Drone Startup Flirtey Partners with The University of Nevada, Reno To Push UAV Delivery Forward

The day when drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), fill the sky is no longer a futurist ideal but an impending reality. Drones have traditionally only been used for military and academic purposes, but within a few years they will be used commercially. Business Insider predicts that 12% of an estimated US$98 billion in global spending on drones over the next decade will be for commercial purposes.

Amazon Prime Air, Google Google Project Wing, Facebook and even NASA are all working on drone technology. Start-ups like Airware are working to provide drone hardware and software to deploy on missions from infrastructure inspection to humanitarian campaigns. Last year, Dominoes Pizza in the U.K. trialed pizza delivery with a drone called the DomiCopter; this year a pizzeria in Mumbai did the same. Now Dronies are the new Selfies, where people use drones with cameras to capture their group shots.

Flirtey Founder and CEO, Matthew Sweeny

Flirtey, a Sydney and Nevada based start-up is aiming to be one of the worlds first UAV delivery companies. The company conducted a world-first drone delivery test back in October 2013 and to date has conducted over a hundred successful test deliveries of textbooks, with its partner Zookal.

Flirtey has struck a partnership with The University of Nevada, Reno, a leading research center for Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAS). In exchange for equity, the University is providing access to its R&D labs for design, manufacture and research collaboration plus its indoor flight-testing facilities and supply graduate students to work with the company.

Governor Brian Sandoval of Nevada said, I am excited to welcomeFlirteyto the Nevada family. The partnership between Flirteyand the University of Nevada, Reno demonstrates a commitment to our shared vision of building a vibrant and sustainable economy.The collaboration betweenFlirteyand UNR will send a strong message that Nevada is a leader in this emerging industry not only because of our unique environment, but also because we are educating and training the aviation workforce of the future.

Flirteyis pioneering UAV delivery to make receiving packages as simple and as easy as possible, where customers no longer have to wait at home all hours for a delivery, or stand in line at the post office to pick up parcels.Flirteys vision is to provide drone delivery as a service, with its fleet of drones making autonomous deliveries directly to your location. Initially, Flirtey drones will trial deliveries over sparsely populated areas and within line of sight for deliveries that customers want within thirty minutes.

Although Amazon has begun lobbying the Federal Aviation Administration to speed up its approval of the usage of drones for commercial usage, it will likely be a few more years until it really happens. Being in Nevada, Flirtey is well positioned when it does. Until then, Flirtey is taking advantage of New Zealands more liberal UAV regulatory stance. The country has launched Airshare, a hub for UAV information, which will allow commercial operators to log their flights to ensure maximum safety. Flirtey will be among the first to participate in Airshare before it goes live later this year. Flirtey has also started lining up customers including urgent parcels, fast food, online retail, and medical deliveries in New Zealand and is looking for more partners. According toFlirtey, this marks the first use of fully automatedcommercial drones for package delivery in the world.

Deliveries viaFlirteycan be made in as little as two or three minutes, compared to two or three days for traditional shippingmethods. Upon arrival at an outdoor delivery destination,Flirteys drones hover and lower the parcel through a custom deliverymechanism that is attached to a retractable cord. Each drones real-time GPS location can be tracked via theFlirteysmartphone app. Currently Flirtey can carry up to 2kg for 10km, but with more time and investment, Flirtey looks to significantly increase the range and payload capacity.

Naturally, safety is a key concern for Flirtey. To prevent the dangerous scenario of a drone dropping from the sky, Flirteys drone is a hexa-copter that can continue to fly even when one rotor fails. They are also heavily investing in a redundant power supply.

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Drone Startup Flirtey Partners with The University of Nevada, Reno To Push UAV Delivery Forward