Zipline's new drone can deliver medical supplies at 79 miles per hour

Source: CNBC | April 3, 2018 | Magdalena Petrova, Lora Kolodny

A merry gang of engineers from SpaceX, Boeing, Google and Willow Garage, started Zipline in 2011 to make and use drones for social good. The company beat Amazon and FedEx to the punch, firing up drone-based logistics in 2016. In two years, they have logged more than 186,000 miles and over 4,000 deliveries.

While Zipline CEO Keller Rinaudo and CTO Keenan Wryobeck initially focused on delivering life-saving medical supplies, especially blood, to clinics in hard to reach parts of Rwanda — their company is planning to expand to new markets this year, including the U.S.

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The Zip 2 can travel at a top speed around 79 miles per hour, carrying 3.85 pounds of cargo. That’s fast enough to get a unit of blood to a hospital that’s out of stock within 15 to 30 minutes almost anywhere in Rwanda.

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The start-up will start making deliveries in the U.S. this year as a part of an FAA pilot program for drone businesses. Once Zipline establishes a base in the U.S., the company’s CTO confirmed, it should be able to make deliveries within a half hour (or less) to people in a defined service area. One service area would have a 99-mile diameter and encompass a population of about 10 million people.

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