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Burritos from the sky? College just got a little lazier:
In what's sure to be a college student's dream come true, drones will soon be delivering burritos on the campus of Virginia Tech. The experimental service, to begin this month and last just a few weeks, is a test by Project Wing, a unit of Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. and the Blacksburg, Virginia, university have agreed to participate.
The Federal Aviation Administration approved the venture, the most extensive test yet in the U.S. of what many companies -- including Amazon.com Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- hope will eventually become routine drone deliveries of products. Amazon has begun a round of trials at a location in the U.K. "It's the first time that we're actually out there delivering stuff to people who want that stuff," said Dave Vos, who heads Project Wing.
Project Wing will use self-guided hybrids that can fly like a plane or hover like a helicopter. They will make deliveries from a Chipotle food truck to assess the accuracy of navigation systems and how people respond. The devices will hover overhead and lower the Chipotle edibles with a winch. Part of the experiment will be to see how well the packaging protects the chow and keeps it warm. Food was selected as the demonstration cargo because it's a challenge. The company is already at work on a more sophisticated second version of the aircraft that won't be used in the tests, Vos said.
"Chipotle edibles"? I smell an entirely new business.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday September 12 2016, @11:07PM
3) Drunk college student later finds an additional charge for a new drone on his credit card statement. Because if you're ordering delivery, they've got your payment information. The bigger issue I think would be drunk college student with a pool cleaning net trying to snag free burritos out of the air, but that could be fixed by flying a couple feet higher. As long as it flies high enough to avoid intentional damage by anyone but the recipient they should be fine. You could maybe still hit it with a rifle or shotgun, but if you've got kids firing guns into the air on a college campus you've got bigger problems than a delivery drone :)