As companies look to find quick and inexpensive ways to deliver goods — particularly food — to customers, drones are a natural addition to a mix that already includes services like Uber Eats and delivery robots. In Denver, LaMar’s Donuts partnered with Austin, Texas-based Drone Dispatch to see how the drone delivery would fly, so to speak. The drones were piloted to their destinations from nearby parking lots, keeping them within Federal Aviation Administration regulations that prohibit pilots of commercial drones from losing sight of their devices.
Mayor Hancock sees the doughnut delivery as more than a small, sweet, fried, glazed success. “This is exciting stuff, and I think as we get ready for not only drones in the air, and get ready for autonomous vehicles, this is our future," he told the Associated Press, "this is how we're going to become a more efficient 21st-century nation, society, quite frankly.”
