Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, said it would run a pilot project using controlled drones for the delivery of household products on Wednesday in Fayetteville, North Carolina. In partnership with FlyTrex, a company well known for its drone delivery service, Walmart takes a wise step to toughen up its delivery business.
The experimental program focuses on delivering select grocery items and household goods by utilizing Flytrex’s mechanized drones. Families residing outside Fayetteville are not catered yet for the pilot testing program.
“We know that it will be some time before we see millions of packages delivered via drone. That still feels like a bit of science fiction, but we’re at a point where we’re learning more and more about the technology that is available and how we can use it to make our customers’ lives easier.”
Tom Ward, Walmart Senior Vice-President of customer products
The company took advantage of consumers’ fear of being infected by the virus to accelerate its expansion of pick-up and delivery services since people prefer goods to be delivered at their doorstep. Its step to expand service was initially by partnering with Ford, Gatik, and Nuro to venture on deliveries through autonomous vehicles.
“The drones, which are controlled over the cloud using a smart and easy control dashboard, will help us gain valuable insight into the customer and associate experience – from picking and packing to takeoff and delivery.”
Tom Ward
The heightened competition between Amazon and Walmart surfaced. According to a news report, this news about Walmart’s pilot project came after Amazon announced its plans to invest in the development of Amazon Scout, which uses automated robots for delivery.
In reality, Walmart is not the first to do a pilot project for delivery using drones. Amazon’s Prime Air service got first approved by the Federal Aviation Administration in late-August to use drones in delivering products.
According to a news report, the Federal Aviation Administration gave a Section 135 air transporter endorsement utilizing automated airplane frameworks to Amazon and has given comparable authentications to Wing Aviation, an auxiliary of Google parent organization Alphabet, and UPS Flight Forward.
With its wise move to take a risky investment, Walmart stock has increased by 16.5% for the year to date. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA has fallen 3.6% for the period.
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