For two years, Google has been running secret drone delivery tests with their own UAV prototypes. Over at The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal has the first look at Google's Project Wing. From The Atlantic:
Taken with the company's other robotics investments, Google's corporate posture has become even more ambitious. Google doesn't just want to organize all the world's information. Google wants to organize all the world.
During this initial phase of development, Google landed on an unusual design called a tail sitter, a hybrid of a plane and a helicopter that takes off vertically, then rotates to a horizontal position for flying around. For delivery, it hovers and winches packages down to the ground. At the end of the tether, there's a little bundle of electronics they call the "egg," which detects that the package has hit the ground, detaches from the delivery, and is pulled back up into the body of the vehicle.
"Inside Google's Secret Drone-Delivery Program"
