Retail giant Walmart collaborates with Wing, Zipline, and DroneUp to reinforce drone delivery services across the Dallas/Fort Price metroplex.
By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
Retail giant Walmart, together with its drone delivery partners, is constant to expand its airborne delivery options within the greater Dallas/Fort Price area, in anticipation of rolling out drone delivery service at its stores nationwide.
Recently Wing announced to media within the DFW market that, in cooperation with Walmart, it might begin offering drone delivery services within the cities of Fort Price and Arlington. With the addition of those two latest sites, Wing and Walmart will now offer drone delivery to homes in greater than a dozen localities across the DFW metroplex.
Currently, Wing – a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet – offers delivery by drone within the North Texas cities of North Richland Hills, Lewisville and Frisco.
Walmart spokeswoman Lindsey Coulter said the recent expansion is an element of the retail company’s plans, announced last January, to supply drone delivery to 75% of the population of the D/FW area by the top of 2024. The corporate appears to be using the D/FW metroplex as a test market to find out the feasibility of expanding drone delivery onto the national stage.
“At once, we’re focused on saturating a single market, D/FW, with drone delivery with the goal of understanding what drone delivery operations could appear to be at scale,” she said. Zipline, one other Walmart drone delivery partner within the metroplex, is predicted to announce an analogous expansion of its D/FW operations in the approaching months.
“The Wing hubs and forthcoming Zipline locations, as a part of the D/FW expansion, are along with the 11 hubs currently operated by DroneUp within the D/FW area,” Coulter said.
Each Wing and Zipline have been certified by the FAA to conduct drone operations beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS).
To conduct its deliveries, Wing employs a fixed-wing, multi-rotor 4.3-foot aircraft with a 4.9-foot wing span that’s in a position to fly horizontally like a plane and hover like a helicopter. The all-electric vehicle has zero emissions and is in a position to fly to its destination in minutes. Once it reaches its delivery destination, the aircraft hovers above its goal and lower its payload of delivery items by tether.
The Zipline system employs two vehicles, the first aircraft, generally known as the Zip, and the smaller Droid, which inserts within the belly of the Zip and which carries the payload of delivery items. The Zip is in a position to fly autonomously to service customers inside a 10-mile radius of its home base store.
Once it reaches its destination, the Zip will then hover tons of of feet up above the delivery location and can lower the Droid to the drop zone on a tether. The Droid has its own quiet navigation system which allows it to land on the particular spot that’s been identified by the shopper. Once the delivery is complete the Droid is hoisted back as much as the first aircraft, which then returns to the dock.
Walmart first amongst U.S. retailers in drone delivery
Walmart claims that it has the biggest drone delivery footprint of any U.S. retail company. Previously several months, the corporate has taken several steps to enhance its drone delivery options. For instance, in early June, Walmart said it was introducing drone deliveries into its app.
In May, the corporate announced plans to expand its UAV deliveries to 4 million U.S. households in partnership with DroneUp.
“We’ll be expanding our DroneUp delivery network to 34 sites by the top the yr, providing the potential to achieve 4 million U.S. households across six states – Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia. This provides us the power to deliver over 1 million packages by drone in a yr,” Walmart said in a press release.
“Between the hours of 8 a.m. and eight p.m., customers will give you the chance to order from tens of 1000’s of eligible items, similar to Tylenol, diapers and hot dog buns, for delivery by air in as little as half-hour.”
Stores participating within the DroneUp delivery service, will house a hub that can include a team of FAA- certified pilots to administer flight operations for deliveries. “Once a customer places an order, the item is fulfilled from the shop, packaged, loaded into the drone and delivered right to their yard using a cable that lightly lowers the package,” Walmart said.
Along with providing delivery services for Walmart, DroneUp will use its hubs to supply additional drone services — similar to insurance inspections, emergency response and real estate services — to local businesses and municipalities in nearby communities.
Like Wing and Zipline, DroneUp is FAA-certified to conduct BVLOS drone operations.