BOSTON – United Parcel Service said Friday it successfully used a drone to deliver medicine to an island near Boston, jumping into a race with competitors such as Amazon.Com to test drone delivery inside the United States.
The delivery of an inhaler on Thursday was conducted in partnership with CyPhy Works, a drone maker in which UPS holds a stake. The delivery kicks off a wider test by UPS of using drones for commercial deliveries to remote or difficult-to-access areas.
“UPS has a history of trying to take a look at new technologies as they evolve,” said Chuck Holland, a vice president of industrial engineering. “We’re looking at this in steps,” he added, declining to say whether the company may someday use drones more broadly.
UPS’s delivery marks the first major commercial delivery conducted via drone in the U.S. since the Federal Aviation Administration implemented long-awaited rules in late August authorizing businesses to start using small drones. The company previously has tested drone use for indoor warehouses and international disaster or human-aid relief, which aren’t subject to the same regulations. UPS is on the FAA’s drone advisory committee.
“Now we can conduct commercial operations without having to go through the rigmarole of getting an exemption from the FAA,” said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chief technologist of CyPhy Works, the Boston-area drone startup that operated the drone. UPS invested an undisclosed sum in CyPhy last year via its strategic enterprise fund.
UPS joins a crowded field of companies including Amazon and Google parent Alphabet Inc. eager to deploy drone technology. Amazon unveiled its plans to deliver via drone in late 2013 and has lobbied for faster action from regulators. It made a deal with British authorities in July to begin testing deliveries in the U.K., where drone regulations are seen as less stringent as in the United States.
Alphabet, meanwhile, said in early September that it plans to use drones to deliver burritos at Virginia Tech in a test of its technology. Deutsche Post AG’s DHL also has tested delivery by drones, including medicine to a German island in the North Sea.
Traditional delivery companies generally have expressed more skepticism about the likelihood of package delivery via drones. “There are two enormous transportation networks that are built around moving light packages and freight, and they are FedEx and UPS,” FedEx Corp. Chief Executive Fred Smith said after Amazon’s 2013 announcement.
UPS’s brown and white drone, which was emblazoned with its logo, took off from Beverly, Mass., carrying the 2-pound package. It flew 3 miles over water within line of sight to a nearby island, touching down in a patch of grass. The drone flew autonomously, without a human pilot, simulating an urgent medical delivery.
One incentive for UPS to invest in drone technology is that the company has higher labor costs than rival FedEx due to its unionized drivers, package sorters and other workers. Still, any wider scale use of unmanned technology to do those jobs likely would complicate the delivery giant’s relationship with the Teamsters labor union.
