Flirtey said its historic drone deliveries to date "have been stepping stones to store-to-home drone delivery." Flirtey is currently in discussions with retailers and food companies about delivery to people's homes, and CEO Matt Sweeny said store-to-home drone deliveries will start sooner than most think.
"Within the next 12 months, Flirtey will be delivering packages from stores to people’s homes, commercially,” said Flirtey CEO and co-founder Matt Sweeny. “It will start incrementally and build up.”
For store-to-home deliveries to become the norm, however, regulations have to catch up with the technology, Sweeny said. There are two FAA regulations, in particular, that need to be resolved: flying beyond visual line of sight (VLOS) and flying over populated areas. Sweeny said the FAA’s logic behind VLOS is to ensure the drones can give right-of-way to manned aircraft. A visual observer, for example, would see the commercial aircraft and fly the drone out of the way. Eventually, on-board technology will take care of all that. Flirtey has able to get around both those regulations in its deliveries to date.
http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/flirtey_drone_delivery_to_homes_will_start_in_next_year
Comments
Looking good and best of luck!
By the way, there are a number of things coming to ArduPilot land that could help over the next few months. ADSB support including some warning and avoidance of manned aircraft using the uAvionix Ping sensor is very close. For Linux flight controllers (or linux companion computers) we're in the planning stages for some improve live video control between the GCSs and flight controllers including multiple video streams (i.e. for drones with multiple cameras)... and of course, precision landing is coming along nicely.