Draft:Flytrex Drone Delivery: Difference between revisions
NinaHirsch (talk | contribs) Submitting using AfC-submit-wizard |
|||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| ⚫ | |||
{{Draft topics|business-and-economics|transportation|engineering}} |
|||
{{AfC topic|org}} |
|||
{{AfC submission|||ts=20231127140550|u=NinaHirsch|ns=118}} |
|||
{{AfC submission/draft}} |
{{AfC submission/draft}} |
||
| ⚫ | |||
{{Infobox company |
{{Infobox company |
||
| name = Flytrex Aviation Ltd. |
| name = Flytrex Aviation Ltd. |
||
Revision as of 14:05, 27 November 2023
 | Review waiting, please be patient.
This may take 2 months or more, since drafts are reviewed in no specific order. There are 1,307 pending submissions waiting for review.
Where to get help
How to improve a draft
You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Editor resources
Reviewer tools
|
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry |
|
| Genre | Delivery drone |
| Founded | 2013 in Tel Aviv, Israel |
| Founders | Yariv Bash, Amit Regev |
Area served | |
| Services | Drone delivery |
| Website | flytrex |
Flytrex Aviation Ltd., an Israeli company founded by Amit Regev and Yariv Bash (former CEO of SpaceIL), is a drone delivery company operating in the United States, focused on food deliveries from large QSR chains and family-owned restaurants. The company designs and manufactures its own drone delivery systems, operates its food-ordering marketplace as well as white-label delivery service.
The company started operating in the United States in 2018, and is now the largest drone-based food delivery service in the country, delivering hundreds of orders daily to homes across North Carolina and Texas. In November 2023, the company reported it delivered more than 60,000 orders in the US.
Flytrex partners with local aviation companies to operate its services. Its delivery stations in North Carolina and Texas are operated by Causey Aviation Unmanned (CAU). In January 2023, CAU received approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate the system under Part 135 [1]. In November 2023, the FAA granted CAU approval to operate its drone delivery service Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) without the need for visual observers [2].
History
Flytrex was founded in 2013 by Amit Regev and Yariv Bash. It originally designed, manufactured, and sold the Flytrex Live, a black-box device used to log flight telemetry data from off-the-shelf consumer drones. The Flytrex Live was used by more than 20k users across 70 countries between 2014 to 2016, recording data from over 500,000 drone flights.
In 2016 the company shifted from its original consumer-focused line of products and started developing its drone delivery service. In 2016 the company partnered with aha.is, Iceland's largest eCommerce website, to launch its first drone-based food delivery service[3]. The first implementation included delivering food orders on a single flight route connecting two points in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In 2018 Flytrex partnered with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) and was one of the few companies selected to participate in the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Integration Pilot Program (IPP), designed to test and evaluate the integration of commercial drone operations into the US national airspace (NAS). Together with the NCDOT, Flytrex launched two drone delivery stations in Raeford and Fayetteville, North Carolina, to test its technology and provide actionable information to the FAA and US Department of Transportation (USDOT).
In October 2021, Flytrex opened its first commercial drone delivery station in Holly Springs, North Carolina. The station is located at Kite Realty Group’s Holly Springs Towne Center. As of November 2023 the company serves residents within 2.75 miles of its delivery station. According to the company, 1 in every 3 households in the area has signed up for their service.
In March 2022, Flytrex opened its station in Granbury, Texas, and in September 2022 in Durham, North Carolina.
Operations
Flytrex designs and manufactures its drones. The company uses a third-party partner to pilot its drones in their locations of operation. Its first partner, Causey Aviation Unmanned, received FAA approval to operate under Part 135 in January 2023 [1]. In November 2023, the company announced they received, through Causey Aviation Unmanned, FAA approval to operate its drone delivery service Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) without the need for visual observers [2].
Flytrex released its own marketplace app in 2020. Users who live in its delivery area can sign up for the app, and once their location is approved for delivery, they can select their favorite restaurant from a list and order to their private yard or a shared delivery point.
The company operates from large stripmalls, where they establish their station in an open lot in proximity to shops and restaurants. With the current drone delivery system, an operator picks up the food order from the restaurant, loads the drone with the package, and then the drone flies to the customer’s house autonomously.
In September 2023, the company announced it has developed a new system capability, Autonomous Pickups [4]. According to Flytrex, the new system, which will be deployed in 2024, will reduce human involvement in the delivery process. Rather than manually collecting orders for delivery, the new system will have the drone fly to the restaurant, retrieve the customer's order itself using a tether, and then fly directly to the customer's house to deliver their food.
Drone specifications
Flytrex’s drone cruises at 51.5 km/h (32 mph) at an altitude of 76 meters (250 feet). The drone can fly 8 kilometers (5 miles) round-trip, carrying up to 2.5 kg (5.5 lbs) worth of food and groceries. Each station can fly multiple drones simultaneously under the supervision of a single drone pilot.
With its six propellers, the drone takes off and automatically flies to the delivery address, utilizing GPS to locate the programmed delivery point and other built-in sensors to check for obstacles. The drone then descends to 24 meters (80 feet), where it hovers as it slowly lowers the cargo to the ground using a proprietary tether mechanism. The drones do not have cameras.
To uphold the strictest safety standards, all Flytrex drones are built with extensive redundancies (e.g. extra propellers, multiple batteries) allowing the drone to return to the station in case of a failure. The drone is also equipped with a parachute that deploys if a major failure occurs that prevents the drone from continuing its flight.
References
- ^ a b "Flytrex, Causey Aviation Unmanned Win Part 135 Air Carrier Certification for Long-Range, On-Demand Commercial Drone Delivery". dronelife. Jan 30, 2023. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
- ^ a b "Flytrex to use new FAA BVLOS approval to scale US-wide drone delivery activity". DroneDJ. Jan 1, 2023. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
- ^ "Yup, Drone Delivery of Retail Packages is Finally Here – in Iceland". dronelife. Aug 25, 2017. Retrieved 21 November 2023.
- ^ "Papa Johns, Little Caesars take to the skies with Flytrex autonomous delivery". Restaurantdive. Sep 14, 2023. Retrieved 21 November 2023.