Here’s What It Takes to Make Your Roasted Chicken Come From the Sky via Drone

Wing is a subsidiary of Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company. Wing operates its drone delivery service in several places on the globe: the United States, Finland, and Australia. Its autonomous drones can fly at altitudes of up to 131 ft (40 m) and can reach a top speed of 68 mph (110 kph). The aircraft weighs around 10 pounds (4.5 kg), while the attached package adds another 3.3 lb (1.5 kg).

The team from Adam Savage’s Tested was granted access to one of Wing’s test facilities south of San Francisco. There are around 50 delivery drones at the facility, which was set up in 2018 and is in a remote location, with no residential houses nearby.

It is a place where Wing tests the platform it's developed to make sure it runs properly. Wing’s aircraft are not designed to necessarily look like a plane, but to meet some crucial requirements for drone delivery: they have to be reliable, safe and have a minimal impact on the community.

Over a thousand flight hours had to be completed by Wing to get its required certification.

The guys at Adam Savage’s Tested got to see the inside of the test facility and were also offered an outdoor demonstration. They were also presented with early prototypes of the Wing drone.

One of the places where Wing is increasingly popular is Australia, where it turned the city of Logan into the drone delivery capital of the world. The company has made well over 50,000 deliveries over there and has recently announced a new delivery model in the area: a rooftop delivery service by drone.