Walmart on Tuesday launched its third drone delivery trial of the month. As well as ferrying groceries and wellness items by air, the big-box store is now dropping off at-home COVID-19 self-collection kits to folks in Nevada and New York.
The experiment—a collaboration with Quest Diagnostics and DroneUp—marks what Senior VP of customer product Tom Ward called "an innovative new way to provide additional, and contactless, testing options" during a global pandemic.
Qualifying patients must live in a single-family residence within one mile of a designated Walmart Supercenter in North Las Vegas or Cheektowaga, NY. Kits are available at no cost for materials or delivery, and will land on the customer's driveway, front sidewalk, or backyard—depending on obstructing vehicles and trees. Once received, simply follow the instructions for performing a self-administered nasal swab, then send the sample to Quest Diagnostics (using the included prepaid shipping label) for testing.
"There's a lot we can learn from our drone delivery pilots to help determine what roles drones can play in pandemic response, health care delivery, and retail," Ward wrote in a blog post. "We hope drone delivery of self-collection kits will shape contactless testing capabilities on a larger scale and continue to bolster the innovative ways Walmart plans to use drone delivery in the future."
Early this month, Walmart teamed with Israeli startup Flytrex to deliver select grocery and household items from brick-and-mortar stores to consumers' homes in North Carolina using a six-propeller machine and line tether. The drones, controlled via the cloud, can fly at 32mph, up to 230 feet, while carrying a 6.6-pound load. Less than a week later, the retail chain announced plans to dispatch health and wellness products within Northwest Arkansas through medical product delivery firm Zipline. Boasting a 50-mile distribution radius, Zipline's airplane-esque drones can reach cruising altitudes of up to 1,600 feet at speeds of 63mph.
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