Wing, Alphabet’s drone subsidiary, surpassed the 100,000-customer delivery mark in recent days, following years of test deliveries—many of which have taken place in Logan, Australia, billed as the drone delivery capital of the world.
Announced in a recent blog post, Wing said residents of Logan have ordered and received more than 50,000 deliveries directly to their homes by Wing delivery drones in just the last eight months. Located just outside of Brisbane on the Pacific coast, Logan has a population of 300,000 and is one of the fastest growing Australian cities.
Wing included a few other remarkable stats, including that Logan residents have ordered almost 4,500 deliveries since the first week of August, meaning that a logan resident on average received a drone delivery nearly once every 30 seconds during Wing’s service hours.
The company added that what distinguishes Logan operations from other tests and trials happening in other parts of the world is that these are live, automated, on-demand deliveries.
“When an order comes in, Wing’s software systems send the best aircraft to perform the delivery from among Wing’s multiple operations sites,” the blog post read. “Then, our systems use data about the operational environment—Wing’s software performs and analyzes 15 million simulations each day to analyze changes in weather and terrain, stress test our delivery systems and continually improve our routing—to create a custom, optimal path for the aircraft to follow to the very spot the customer selects for delivery, either at their home or, in some cases, their office.”
Wing is reportedly conducting operations in Christiansburg, Virginia, as well as Helsinki, Finland, and Canberra, Australia. While there is no question drone meal delivery will eventually make its way to the United States in a bigger way, our country’s stricter regulatory requirements are still keeping most large-scale pilot tests outside of our borders.
Cue up the “still waiting” skeleton memes, because this wait is bordering on agonizing.
