Credit: Aeronext
The community of Sakai, Ibaraki Prefecture, and its collaborators announced Monday that they will launch a trial of a delivery service utilising self-driving buses, drones, and other innovations with the goal of realising the ability to deliver products within 30 minutes of an order.
On Monday, they showed how a drone could transport a cargo 290 metres from the town hall to an elementary school’s schoolyard and how it could take off with a box that had been emptied from an autonomous bus.
The mayor of the town, Sakai, said “We’ll be able to expand the service to other hilly and sparsely populated areas.”
Citizens of the community are going to able to purchase food and other daily essentials from nearby retailers using an app for their phones or other methods starting in November.
A self-driving bus that is currently in daily use in the town will transport packages to a collecting point, while drones will deliver small packages to sites outside of the town centre.
By implementing such a system, the municipality and its partners want to increase the effectiveness of land mobility in the town centre region.
The first sites where drone transportation will be used are regions that are unoccupied or where someone is watching to make sure the area is safe.
As early as fiscal 2023, the municipality and its partners intend to provide a service incorporating Level 4 drone flights in inhabited regions outside line of sight.
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