Tech giant Uber have their sights set firmly on the skies as they focus on launching a drone food delivery service in less than three years time.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Uber recently posted a job advertisement seeking a new executive for their drone food delivery program. The new executive of the program, referred to by a company employees as UberExpress, will be tasked with “enabling safe, legal, efficient and scalable flight operations” by 2021.
The challenges facing Uber in making flying food deliveries in less than three years?
Getting a project of this complexity ready to go in less than three years is highly ambitious. The regulatory environment is complex and as things currently stand in the United States, drone operators are not allowed to fly their crafts beyond line-of-sight.
Add to that public privacy concerns about drone equipped with cameras flying through neighborhoods or how to ensure Uber drones don’t accidentally fly into power lines or fall on someone and you start to see that the task facing this new executive will be tricky indeed. Once the UberExpress jumps all the legislative and technical hurdles, Uber will aim for its drones to deliver food to customers within 5 and 30 minutes.
Uber have already achieved great success with UberEats, which is already operating in hundreds of countries across the world. They also have ambitions in the longer term for autonomous flying drone taxis.
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