Nevada Receives an FAA-Approved Urban Drone Delivery System

Some time ago, an ambitious startup named Flirtey has managed to perform the first FAA-sanctioned drone delivery in a rural area, and it looks like its creators have even greater plans for this special drone. On March 10, the autonomous hexacopter managed to perform a half-a-mile flight to an empty house in Hawthorne, Nevada in order to deliver essentials such as food, water and a first-aid kit. What’s impressive about this is that the drone flew over there by its own while following a pre-programmed path. A pilot was on site to take over just in case things went south, but fortunately, everything went exactly according to plan.

Obviously, it’s one thing to carry some food and water to an empty house and another to carry large electronics such as TVs, which means that retailers such as Amazon still needs to figure out a better way to transport large fragile objects to its customers. Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeny has stated that he managed to convince the FAA to sign off on this trial by invoking the company’s previous success in delivering car parts and textbooks to parts of New Zealand and Australia. The next big thing for Flirtey is to conduct a similar experiment in an urban populated area, which will probably be quite a bit more challenging.