(Image Credit: iStockPhoto/NoDerog)
Ever fancied your pizza flown to you? Domino's Pizza could be the first thing you have flown to your house by drone after the firm partnered with Flirtey to launch the first commercial drone delivery service in the world before the end of the year.
With the amount of buzz surrounding Amazon's delivery drones, most of us expected Bezo's giant to be first to launch a commercial service but the company is still testing in the UK which it says the country offers a great testing ground for its plans – with full support from the UK Civil Aviation Authority who are looking to learn from the ongoing trials.
Domino's service will be launching in New Zealand initially, with the first pizza delivered via drone on Thursday (hopefully it arrived hotter than my local driver gets it to my house.) By skipping traffic and using less fuel, it certainly seems a better solution than a car or scooter. "We've always said that it doesn't make sense to have a 2-tonne machine delivering a 2-kilogram order," said Dominos Chief Executive, Donald Meij.
The initial demonstration was conducted under Civil Aviation Rules Part 101 and marks a final step in Flirtey’s approval process, following which the partnership will aim to connect people with pizza via CAA-approved trial store-to-door drone deliveries from a selected Domino’s New Zealand store with flights to customer homes later this year.
Over the past few years, Domino's growth has led to a significant increase in the number of deliveries and led to seeking innovative and futuristic ways to deliver pizzas to customers.
“With the increased number of deliveries we make each year, we were faced with the challenge of ensuring our delivery times continue to decrease and that we strive to offer our customers new and progressive ways of ordering from us."
“Research into different delivery methods led us to Flirtey. Their success within the airborne delivery space has been impressive and it’s something we have wanted to offer our customers,” Mr Meij said
The use of drones as a delivery method is designed to work alongside Domino’s current delivery fleet and will be fully integrated into online ordering and GPS systems.
“Domino’s is all about providing customers with choice and making customer’s lives easier. Adding innovation such as drone deliveries means customers can experience cutting-edge technology and the convenience of having their Supreme pizza delivered via air to their door. This is the future."
Do you think drone-based deliveries will take off? Let us know in the comments.
Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this and sharing their IoT use-cases? Attend the IoT Tech Expo World Series events with upcoming shows in Silicon Valley, London and Amsterdam to learn more.
The show is co-located with the AI & Big Data Expo, Cyber Security & Cloud Expo and Blockchain Expo so you can explore the entire ecosystem in one place.
