UPS Drone Makes First Home Prescription Deliveries For CVS (reuters.com) 20
UPS subsidiary Flight Forward has completed the first prescription medication delivery to a customer's home by drone. Reuters reports: Flight Forward's maiden delivery flight on Friday in Cary, North Carolina, beat rivals in one phase of the race for the nascent market. The second drone flight delivered medications to a public space at a retirement community. The packages, roughly the size of small shoeboxes, were lowered from drones hovering at an altitude of about 20 feet. UPS and CVS said on Tuesday the deliveries were the first of their kind under an program approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Regulators are still hammering out rules for how the unmanned winged vehicles will operate in U.S. airspace and guidelines are expected in 2021.
Can't wait (Score:2)
This needs to be regulated by people with actually functional brains.
It's unfortunate, isn't it (Score:2)
> This needs to be regulated by people with actually functional brains.
It's unfortunate that people with functional brains don't tend to be the people who want to spend their time controlling what everyone else does. Maybe one day we'll get a non-stupid politician.
Receipt (Score:4, Funny)
Did they send a second drone to deliver the receipt?
Of COURSE they use a prescription drug delivery (Score:3)
I guess delivering lifesaving or life-improving medication as a first, news-item-worthy, payload is the "we want it to look good and people to support drone swarms" mirror of going after the most disgusting child-abusing scumbag available when trying out new censorship laws.
Then people who oppose, or suggest ways to discourage, the deployment get to look like murders.
this idea won't fly (Score:4, Insightful)
retail has terrible margins in their pharmacy because of their overhead. the only thing that keeps the doors open at CVS/Walgreens is the people who come in to pick up their trifecta (metformin, lisinopril and atorvastatin) also stock up on soda, chips and candy. killing your foot traffic is a recipe for going out of business.
but what do i know?
Re: (Score:1)
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They'll be creepier than an old blacked out van down the street.
Bad news, fuck the world (Score:2)
Does anyone not see a problem? (Score:1)
Re: Does anyone not see a problem? (Score:1)
Re: Does anyone not see a problem? (Score:1)
It all depends on the altitude in which these fly and the anti-theft mechanism involved. It's going to be
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ballistic delivery (Score:1)
would be way better.
FOOOMP............3...2...1...ding!
noisy last mile (Score:1)
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While I share your concern, so many people are now full-time indoor dwellers that keep their windows shut year-round.
My neighbors *never* open their windows. They switch directly from heat to air conditioning and back to heat.
As long as the noise isn't loud enough to be heard inside over the sound of the electronic devices people are using indoors, I think there won't be much pushback.
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I can hear the UPS truck from two blocks away. That's quite a bit of noise right there.
What's this AN program about? (Score:1)
Doorbell? (Score:2)
There's a future in this, really (Score:1)
There's a growing market for this that mot people aren't seeing. Those who are alone. Seriously alone.
I just got out of the hospital (twice in succession) and had to have prescriptions filled. I was taking Lyft to and from the hospital because I literally have no one I know here who I could ask to help me. Trying to get to the store to get my prescriptions was not a good experience.
For those who don't have friends, families, partners, etc. this kind of thing is game changing. It would have been great to som