Google Aims for Drones Delivering Products as Early as 2017
Google will start delivering consumer goods via drones in the next one to three years, as long as the government approves the use of commercial drones.
The tech giant is so confident in their future drone delivery business the head of the project says drones will be safer than commercial aircraft, Fortune reports.
Google has been working on delivering items using drones for the past three years. The Google X Project Wing team, as Google calls its drone division, is led by Dave Vos.
Vos believes there is plenty of open airspace to allow for the safe operation of drones for the purpose of delivering products. He also believes the drones will have minimum disturbance on aviation and operate with little noise.
Google has competition when it comes to future drone deliveries. Amazon and Wal-Mart have both expressed that they want to conduct deliveries with drones and have been testing prototypes. Amazon hopes to deliver some products as quickly as 30 minutes with drone delivery.
Companies Need FAA Approval
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will need to approve drones for use by businesses. Currently, the FAA says drones can't fly at night and only one drone per operator can be flying at one time. This would make it hard for what Google imagines their drone business to be.
The FAA will continue to work on rules for drones and plans to have the final set of regulations for commercial operation set by the spring of 2016.
Drones Must be Registered
The most recent regulation that was created by the FAA is requiring drone owners to operate their devices through a registration website. The website went live in December and already has over 181,000 registrations.
Vos says the creation of the drone registration website is just one way the private sector and the government can work together to make drone delivery a possibility in the future.