Wing, Walmart expand drone delivery into metro Atlanta
By DRONELIFE Editor Jim Magill
Drone delivery company Wing and retail giant Walmart have expanded their UAV delivery service partnership with the opening of six new delivery hubs in the metropolitan Atlanta region.
The move is part of a broader expansion effort to bring drone delivery hubs to 100 additional Walmart stores in five new U.S. metropolitan areas by the end of 2026, Wing said in a statement.
“We’re just thrilled with this moment. It’s the first step of many with our partnership with Walmart,” Kent Ferguson, Wing’s head of partnerships, said in an interview with DroneLife. We’re thrilled to offer a fast, convenient, cost-effective mode of delivery to Walmart customers.”
The two companies currently partner with one another to provide drone delivery service in the Dallas/Fort Worth region of Texas. As in its DFW operations, Wing will employ its proprietary multi-rotor vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles in its deliveries.
After taking off from the staging area at the store site, the UAVs will cruise at altitude of 150 feet to the drop-off destination where they will lower their cargo to the delivery site on a tether. With a cruising speed of about 65 mph, the drones are able to deliver in an area within a 6-mile radius of the store within minutes.
Ferguson said the Walmart locations chosen to host a delivery hub were carefully chosen, based on customer demand and the suitability of the physical layout of the store location for the construction of a hub.
“We size our infrastructure, depending on the store and their constraints, and then the customers that are within the area,” he said “We’re also being conscious of the overlap between stores and we want to make sure that we can launch to maximize our customer reach, but not necessarily have two stores on top of each other.”
The delivery hub at each Walmart store is unique. For example, the store location that the partners chose to launch the expansion has fewer pads for takeoffs and landing than what one would see at a Walmart in Dallas.
Prior to launching the expansion into the Atlanta Metro area, the partners worked with state and local government officials and interest groups “to ensure that they understand what it is we’re doing with respect to drone delivery, and the value that it brings to the community,” Ferguson said.
“By and large, we’ve been very warmly received not only in Dallas, but now in Atlanta as well. We were excited about launching in Atlanta because it’s always been a forward-leaning city with roots in aviation and innovation,” he said. “We’ve been thrilled with the response thus far.”
Currently, eligible customers in the Atlanta area are able to order products from Walmart on the Wing app. Customers should first go to https://wing.com/Walmart to see if their address is eligible to receive drone delivery. If they are eligible, customers will be able to download the Wing app and sign up to begin placing orders for Walmart products.
Walmart products eligible for drone delivery include grocery items, last-minute gifts, household goods and over-the-counter medicine.
Once the order is placed, the Wing system automatically chooses a route to safely and efficiently deliver the package, avoiding other aircraft and obstacles. The Wing app transmits the order to associates at the appropriate store, who then pick up the ordered items and pack them in a specially designed delivery box, which is then carried out to the drone staging area, or nest, and loaded onto the waiting drone.
When it reaches its destination, the drone checks for obstacles, such as cars or trampolines near the selected delivery zone. The UAV can automatically move to avoid such obstacles before gently lowering the order on its tether. The entire process, from order placement to delivery, will be accomplished within 30 minutes or less, Ferguson said.
Initially deliveries will be made using the same model drone that Wing currently uses in it DFW operations. These aerial vehicles weigh about 11 pounds and can carry two-and-a-half-pound payloads. However, later this month or early next year, Wing plans to put into service a larger drone model, which still is under 20 pounds but which can carry twice the payload.
Expansion to cover major American cities
Wing reports that in the DFW region today, it successfully delivers thousands of orders to Walmart customers’ homes weekly. The company added that more than 75% of its drone delivery service customers have used the service more than once in the past year.
In its statement, Wing said the company and its partner Walmart chose the Atlanta metro area for the first phase of their expansion of drone delivery service because of the region’s dense population and the high customer demand for rapid delivery.
The next metropolitan areas targeted for drone delivery expansion by the partners are Charlotte, Houston, Orlando and Tampa. Under the partners’ ambitious expansion plans first announced in June, drone deliver will soon be available at Walmart stores located within 10 miles of 90% of the U.S. population.
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
