Walmart is using drones to conduct COVID-19 tests in Vegas

Clients will receive a text message from DroneUp when the Task diagnostics (DGX) The test is on his way. And depending on where the cars and trees are located, groups will land on people’s walkways, front sidewalks, or backyards. Delivery, which may take as little as five minutes, will be free.

“We hope that the delivery of self-assembly drone kits will shape contactless testing capabilities on a larger scale and continue to promote the innovative ways Walmart plans to use in delivering drone deliveries in the future,” said Tom Ward, senior vice president of consumer products at Walmart. . Blog post.

There are restrictions on the program. Drone shipments are only available “until supplies are depleted” between 8:30 am and 3:30 pm and for single-family homes. Deliveries can be prevented through “unexpected physical barriers, power lines, trees, cars, or weather.”

In other words, if you need to get tested for Covid-19 on a rainy day, it probably won’t come via a drone.

To keep failed deliveries to a minimum, Quest Diagnostics said delivery areas will be “cleared in real time” in advance.

The Covid-19 drone testing program is just part of Walmart’s experiments with drones.

“We know it will be some time before we see millions of packages being delivered by drone,” Walmart CEO Ward wrote in a separate blog post. “It still sounds like a kind of science fiction, but we’re at a point where we’re learning more and more about the technology available and how we can use it to make the lives of our customers easier.”