Graphic shows how the delivery service works.
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TECH

Aha’s on-demand drone delivery service

By Ninian Carter

October 29, 2018 - Aha, an Icelandic fast-food delivery service, is using autonomous drones to fly produce to customers across almost half of the capital.

The Aha drone delivery experiment began in 2017, when it partnered with Israeli drone technology company Flytrex, to bridge the Ellidarvogur sea inlet that divides Reykjavik.

A centrally based restaurant could send a takeout meal to Aha’s drone hub, which in turn would dispatch it by air across the water to a waiting driver, who would pick it up and complete the delivery by road – shaving 16 minutes off a delivery to the east side of the city.

The average distance over which a meal is delivered in Reykjavik – a low-rise, spread-out city, subdivided by a large bay and several rivers – is about 7km, making it an ideal location for this type of drone testing.

The Icelandic Transport Authority recently granted Aha license for more than a dozen further routes across the capital, where the company can even in some cases deliver directly to a residence, if it’s within a permitted neighbourhood.

The Chinese-made drones, including new “InAir” wire-drop varieties that don’t land but instead safely lower their packages to a consumer’s back yard, now operate over nearly half of Reykjavik.

Sources
PUBLISHED: 29/10/2018; STORY: Graphic News; PICTURES: Flytrex handouts
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