from the will-it-still-expect-a-Christmas-bonus? dept.
UK's Royal Mail to deliver post by drone on 50 new routes
The UK's Royal Mail has announced plans to open 50 postal routes serviced by delivery drones over the next three years as part of a wider objective of deploying over 500 UAVs to carry letters and parcels to remote localities in the country.
Royal Mail said drone delivery of post will initially be introduced to the Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands, Hebrides, and the Isles of Scilly. That latter destination was selected by the 507-year-old public service last year to first trial postal flights by UAVs between Cornwall and the archipelago, located 30 miles to the south. Since then, Royal Mail has additionally operated test programs to Scotland's Isle of Mull and Orkney Islands.
Most of those Royal Mail trials have been in partnership with drone delivery and air taxi infrastructure company Skyports, which operated the Mull flights after earlier transporting medical materials to far-flung UK destinations during spikes in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pending approval from the UK's Civil Aviation Authority, Royal Mail will start phasing in postal drone deliveries across more than 50 designated routes in coming months. It will operate flights with drone manufacturer and service provider Windracers, which participated in earlier trials.
The company's 10-meter, fixed wing UAVs can carry up to 100 kg of post over a maximum range of 70 miles. The craft were used in a trial last month to the Orkney island of Unst, flying 50 miles each way.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @12:17PM
The drones are going to steam open your mail, read the contents, and then deploy their laser weapons if the Queen is not amused by what you're reading.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 16 2022, @01:37PM (2 children)
If you dig down to the original source article it explains what they are actually doing.
Its not last mile delivery, its just getting the post out to the islands. Regular postie for the last bit.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday May 16 2022, @04:41PM (1 child)
Actually I guessed so just from the information in the summary. The description of the drone doesn't sound like it would be able to deliver single letters to individual recipients.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17 2022, @12:29AM
I wonder if they couldn't modify the drone to enable that. Load up with parachute-boxes pushed by a spring or pulled out by gravity. Fly to the remote address and push theirs out. Even if you have to buy a number of drones to cover the entire area, seems like you could come out ahead in the end if sparsely populated enough.