Domino’s claims world-first pizza drone delivery
The pizza giant has successfully performed the first commercial delivery of food by drone in New Zealand.
Domino’s has on Wednesday successfully completed the delivery of a pizza to a customer in New Zealand, using a drone as its mode of transport.
The unmanned aerial vehicle, DRU Drone by Flirtey, was autonomously controlled using GPS navigation, delivered to the yard of a residence in Whangaparaoa, 25km north of Auckland.
Domino’s Group CEO and managing director Don Meij said he believes drone delivery will be an essential component of the organisation’s pizza delivery process.
“We will be conducting more delivery flights to customers from the Whangaparaoa store this week, and will use the information we gather to expand drone flights to a larger DRU Drone by Flirtey delivery area next year,” Meij said.
“We expect DRU Drone by Flirtey to be an essential addition to our delivery fleet.”
Flirtey received a Part 102 Unmanned Aircraft Operators Certificate from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) before the delivery was conducted.
The successful delivery comes three months after the companies announced their partnership and their intention to deliver pizza by drone.
According to Domino’s, the successful delivery followed a number of operational and product trials, which included food temperature testing and consultation with government.
Innovative companies around the world have embraced a modernised, business-centric approach to IT, delivering orchestrated solutions that help achieve better business results. Now, more efficient and agile servers support this innovation by combining compute, storage, and networking resources to manage entire IT environments as programmable elements that are flexibly tailored to meet changing business demands. With HP ProLiant Gen9 servers, you can redefine your IT infrastructure so that it’s converged, software-defined, cloud-ready, and workload-optimised.
Formula One is an incredibly fast moving sport. There can be as little as a few hundredths of a second between first and second place. The speed of innovation is extreme – and with Formula One regulations becoming more stringent each year, increasing the volume and quality of simulations to test new designs becomes increasingly critical. Join Red Bull Racing as they discuss the high-tech innovations needed to achieve success and how IBM solutions help – from the drawing board to race day! And learn how you can translate this to achieve 30-50% greater throughput for your research, engineering and design workloads. Register for this webcast now!
Flirtey and Domino’s previously conducted trials under Civil Aviation Rules Part 101 and marked a final step in Flirtey’s approval process.
Earlier this year, Domino’s unveiled the first commercial autonomous delivery vehicle, the Domino’s Robotic Unit, known as DRU.
Capable of driving at only 18 to 20 kilometres per hour, DRU uses Google Map data and data obtained by Domino’s GPS tracking technology to manipulate bridges, footpaths, and even rubbish bins placed on the curb.
Weighing in at just under 190kg, DRU has a custom-built hot and cold food compartment and upon receiving a delivery, the customer inputs a code provided to them by Domino’s, which opens the top hatch of the unit.
DRU was born out of Domino’s innovation lab, DLAB, with help from local startup Marathon Robotics. Located at Domino’s headquarters in Brisbane, DLAB is a startup incubator, designed to attract a dynamic range of entrepreneurs from food science through to digital technology.
Meij said Thursday that the use of delivery drones is expected to work alongside the company’s current delivery fleet — and DRU — and will be fully integrated into existing online ordering and GPS systems.
