Covid-19 led Alphabet’s drone delivery to soar, delivering more than 1,000 orders in two weeks, mostly toilet paper.

Alphabet’s drone delivery division, Wing, said the company was witnessing a significant increase in demand for its services over the past two weeks – when the Covid-19 epidemic began to break out in the US. In just 2 weeks, they completed more than 1,000 drone deliveries to customers. The most requested item in orders: toilet paper.

Wing was one of the earlier moonshot divisions of Google X. In 2018, the division was split into a separate company, operating in drone delivery in Christiansburg, Virginia as well as in several regions in Finland and Australia. In the US today, this is the only drone-based commercial delivery service available to the public, even though Amazon is also preparing to launch a competing service in the near future: Prime Air.

A drone of Wing.

” No one can predict the corona virus, so even we were surprised by the skyrocketing demand of our customers who were” in a shelter “in Virginia .” Alexa Dennett, head of Wing’s marketing and communications division, said in an interview with Business Insider.

Here’s how Wing works:

People in the service area can download the Wing app to order an item. When their purchase is complete, a drone will take off from Wing’s station to the merchant’s place of pickup. When the cargo is loaded on the drone, it will fly at about 65 mph (about 104 km / h) to the customer’s home. Upon arrival, it will drop to 7m or lower to drop the package.

Dennett said Wing’s drones needed a space “about the size of a camping blanket ” to safely drop packages.

” We have delivered to apartment buildings in Helsinki in Finland and these places usually have a small yard where we can safely put the packages down .” Dennett adds.

The delivery way of Wing.

Toilet paper is one of the 3 items in the highest demand today. Wing also delivered soups, baby food and over-the-counter medicines from Walgreens. Items such as coffee or ice cream will be delivered in insulated containers.

With customer demand increasing sharply and becoming more diverse, Wing is creating new partnerships.

” In Australia, we get dozens of milk and bread delivery requests, so we have to add a grocery store here, ” Dennett said. Similarly, they ” speeded up ” discussions with retailers in Virginia, because the company understood that ” their business is being affected at this time .”

The company did not say how many drones it has or plans to expand in the future, only saying that it is expecting to get a lot of feedback from existing customers.

” These are just early days so it is difficult to know how the corona virus will shape our business strategy .” Dennett said. ” It is vitally important now that we want more families in the United States and around the world to have access to our technology, but we have nothing specific at this time .”

Refer to Business Insider