Google has announced the launch date for its planned drone delivery service, dubbed Project Wing.
The scheme’s project leader David Vos says goods will be winging their way to consumers sometime in 2017.
Speaking at an air traffic control convention in Washington, Vos said: “
See also: What is Google’s Project Wing?
Project Wing, one of the firm’s vaunted X Labs moonshots, has been in testing for over a year, but very little is known about the drones thus far.
In a video released last month, the drones are shown lowering packages to the surface on a tether, rather than landing at the destination a la Amazon’s Prime Air quadcopters.
Google has also earmarked the tech for use in emergency situations.
“Even just a few of these, being able to shuttle nearly continuously could service a very large number of people in an emergency situation,” Google X’s Captain of Moonshots, Astro Teller, told the BBC last year.
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The drones will have a wingspan of 5-feet with electrically-driven propellers. They’ll also rock on-board GPS, cameras and radios.
Now the battle for Google, and of course Amazon, is to win the favour of regulators in the United States. The FAA is still formulating rules for the commercial use of unmanned aircraft.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.