Walgreens to deploy Wing drone deliveries in Dallas-Fort Worth area
In a blog post by Alphabet’s (GOOG, GOOGL) Wing, the company said, ” Today we’re unveiling a new model for drone delivery that will allow us to expand into densely-populated metropolitan areas in the United States.
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Wing will stage delivery drones at retail locations; ready to fly directly to customers.
The aircraft will arrive in small containers that serve as tiny hangars, allowing each store to quickly and easily deploy a small, dedicated fleet from its parking lot, on its roof, or in small spaces adjacent to the building.
When this model launches, Walgreens (WBA) will be the first U.S. retailer to use this new approach.
Walgreens team members will process orders and load packages onto the delivery drones, and Wing will oversee operation of the delivery service.
Our first lightweight, co-located operation will be set up at a Dallas-Fort Worth area Walgreens store in its parking lot, serving parts of the city of Frisco and town of Little Elm.
In addition to the Walgreens store, Wing has teamed up with Hillwood to prepare a separate drone delivery facility within Frisco Station, an urban, mixed-used development located in Frisco.
Hillwood has a long track record supporting forward-thinking, innovative transportation initiatives across the region, most notably at its Alliance Texas development and its designated Mobility Innovation Zone.
We look forward to working with Hillwood as we deploy a facility at Frisco Station that has all the usual delivery capabilities, but will be dedicated to exploring new use cases, community demonstrations, school field trips and public tours…
In preparation for this launch, we’ve been conducting test flights since June at Hillwood’s AllianceTexas Flight Test Center, a drone testing facility in Fort Worth.
We’ll begin a small number of practice flights next week in Frisco and Little Elm, and hope to set up delivery demonstrations to get feedback from the community in the coming weeks.
In the coming months, we expect to launch a commercial service there that would be the first of its kind in a major U.S. metro.”
Wingย is a subsidiary ofย Alphabet Inc.ย that develops technology ofย drone-basedย delivery of freight. The company completed their first real-world deliveries in 2014.ย The company has operations in Australia, the United States, and Finland.ย
In July 2018, Project Wing graduated fromย Google Xย to become an independent Alphabet company.ย As of January 2019, Wing began delivering take-out food and beverages out of its test facility inย Bonython, Australia as part of a pilot program. In April 2019 Wing became the first drone delivery company to receive anย Air operator’s certificateย from theย Federal Aviation Administrationย to allow it to operate as anย airlineย in theย USA.
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