Now, I know what you’re imagining after reading the headline.
You get a message that your delivery has arrived, and the doorbell rings soon after. Then you open the door and see a drone hovering in mid-air carrying your 10 cans of soup and 10 rolls of toilet paper.
“Thank you, drone”, you say.
“You’re welcome, human”, the drone replies before flying off into the sunset.
Sadly, I have to burst your bubble as this particular drone delivery had nothing to do with door-to-door delivery of groceries.
No, it simply delivered some vitamins to a ship.
S’pore’s First Drone Delivery Took Place & It Was Carrying Vitamins
It’s 2020 and the future is now: Singapore’s first drone delivery service has started.
The first parcel contained 2kg of vitamins and was dropped onto a ship anchored off the island on 19 April.
According to The Straits Times, F-drones is the first company to receive authorisation from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) for such deliveries.
Each drone can take up to 5kg of supplies and travel up to 5km offshore each way.
Much Faster & Greener Than Boats
Of course, with the coronavirus stealthily spreading all across the globe, such drone deliveries can also reduce unnecessary human contact.
But it’s also a much faster and greener way of transferring supplies in busy ports.
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Currently, diesel-powered boats are used for such deliveries, of which there can be more than 100 a day in Singapore.
Drone trips take less than 15 minutes on average, while it can take more than two hours for the boats to make trips of a similar distance, according to The Straits Times.
This sounds impressive, but while F-drones’ current product can only carry 5kg of supplies over a distance of up to 50km, their final product will be able to carry a load of up to 100kg over 100km.
That drone will only be ready next year, however.
But what about the drone deliveries we all actually care about?
Drone Food Deliveries?
F-drones said that the use of drone deliveries over land has been slowed by various obstacles globally, unlike deliveries over seas to ships.
“People in cities may not like drones flying over their heads because of the noise, for example, but that’s not an issue when flying over water.
In 2019, UberEats announced it would start testing drone deliveries in San Diego during 2020, but this has presumably been halted due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Their plan was to use drones to deliver food directly to the customer.
Even Foodpanda tested drone deliveries in 2016, saying delivery times via drones were reduced significantly. On average, the time from the restaurant to a customer was reduced by 50%.
With the current need to reduce human contact, it would certainly be safer to receive your Nasi Lemak from a drone.
However, as Forbes says, it will likely be several years before consumers see widespread drone delivery of individual meals and even longer before full-scale grocery delivery.
Yes, unfortunately, you’ll still have to interact with humans to get the groceries and food you need.
Reader: Aw man I hate that
We all do, dear reader.
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