Japan takes a big step toward widespread drone delivery service
Japan, perhaps more than any nation on Earth, has a
deep history with autonomous drones. Its companies have been using them
for decades to assist with agriculture, infrastructure inspection, and construction.
Today one of Japan’s biggest tech companies, Rakuten, announced it was
forming a joint venture with the American startup AirMap. The goal is to
develop a robust traffic management system for unmanned aerial
vehicles, allowing large numbers of drones to operate autonomously in
the same airspace.
Rakuten, which is best known as an e-commerce company,
has been experimenting with drone delivery since June of last year. Like
Amazon, it wants to enable customers to order something online and have
it delivered to their doorstep, or windowsill, in under an hour. The
company sees low-altitude airspace as a wide-open market, where the only
competition comes from birds and radio waves.
AirMap recently disclosed a $26 million round of funding
led by Microsoft Ventures. The company is using that cash to open new
offices in California and Germany, and is already planning for the day
when its mapping technology could be used to help a variety of different
autonomous vehicles navigate safely through low-altitude airspace,
including flying cars.
The article was published on : theverge
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