Fiona Govan
THE Villaverde district in Madrid is poised to become the first place in Europe to try out a home delivery service using drones.
Madrid’s City Council has approved a pilot test for a flying robot service run by GesDron in Villaverde, a district in the south of the capital which could be operational within months.
Angel Niño, Madrid’s council delegate in charge of Innovation and Entrepreneurship said that not only does delivery by drone offer a quick and efficient delivery service but it is also more environmentally friendly, easing traffic in congested city streets and lessening pollution.
“We have already started pilot tests in and around the GesDron warehouse that uses remote controlled drones to collect food deliveries from restaurants and deliver them to homes,” he explained adding that they could also be used to deliver small packages.
But there are still a few issues to be ironed out before the pilot project can launch to the public.
The deliveries can be made to rooftops or terraces of properties but not everyone has access to these areas so the service will be limited to those that do.
Plus strict regulations currently govern the use of drones in built up areas so new legislation is needed to licence their use for home delivery, something that could be introduced in the coming months, Niño said.
Drones are already used in many ways across Spain, from monitoring roads to aiding lifeguard services on beaches.
Since the start of the pandemic, Spain’s police forces have used drones to monitor residents and catch them out if they breached Covid-19 restrictions.
They even monitored visitors in cemeteries on All Saint’s Day to ensure people kept social distancing and didn’t exceed the permitted number of people within one group.
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