PHOENIX — Are you ready for drone delivery?
Walmart is teaming up with DroneUp to expand its drone delivery network to the Valley later this year.
The program will launch at 34 different Walmart locations, which could provide four million U.S. households with the convenience of drone delivery and the ability to deliver more than one million packages by drone within the year.
DroneUp CEO Tom Walker says the service may be available in Arizona by the end of summer.
He says families can use it to order food, over the counter medicine, even batteries.
Customers would be able to order certain items between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. and expect their package to be air delivered in as little as 30 minutes.
The total weight of the delivery is up to 10lbs and the delivery fee is $3.99.
The drones will fly at an altitude of about 200 feet and as fast as 30 miles per hour, weather permitting.
Walter says safety is the top priority. The drones will not be flying over people or moving cars. The drones even come equipped with parachutes in case something goes wrong.
Walker says, "It senses there's a lack of control or sudden drop of more than one second, a change in angle that indicates a serious problem, the system shuts off all the props and deploys a parachute and sets the drone on the ground."
An exact date for when the services will be available hasn’t yet been announced.
