This fireside chat recap is from FreightWaves’ DroneWaves Summit.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Flying beyond the line of sight
DETAILS: FreightWaves’ Anthony Smith discusses the future of drone delivery and dispels misconceptions about the industry with Yariv Bash.
SPEAKER: Bash is the co-founder and CEO of Flytrex Aviation, which provides autonomous drone delivery solutions for the food and retail sectors. His company was the first in the world to deploy a B2C drone delivery system in an urban environment in Reykjavik, Iceland. Flytrex is part of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) commercial drone pilot program.
BIO: Previously, Bash was the co-founder and the first CEO of SpaceIL, a $100 million Israeli nonprofit organization that attempted to land Beresheet, the first private interplanetary robotic mission, on the moon in April 2019.
KEY QUOTES FROM BASH:
“We’re doing all deliveries, and most specifically, we’re doing backyard deliveries, focusing on food from restaurants, retail foods straight to people’s backyards. We’ve been working with the FAA for almost four years now on building a certifiable aviation vehicle that can perform $5 deliveries to backyards, which is a bit of a miracle.”
On the current phase of the FAA’s commercial drone pilot program: “How do you fly beyond the visual line of sight? How do you build a system that can now really scale and have multiple companies flying in the same airspace with manned airplanes sharing the same sky? You’ve only got one sky for everyone and that’s being solved these days.”
On backyard drone deliveries: “If you remember 20 years ago when you made online orders, let’s say, Amazon, you added items to your cart. And then you checked out and you selected how fast you wanted it versus how much it would cost you. Today, most people just click ‘buy now.’ With drone deliveries, we can take on-demand to that level. So if you eat tomatoes for dinner, just click ‘buy now’ and get them in 15 minutes or less.”