US drone delivery service Flirtey on Monday announced that its self-piloting flying machines have whisked flu medicine, hot food and more from 7-Eleven convenience stores to customers’ homes.
The Nevada-based company boasted of being the first drone service to complete regular commercial deliveries to residences in this country, having completed 77 such autonomous missions.
“We have now successfully completed the first month of routine commercial drone deliveries to customer homes in partnership with 7-Eleven,” Flirtey chief executive Matthew Sweeny said in a release. “This is a giant leap towards a future where everyone can experience the convenience of Flirtey’s instant store-to-door drone delivery.”
Flirtey said it made 77 drone deliveries to homes of select customers on weekends last month, filling orders placed using a special application.
Ordered items, including food and over-the-counter medicine, were packed into special containers and flown by drones that used GPS capabilities to find addresses, Flirtey said in the news release.
Drones hovered in the air and lowered packages to the ground, on average getting items to customers within 10 minutes, the company reported.
Popular items ordered included hot food, cold drinks and medicine for headaches or flu, Flirtey said.
Flirtey and 7-Eleven plan to expand the drone delivery service in the coming year.
Amazon earlier this month said it completed its first delivery by drone, in what the global online retail giant hopes will become a trend in automated shipments by air.
The delivery to a customer near Cambridge, England, was announced in a tweet by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
“First-ever #AmazonPrimeAir customer delivery is in the books. 13 min — click to delivery,” he wrote of the Dec. 7 order.
Amazon, which has been testing drone deliveries in the US and elsewhere, has on several occasions complained that the regulatory environment in the US for these automated deliveries is more cumbersome.
Google parent Alphabet Inc has a similar project, and some reports say Wal-Mart Stores Inc is also studying drone deliveries.
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