Robot Food Delivery Service Drone Fleet Ready For Launch

A company, perhaps aptly named Starship Technologies, has been busy testing out a fleet of food delivery drones in a Silicon Valley campus for some time now. It seems the tests have been successful since the company has announced that it will be taking its services to the next level. Soon, people everywhere might be able to have their takeout delivered via tiny pods on wheels.

The tests of the drones were conducted in the campus of the startup Intuit, where workers at the 4.3-acre area would use the app for Starship’s drones to order food, WIRED reports. After picking out what they want, the users would then pin the delivery spot on the map. The robots themselves are unable to open doors, so the customers will simply have to meet them at the door.

According to Starship co-CEO Ahti Heinla, the trials have been successful and they are now ready to widen the reach of their drones. For now, though, it seems there will still be some limitations in place with regards to who can make the orders

"We are ready to scale this," Heinla said. "So far, we have done commercial deliveries in other places as well. But these have been limited in the sense that we are still perfecting the service".

Starship could be facing some major roadblocks in its ambitions to scale its services, however, with delivery drones taking up space on pedestrian roads being banned in some places. San Francisco is one such place, Futurism reports, with the city’s official declaring that delivery drones were not allowed to make deliveries.

Then again, other places like Washington D.C. and Idaho are a lot more welcoming at the prospect of delivery drones that might take up sidewalk space. With this being the case, autonomy is fast becoming the preferred means of getting anything these days.