.
– Don't be too nervous if you were in Lithia, Fla., earlier in the week and spotted a UPS truck launching a device from its roof to a nearby blueberry farm. It was all part of a test of a new drone-delivery feature the company hopes to bring to residential areas, Consumerist reports. The Workhorse Group's HorseFly unit—which can buzz along for about a half-hour, carrying packages that don't exceed 10 pounds—traveled a quarter-mile or so from the truck to the farm, dropped off its package, then circled back to find the UPS truck, on its way to a new destination. TechCrunch reviewed the test runs and said the process "still needs work," noting that interference caused one launch to be aborted. Reuters reports the experiment followed on the tail of a UPS announcement that automation and new technology were high on the company's priority list. Mark Wallace, a UPS senior VP, explains to Consumerist that rural areas could be a particularly viable place for the truck-launched drones, as a truck could settle in the middle of a "triangular delivery route" and send the drone to different destinations. Another UPS exec, John Dodero, tells Reuters that there's no set timeline for getting the drones into wider circulation because federal regulations are in flux. FAA rules, for example, currently require commercial drones to stay in operators' view, and they can only buzz over their operators, not other people. (Inc. notes the risk to those below if the drone malfunctions and drops the package.) One thing Dodero can speak clearly to: "UPS is never looking to replace our UPS drivers," he tells Reuters. (Amazon has also been experimenting with drone delivery.)