Can foodies soon opt for food deliveries via drones? Perhaps through PandaFly by Foodpanda.
Last week, Foodpanda Singapore managed to deliver 5 packets of Ayam Penyet from the Marina South Pier to a cargo ship (called the POSH Bawean), which was located 3km offshore.
Called PandaFly, the partnership between Foodpanda and DroNet – a drone network system by Singapore Technologies (ST) Engineering – hopes to “see drones picking up and delivering orders to and from designated collection points islandwide”. For now, the company is testing DroNet to deliver “light food items” over short distances.
“The objective for us is to use PandaFly as a means to bring all the choices we have in one area of the country… everywhere in the country. We can do island-wide deliveries high food quality to customers,” said Luc Andreani, Managing Director of Foodpanda Singapore.
Although this project is still in its prototype stage, the PandaFly developers feels that this process could become commercial in 3 years time. There’s no doubt that the usage of drones would speed up the delivery process but will people want to pay crazy high delivery fees?
Mr Andreani said that “the idea would be to keep delivery fees stable so customers don’t feel any difference“. However, it is unlikely that drones will deliver directly to homes. Instead, there are plans to have “a network of collection points where these drones can take off and land from”.
Source: Asia Times.
