UPS Develops 'Rolling Warehouse' System In Which Drones Are Launched From Atop Trucks (bloomberg.com)

mi writes: A Bloomberg article describes a test conducted by UPS on Monday, "launching an unmanned aerial vehicle from the roof of a UPS truck about a quarter-mile to a blueberry farm outside Tampa, Florida. The drone dropped off a package at a home on the property, and returned to the truck, which had moved about 2,000 feet." The company is looking to design a "rolling warehouse" system in which a drone is "deployed from the roof of a UPS truck and flies at an altitude of 200 feet to the destination." It returns after dropping off the package while the truck is already on its way to the next stop.

Comments

Prior Art on Slashdot

[mi]

The company is looking to design a "rolling warehouse" system in which a drone is "deployed from the roof of a UPS truck and flies at an altitude of 200 feet to the destination." It returns after dropping off the package while the truck is already on its way to the next stop.

We discussed just such a system here on Slashdot about 4 years ago... If anything, that discussion should allow other players to implement their own without fear of stepping on UPS' patent(s).

Reliability

[pete6677]

If UPS drones operate anything like their human drivers, they'll just drop packages in random locations, mark them "delivered", and nobody ever sees them again.