Walmart is testing delivery drones in a new pilot with Flytrex, which is an “end-to-end drone delivery company.” The program is focused on delivering select grocery and household essential items from Walmart stores.
The pilot launched today in Fayetteville, North Carolina. “The drones, which are controlled over the cloud using a smart and easy control dashboard, will help us gain valuable insight into the customer and associate experience, from picking and packing to takeoff and delivery,” Walmart said.
The retailer said it’s one more way to learn about how to use technology to make customers’ lives easier. It cited its work with Gatik, Ford and Nuro on autonomous vehicles and said it had gained “loads of valuable insight into how autonomous vehicles fit within our business.”
“We know that it will be some time before we see millions of packages delivered via drone,” Walmart stated.
“At the end of the day, it’s learnings from pilots such as this that will help shape the potential of drone delivery on a larger scale and, true to the vision of our founder, take Walmart beyond where we’ve been.”
You can find the announcement on the Walmart.com Newsroom, and Reuters published a video about the announcement.
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