Walmart is testing a drone delivery service for groceries and household goods

Walmart is getting into the drone delivery business. That’s right, the company wants to deliver grocery and household essentials to your front door using a drone. Yea, a freaking drone. And they’re starting the whole process with a pilot program in North Carolina.

Walmart is partnering up Flytrex, an end-to-end drone-delivery company, to get the ball rolling. And folks living in Fayetteville, North Carolina, will get first dibs on testing the service out.

“We know that it will be some time before we see millions of packages delivered via drone. That still feels like a bit of science fiction, but we’re at a point where we’re learning more and more about the technology that is available, and how we can use it to make our customers’ lives easier,” wrote Tom Ward, senior vice president of customer product at Walmart, in the announcement. 

Here’s a quick video of what these drone deliveries look like

As for the drones delivering Walmart’s goods, they’re capable of flying at 32 mph at 230 feet and can carry up to 6.6 pounds. And Flytrex drones are part of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Integration Pilot Program. This is the program that allows drones to fly outside of line-of-sight, obviously an important factor in drone delivery services.

Walmart isn’t the only player in the drone delivery business game. Amazon recently got FAA approval to begin its Prime Air delivery trials, as well as Wing, a subsidiary of Google. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more pop up in the next couple of years.

All in all, this is a step in the right direction for Walmart. With the company competing with Amazon every step of the way, this move was inevitable.

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Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.