Wing drones deliver along last mile for Walmart

Mountain View, Calif.-based delivery drone provider Wing is offering last-mile drone delivery for a Walmart in Frisco, Texas, and plans to add delivery services for another undisclosed Walmart store in Texas by the end of 2023.

[caption id="attachment_57137917" align="alignright" width="300"] Wing will offer drone delivery from two Walmart stores in Texas by the end of the year. (Photo/Wing)[/caption] The drone service will deliver a wide range of products, including meals, groceries , household goods and over-the-counter medicines, according to a release from Wing, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet .

“This is a major milestone for Wing, as we continue down our path toward building capabilities to support some of the most significant delivery operations in the world,” Wing Chief Financial Officer Shannon Nash said in a blog post. “Our technology is designed to complement existing delivery offerings, making overall systems more efficient and able to meet real customer needs.”

The service will be available to homes within approximately 6 miles of each store, according to Wing. About 6,000 homes will have access to this service, according to a release from Walmart.

Drone uses sensors to create map The delivery drones are controlled by remote operators who can oversee multiple drones simultaneously. Wing drones cruise at 65 mph and can carry up to 2.3 pounds. The drones use a tether to deliver fragile products like eggs and light bulbs.

“Wing’s highly automated and reliable system allows our drones to operate autonomously,” Nash told Air Cargo Next . “Individual flights do not require human interaction, as our flight navigation system plans its own routes, and then the aircraft execute those routes. The system performs its own health checks, flags issues if they arise and responds to contingencies as needed.

“Wing’s pilots don’t control individual flights,” she said. “Instead, they’re watching our aircraft complete missions, they’re monitoring weather and other air traffic, the overall health of the system, and responding to alerts as needed.”

Wing’s drone is specifically designed for quick delivery of smaller, lighter payloads, according to the company. Instead of using cameras, Wing drones use sensors that measure and analyze light to determine distances between the drones and the ground and obstacles.

“The drones’ algorithms create an imprint of obstacles below, allowing us to build a three-dimensional map of points on the ground so the drone can identify an optimal delivery spot,” Wing’s website states. “If the sensors perceive an obstacle like a car, the drone simply moves over slightly to deliver the package.”

Each drone uses its sensors to build a simplified view of its surroundings — a process called semantic segmentation. Using an onboard computer and learned computer vision models, the sensors perceive things below and categorize them as roads, trees or other objects based on the drone’s location, according to the website.

“The result is a color-coded map of the world that wouldn’t make much sense to a human but allows the drone to understand its surroundings,” the website stated.

Wing has completed more than 350,000 commercial deliveries in the United States, Australia and Europe, Nash told Air Cargo Next .

Walmart increasingly looks to drones Walmart has been offering drone delivery since 2021, gradually growing the service across seven states and 36 stores, completing more than 10,000 deliveries, according to Walmart.

“With drones that can fly beyond visual line of sight , we’re able to unlock on-demand delivery for customers living within an approximate 6-mile range of the stores that offer the service,” Prathibha Rajashekhar , senior vice president of innovation and automation for Walmart U.S., said in the Walmart release.

Customers will be able to access the service via the Wing app.

Wing declined to disclose the number of drones it will provide for Walmart deliveries or the value of this deal. Walmart did not respond to a request for comment.

Join Air Cargo Next for its second annual Air Cargo Tech Summit on Sept. 18-19 in Brussels, sponsored by Unisys and Brussels Airport and featuring a fireside chat with Brian Hodges, managing director, American Airlines Cargo. For more details and to register, click here .

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