Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… dinner? After a couple of attempts that didn’t amount to much, Uber Eats will again test food deliveries by drone under a partnership with autonomous drone delivery company Flytrex.
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The service will be launched in pilot markets in the US later this year. The companies say orders will be delivered to customers “in minutes while reducing congestion and emissions.”
A representative for Flytrex said the company did not know exactly when the service would officially launch or in which areas. In terms of cost for customers, a spokesperson for Uber Eats said that there was “no price difference between deliveries brought by a robot or a courier” with previous Uber Eats drone deliveries.
Flytrex already is doing deliveries in select communities across the United States, including North Carolina, Texas, and other locations. The company, which cut a deal with DoorDash earlier this year and also delivers for Walmart, says it has already delivered over 200,000 meals to suburban households in the past three years.
The Tel Aviv-based company is one of four drone delivery providers that are authorized by the FAA for Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations. That basically means the drone pilots can’t always see the drone they are operating.
“Autonomous technology is transforming mobility and delivery faster than ever before,” said Sarfraz Maredia, the president of Autonomous Mobility and Delivery at Uber, in a press release. “With Flytrex, we’re entering the next chapter — bringing the speed and sustainability of drone delivery to the Uber Eats platform, at scale, for the first time.”
As part of the deal, San Francisco-based Uber will be investing money in Flytrex to help the company ramp up its drone deliveries in the US.
Uber has attempted aerial food deliveries twice before. “Uber Elevate,” in partnership with McDonald’s, did a few test deliveries in 2020, but the program fizzled out. Later, Uber tried an unmanned aerial system with vertical takeoff and landing. That delivery model was capable of delivering meals to two people, but Uber didn’t continue with the program for undisclosed reasons.
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