Special
Delivery
W arehouses are noisy places, with convey- ors, cranes, and forklifts shuttling items, cases, and pallets in and out of storage.
But the next time you hear a persistent buzz in a
busy DC, look up—the sound may not be coming
from the material handling equipment, but from a
flying drone.
Drones used in logistics usually make the headlines
only when they involve deliveries to consumers.
Recent examples include Amazon Prime Air’s deliv-
ery of a bottle of sunscreen to an Amazon-hosted
conference in Palm Springs, Calif., and the dropoff
of an Amazon Fire streaming device and bag of
popcorn to a residence in the British countryside.
UPS Inc. also made the news when it whisked an
asthma inhaler to an island in Boston Harbor, as
did Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, when
it (literally) dropped off burritos from a Chipotle
restaurant to hungry students at Virginia Tech’s
Blacksburg campus.
Despite those high-profile successes, parcel delivery drones face many hurdles before they can transi-
The hype is all about package delivery. But some visionary companies have been
quietly putting drones to work in the warehouse—with impressive results.
BY BEN AMES
Drones prepare
to swarm the DC
