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Los Angeles residents could be receiving their Postmates order or prescription drugs from CVS via drone as soon as 2023, under a new initiative introduced Wednesday by the city's Mayor Eric Garcetti.
"Los Angeles is where we turn today's ideas into tomorrow's reality — a place where a barrier-breaking concept like urban air mobility can truly get off the ground," Garcetti said in a statement. "The Urban Air Mobility Partnership will make our city a force for cleaner skies, safer transportation, expanded prosperity, and stunning innovation and provide a template for how other local governments can take this new technology to even greater heights."
The one-year partnership is funded by Hyundai Urban Air Mobility, Urban Movement Labs and Estolano Advisors. The aim is to come up with policies to regulate delivery drones and start to plan for a "vertiport" to access urban air mobility aircraft.
The initiative is hiring an "Urban Air Mobility Fellow" who will be tasked with devising a public engagement strategy around urban air mobility.
"I'm really excited about the potential there," said Lilly Shoup, Interim Executive Director of Urban Movement Labs, a public-private nonprofit partnership launched by Garcetti last year that is trying to turbocharge transportation innovation across the city.
Urban Movement Labs is also sponsoring a testing center at Warner Center where Kiwibot, a San Jose startup, is testing the use of robots to deliver goods on city sidewalks. After a successful rollout at the University of California, Berkeley, the company is preparing to make a much bigger push in L.A. next year.
"L.A. is going to be our most important city next year," said Kiwibot CEO and founder Felipe Chavez.
Robots on the ground are much closer than drones to becoming a viable option for Angelenos, but Amazon and others have been working for years on ways to deliver goods via air.
Earlier this year, the Federal Aviation Administration designated Amazon Prime Air an "air carrier," which allows the company to begin testing commercial deliveries in the U.S.
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UPS' drone subsidiary and the CVS pharmacy chain say they'll start delivering prescription medicines to the nation's largest retirement community next month, using Matternet's M2 drone delivery system.
The service, approved by the Federal Aviation Administration under Part 107 rules, will be available for The Villages, a community in central Florida that's home to more than 135,000 residents. UPS Flight Forward and CVS will be authorized to operate through the coronavirus pandemic and explore continuing needs as they arise once the pandemic fades.
Physical distancing and restrictions on retail business, enacted in response to the pandemic, are bringing more attention to the potential for drone deliveries.
The UPS-CVS delivery effort follows up on a foundation that's been built over the past year, starting with UPS' transport system for medical samples in North Carolina, and continuing with UPS Flight Forward's certification as a full-fledged drone airline last September as well as its first prescription delivery for CVS in November.
UPS and CVS make residential drone delivery www.youtube.com
Bay Area-based Matternet, which is part of the Boeing HorizonX investment portfolio, has been partnering with UPS since last year.
UPS said the ramped-up service for The Villages will address needs that have become more acute due to the coronavirus outbreak.
"Our new drone delivery service will help CVS provide safe and efficient deliveries of medicines to this large retirement community, enabling residents to receive medications without leaving their homes," Scott Price, UPS chief strategy and transformation officer, said in a news release. "UPS is committed to playing its part in fighting the spread of coronavirus, and this is another way we can support our healthcare customers and individuals with innovative solutions."
Jon Roberts, executive vice president and chief operating officer of CVS Health, noted that CVS pharmacies already offer in-store pickup, free delivery services and drive-through pickup. "This drone delivery service provides an innovative method to reach some of our customers," Roberts said.
The first flights to The Villages will travel less than a half-mile, and deliver prescriptions from a single CVS pharmacy to a location near the retirement community. Initially, a ground vehicle will complete the delivery to the resident's door, UPS said. The operation could expand to include deliveries from two additional CVS pharmacies in the area.
Separately, UPS Flight Forward is working with Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology, DroneUp and the Workhorse Group on tests designed to determine how drones can help health care professionals respond quickly to medical needs during the pandemic.
Other drone ventures are also upping their game to respond to the outbreak. Alphabet's drone subsidiary, Wing, has partnered with FedEx, Walgreens and other businesses in the Christiansburg, Va., area to deliver over-the-counter drugs as well as other items ranging from baby food to toilet paper.
"As COVID-19 has spread and families have been encouraged to stay home, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of customers using the service," Jacob Demmitt, a spokesman for Wing, told GeekWire in an email. (Demmitt is a former GeekWire reporter.)
Over a two-week period, Wing made more than 1,000 deliveries, for Walgreens and other retailers, Demmitt said.
Amazon and Walmart are expected to play a big part in future drone deliveries, although they're not currently involved in any of the public pilot projects approved by the FAA.
Last June, Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke said Amazon's all-electric drones would start delivering packages to consumers within months. Although the Seattle-based retail giant has continued testing its drones in a variety of locations around the globe, it hasn't yet announced a publicly available drone delivery service in the U.S.
This story first appeared in GeekWire.
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