Flirtey's First US Ship-to-Shore Drone Delivery
By Aiswarya Lakshmi
Friday, June 10, 2016
Flirtey has announced that it will be conducting what it believes will be the first US-based ship-to-shore drone delivery later this month.
The Nevada-based startup will conduct the first ship-to-shore drone delivery in the US on June 23 in Cape May, New Jersey.
The purpose of the joint mission is to demonstrate how unmanned aircraft can provide life-saving aid to disaster victims.
Maersk, the maritime shipping giant, used drones earlier in 2016 to deliver a small box of cookies to one of its tanker ships in a seaport town in Denmark. It took about one-and-a-half minutes for the drone to deliver the cookies across a distance of one kilometer.
Maersk is looking to use drones to cut down on the costs it takes to use barges for deliveries.
The drone company will be teaming up with Dr. Timothy Amukele, assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, to conduct the test flights on 23 June on the New Jersey coastline.
Flirtey will fly drones carrying medical samples between an onshore medical relief camp at Cape May and a test facility on a vessel stationed off the coast. In a round trip, Flirtey drones will also deliver medical supplies from the vessel to the onshore medical camp.
Flirtey was the first company to conduct an FAA-approved delivery in the United States, and the first company to perform a fully autonomous drone delivery to a home in the US.