Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

Watch Google’s new Project Wing drone deliver a package

Trevor Mogg
By
Google’s delivery-drone project has well and truly gotten off the ground (again), evidenced by a short video of its latest flying machine dropping off a small package (Sergey Brin’s lunch, perhaps?) at a Google event in Arizona on Monday.

Attendee Aaref Hilaly, a partner with Sequoia Capital, tweeted the video (below) together with the message: “Watching baby steps of drone delivery, courtesy of Google X.” Hilaly added that the Mountain View company’s new drone should be able to hit speeds of up to 60 mph. A short while later, Google’s new CEO, Sundar Pichai, retweeted Hilaly’s message.

Recommended Videos

Watching baby steps of drone delivery, courtesy of Google X (5 miles in 5 mins is the promise) #zg15 pic.twitter.com/Xk2KyTRURP

— Aaref Hilaly (@aaref) October 19, 2015

Google’s first attempt at developing a drone, which it wants to build for carrying vital supplies in areas hit by disasters, was abandoned earlier this year when around 80 percent of the development team concluded the project had hit a wall.

According to Monday’s video, the latest unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to fly out of the Project Wing workshop appears to have some similarities to the original design in that it incorporates both wings and propellers. Also, as with the team’s first effort, the UAV delivers its payload via a winch and tether, with the machine’s propellers enabling it to hover steadily above the delivery spot. Such a mechanism certainly makes sense if the drone is going to be used in disaster zones, as the environment may be too disturbed or unstable to successfully land and relaunch the vehicle.

Comparing the drone shown in the new video with footage of the original Project Wing machine, it seems that the new design is a lot more agile and lighter than its bulky predecessor.

Google X chief Astro Teller has already said we can expect an update before the end of the year on how Project Wing is progressing, and with the company’s CEO now confirming the team has a working model in the sky, hopefully the lowdown on its latest effort will land sooner rather than later.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Drone-delivery specialist Wing lifts the lid on its secret testing facility
The drone used by Wing's delivery service.

Drone-delivery specialist Wing has lifted the lid on its secret testing facility in Australia.

A video (below) shared by the Alphabet-owned company shows how its team is continuing to develop its drone technology while at the same time running trial services delivering snacks and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals to residents in places such as Logan City near Brisbane.

Read more
Walk the Great Wall of China in Google’s latest virtual tour
The Great Wall of China.

If your pandemic-related precautions still prevent you from traveling but you’d like to take a trip somewhere far away, then how about diving into the latest virtual tour from Google Arts & Culture?

The Street View-style experience features a 360-degree virtual tour of one of the best-preserved sections of the Great Wall, which in its entirety stretches for more than 13,000 miles -- about the round-trip distance between Los Angeles and New Zealand.

Read more
Drone delivery from this new location makes perfect sense
A Wing delivery drone in flight.

Drone-delivery leader Wing has been testing a service in the Australian city of Logan since 2019 and in that time has used its flying machines to make more than 100,000 deliveries.

Until recently, all of its drones operated from a station constructed on its own dedicated plot of land, but recently the Alphabet-owned company hit on the idea of building a new station on the roof of a shopping mall.

Read more