Google X said Thursday it is developing a system of drones to deliver goods. Rival Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.23% is also testing delivery drones, and Domino's Pizza Inc. DPZ -0.05% tested delivering pies via drone in 2013.
Google said a 5-foot-wide single-wing prototype from its Project Wing carried supplies including candy bars, dog treats, cattle vaccines, water and radios to two farmers in Queensland, Australia, earlier this month. VIDEO
Google's drones are 2½ feet high and have
four propellers that move into different positions for different stages
of flight. Packages fit into a gap in the middle of the wing. Google
said it began test flights last year.
The
rush to the skies comes despite the fact that commercial drone use is
mostly banned in the U.S. The Federal Aviation Administration is
considering regulations to change that and in June approved the first
commercial drone flight over land—for energy giant
BP
BP.LN -0.39%
PLC in Alaska. But the regulator is moving carefully because the
technology is potentially dangerous and raises privacy concerns.
Google
began working on drones in 2011 and said it expected it would "take
years to develop a service with multiple vehicles flying multiple
deliveries per day."
Google says these planes will have more in common with the
Google self-driving car than the remote-controlled airplanes people fly
in parks on weekends.
Google
Google aims to have the drones flying
programmed routes at altitudes of 130 feet to 200 feet with the push of
a button. Precise navigation will be needed to pick the most efficient
routes while controlling noise, respecting the privacy and safety of
people on the ground and delivering items to an area the size of a
doorstep, Google said.
A YouTube video
released by Google shows Australian farmers ordering dog food. The
drone takes off vertically, with its single wing pointing to the sky.
Once in the air, the wing turns into a horizontal position and the
vehicle flies fast, more like an airplane than a hovering,
helicopter-like drone.
Google X works on long-term, risky projects with big potential payoffs, which Chief Executive
Larry Page
calls moonshots. The company hopes its drones will create new
economic growth opportunities by moving goods around more efficiently.
Google
hired
Nick Roy,
an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in July 2012 to head the project.
Mr. Roy returned to
MIT
MITD -17.91%
this month and Dave Vos, a veteran in automated aviation systems,
joined Project Wing to work on turning the prototype into a commercial
product, Google said.
Amazon said late last year it was testing delivering packages using drones. Earlier this year the e-commerce giant asked the FAA to test the vehicles in open U.S. airspace.
Amazon's initial prototypes looked like a typical drone, with small rotor blades arranged in a square.
The
company hopes the helicopter-like vehicles will be able to drop-off
items generally weighing less than 5 pounds within a 10-mile radius of
its warehouses in about 30 minutes.
Amazon
has acknowledged that regulatory approval could take several years.
Along with Google and drone makers DJI Innovations, Parrot SA and 3D
Robotics, it retained Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP to help
lobby the government on civilian use of drones.
"I
don't know that Google is much better positioned than Amazon or anyone
else in terms of technology, but the company has a track record of being
influential in terms of policy," said
Ryan Calo,
a law professor at the University of Washington who studies
robotics and privacy.
Earlier this year,
the FAA said it didn't contemplate autonomous drone delivery,
effectively grounding Google's and Amazon's ambitions for now, Mr. Calo
noted. However, he said having both Google and Amazon working to change
the FAA's view increased their chances of success.
Commercial
drone use by these companies faces legal and practical headwinds. Legal
experts have questioned the legality of operating drones within
homeowners' airspace and raised insurance issues.
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