Uber eyes drones for food delivery

Uber said Wednesday it plans to speed up restaurant meal delivery by using drones for its Uber Eats service, in the latest effort by the ride-hailing giant to disrupt the transport sector.

At its Uber Elevate Summit, the company said it had regulatory approval to begin tests of delivering food by drone in the region of San Diego, California.

"Our goal is to expand Uber Eats drone delivery so we can provide more options to more people at the tap of a button," said Luke Fischer, head of flight operations at Uber Elevate.

"We believe that Uber is uniquely positioned to take on this challenge as we're able to leverage the Uber Eats network of restaurant partners and delivery partners as well as the aviation experience and technology of Uber Elevate."

For logistical reasons, the drones will not deliver directly to customers, but to a safe drop-off location where an Uber Eats driver will complete the order.

In the future, Uber hopes to land the drones on parked vehicles located near each delivery location to allow the final delivery by hand.

Uber said it had developed a proprietary airspace management system called Elevate Cloud Systems that will guide the drones to their location.

While not the first food drone delivery service, Uber is aiming for a potentially large-scale service through its food service partners across the United States.

Initial testing in San Diego was done with McDonald's, and will be expanded to include additional Uber Eats restaurants later this year.

The drone service is part of Uber's move to the skies as it seeks to develop an aerial ride-sharing network tied in with its smartphone app to help people avoid traffic congestion on the ground.

Uber said the drone service will provide data that will help manage its air network, and eventually allow the aircraft to operate autonomously.

New autonomous car
Separately, Uber unveiled its newest self-driving vehicle produced by Volvo Cars.

The Volvo XC90 prototype will be "capable of fully driving itself," according to an Uber statement, with sensors atop and built into the vehicle to allow it to operate and maneuver in an urban environment.

"Working in close partnership with companies like Volvo is a key ingredient to effectively building a safe, scalable, self-driving fleet," said Eric Meyhofer, CEO of Uber Advanced Technologies Group.

Uber signed a deal in 2017 with Volvo, which is owned by China's Geely, to produce "tens of thousands" of self-driving cars for a fleet of autonomous taxis.

Volvo said it will use a similar autonomous base for the introduction of its first commercially available autonomous drive technology in the early 2020s.

This week, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he does not expect fully self-driving vehicles to be deployed for at least 15 years, but that autonomous features will be gradually introduced and that some "easy" trips may be made autonomously.

Uber also unveiled the latest versions of its electric bikes and scooters that round out its shared transportation system.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Amazon says drone deliveries coming 'within months'

LAS VEGAS -- Amazon said Wednesday it expects to begin large-scale deliveries by drone in the coming months as it unveiled its newest design for its "Prime Air" fleet.

Jeff Wilke, head of Amazon's consumer operations, told the company's Machine Learning, Automation, Robotics and Space conference in Las Vegas that drones would play a role in ramping up efforts to shorten delivery times for many items to just 1 day for Amazon Prime members.

"We've been hard at work building fully electric drones that can fly up to 15 miles (25 kilometers) and deliver packages under 5 pounds (2.3 kilos) to customers in less than 30 minutes," Wilke said in a blog post.

"And, with the help of our world-class fulfillment and delivery network, we expect to scale Prime Air both quickly and efficiently, delivering packages via drone to customers within months."

Amazon offered no details about where or when the drone deliveries would be operational. 

The company conducted its first test of drone deliveries in 2016 in Britain. At the time, it said US regulations made it harder to use drones for delivery in the United States.

Wilke said Wednesday that Amazon has invested to make its delivery drones safer and more efficient.

"It can do vertical takeoffs and landings -- like a helicopter," he said. "And it's efficient and aerodynamic -- like an airplane. It also easily transitions between these two modes, from vertical-mode to airplane mode, and back to vertical mode."

The new drones are also designed to be stable even in gusty wind conditions, Wilke added.

"We know customers will only feel comfortable receiving drone deliveries if they know the system is incredibly safe," he said. 

"So we're building a drone that isn't just safe, but independently safe, using the latest artificial intelligence technologies."

Amazon said earlier this year it would speed up its free delivery for its Prime subscribers, currently 2 days for most items, to a single day, with North American customers the first to benefit.

It said it would spend some $800 million in the current quarter in the effort to shorten delivery times. It is also hiring more drivers and offering employees an opportunity to launch their own delivery enterprise with a subsidy from Amazon.

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China drone king DJI turns to farming

SHENZEN, China - China drone-maker DJI is betting on flying machines that shoot pesticide instead of photos to fend off growing competition in the global remote-controlled aircraft market.

The world leader in the civilian drones sector is switching its focus from leisure photography to more professional uses for its unmanned aerial vehicles, and it sees agriculture as the future for the burgeoning industry.

DJI's campus lies within the High Tech Park of the southern city of Shenzhen, China's Silicon Valley, where visitors are treated to a showroom featuring an array of drones.

Half the space of the showroom is dedicated to the recreational machines like the Phantom series, while the other half shows off the "enterprise" drones for agriculture, public safety, professional photography or film-making.

Propelled by rotors, the tiny crop dusting aircraft can carry a liquid payload of 15 kilograms (33 pounds) to spray fields.

Piloted from a distance, one drone can cover the same surface as around 30 people and it does the job more efficiently, said Jiang Sanchun, manager of a small company that operates pesticide drones for farmers in northern China.

"Within five years, we went from drones that only took photos to machines specialized in first aid or agriculture," DJI vice president Paul Xu told AFP at the company's headquarters in Shenzhen.

FIGHTING FIRES

DJI was founded in 2006 in an apartment in Shenzhen by Frank Wang, a young graduate with a passion for model planes.

The company now makes almost two-thirds of the world's civilian drones, according to an estimate by Frost & Sullivan, a market research company.

Its overall revenues reached $1.5 billion last year.

Xu boasted that DJI "created a new market" in 2013 when it launched its Phantom drone with high-definition cameras.

Some 75 percent of its drones are sold abroad, mostly in the United States and Europe, and they are popular among people flying the crafts for fun or to take aerial photos.

A drone that landed on the White House lawn in 2015 was a DJI Phantom.

US authorities issued news rules last year that clear the way for small, commercial drones to operate across American airspace, while European Union regulators are trying to catch up.

With competition on the rise, DJI is looking for new markets.

In late 2015, it launched Agras MG-1, an octocopter, or eight-rotor drone, which can carry pesticide or fertilizer.

"A drone can monitor energy networks in hard to reach areas or support public security missions," Xu said.

Chinese police use thermal cameras to track down fugitives. In Brazil and California, firefighters use them to get a complete, bird's eye view of a blaze. Zoom lenses can help authorities locate people in rescue missions in remote areas.

"DJI is entering these enterprise markets because that is where their customer base takes them," said Susan Eustis, president of US-based firm WinterGreen Research.

Worldwide drone sales soared by 60 percent last year, according to the Gartner consulting company. Sales are expected to reach $6 billion this year and nearly double to 11.2 billion by 2020.

Drones for commercial uses represent six percent of the market, but a whopping 60 percent of revenue.

"We do see the DJI market domination as likely to continue for the next five years with no serious challengers," Eustis said, noting that the company has the ability to roll out new products within months.

NOT A WINNER

But the Chinese firm is far from dominating the enterprise drone market.

While DJI commands half the general market in small drone sales in North America, its share falls dramatically for the higher priced machines.

In the battle for drones costing more than $7,500, DJI has a 33 percent market share in North America, said Colin Snow, chief executive of Skylogic Research, a consultancy in the drone market.

Snow, writing in a research note, said DJI's strategy of transforming existing products to fit the enterprise market "is not a winner", noting that brands like Lockheed Martin are better known among companies.

But with a quarter of DJI's 8,000-staff dedicated to research, Xu said the company was capable of producing "the necessary cocktail of complex technologies".

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Drone halts traffic at Dubai airport

DUBAI - An unauthorized drone forced Dubai airport to halt air traffic for about half an hour on Wednesday in the second such incident in four months, the airport authority said.

Airspace around the world's busiest airport for international flights was closed between 8:08 and 8:35 a.m. (0408 and 0435 GMT) "due to unauthorized drone activity," Dubai Airports said on its Twitter account.

"We are working to minimize inconvenience," it added.

"Safety is our top priority and we remind all UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) operators that activities are not permitted within five kilometers (three miles) of any airport or landing area."

Those found guilty of flying drones within that limit are liable to heavy fines in the United Arab Emirates.

But since the earlier incident on June 12, which forced Dubai airport to close for 69 minutes, the UAE authorities have announced their intention to tighten the rules on the purchase and use of drones and the penalties for violating them.

Around 100 airlines fly to more than 260 destinations from Dubai, which is also home to major carrier Emirates.

More than 78 million passengers traveled through the airport last year.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Facebook's solar-powered internet drone takes flight

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook Inc. said on Thursday it had completed a successful test flight of a solar-powered drone that it hopes will help it extend internet connectivity to every corner of the planet.

Aquila, Facebook's lightweight, high-altitude aircraft, flew at a few thousand feet for 96 minutes in Yuma, Arizona, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post on his Facebook page. The company ultimately hopes to have a fleet of Aquilas that can fly for at least three months at a time at 60,000 feet (18,290 meters) and communicate with each other to deliver internet access.

Google parent Alphabet Inc. has also poured money into delivering internet access to under served areas through Project Loon, which aims to use a network of high-altitude balloons to made the internet available to remote parts of the world.

Yael Maguire, Facebook's engineering director and head of its Connectivity Lab, said in an interview that the company initially hoped Aquila would fly for 30 minutes.

"We're thrilled about what happened with our first flight," Maguire said. "There are still a lot of technical challenges that need to be addressed for us to achieve the whole mission." He said he hoped the system might be brought into service "in the near future."

Zuckerberg laid out the company's biggest challenges in flying a fleet of Aquilas, including making the plane lighter so it can fly for longer periods, getting it to fly at 60,000 feet and creating communications networks that allow it to rapidly transfer data and accurately beam down lasers to provide internet connections.

Maguire said Aquila would go through more test flights and hoped it would soon break the world record for the longest solar-powered unmanned aircraft flight, currently at two weeks.

Facebook, which has more than 1.6 billion users, has invested billions of dollars in getting more people online, both through an initiative called internet.org - which offers a pared-down version of the internet to poor areas - and by building drones.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Russian chain delivers pizza by drone

MOSCOW -- A Russian fast food chain claims to have taken a slice out of the competition by becoming the first to offer pizza delivery by drone.

Dodo Pizza in the northern Russian city of Syktyvkar posted a video online over the weekend showing the first airdrops of pizzas to customers and promised the service was not just a one-time PR stunt.

"We already sold six pizzas in one and a half hours using a drone, it is a real business model," manager Ilya Farafonov told AFP.

"You should see the faces of people when their pizza arrives from the sky, it's like magic," he added.

In the video, a pizza agent in an orange vest dispatched to a local park is shown taking orders from a gaggle of hungry students. Moments later, a tiny copter hones into view and lowers a pizza to the customers on a piece of extending rope.

"People didn't want to order pizza before, but now they do," said Farafonov.

The fast food chain hopes to expand delivery by drone to 18 other Russian cities, flying pizzas to beaches and university campuses.

The only snag in the new delivery method is that the destination and route of each drone flight has to be carefully planned and pre-approved by authorities, Farafonov said.

Although other chains, such as Domino's in the UK and a company in India, have previously attempted to deliver pizza by drone, Farafonov said these had never developed into "real delivery."

Retail giant Amazon announced last year it was looking into delivering its packages by drone and several companies already use the unmanned aircraft to distribute their products.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com