Drone Food Delivery

Manna sat they are going to deliver food March 2020 in UCD. 'Drone delivery company Manna plans to pilot its takeaway food delivery service on the campus of University College Dublin from the end of March.' Which will be great if it happens.

I can't find any videos of someone making an order and getting it delivered. Or anything close to a test run of that. Including from students seeing a delivery test and recording that.

All there is is slick PR video that is not a real delivery

I've asked some people involved if they had done test runs in UCD and I was told they did test runs in 'Last 3 years in wales and here. Tens of thousands of flights. UCD Just another step in the process.' 

Physical startups are hard. Airbnb and Uber took existing hardware, a mobile app and lots of negotiations with a regulator to create businesses worth billions. Manna seem to be negotiating with the regulator 'Irish Aviation Authority questions new Dublin food drone delivery service'. They could use the delivery company app or a version of that that let you indicate you were in UCD and what drop point you wanted to use. Getting that to only to all UCD students would be tricky but not impossible. If it not all students but only a few then it is a demo not a pilot. The drone they are using is well known so that is existing hardware. Both AirBnb and Uber did lots of physical testing of their product in the early phases and doing this with drones is really visible.

I could be wrong to be suspicious that this is going to be a demo not a full pilot for lots of people over an extended period. If I am wrong I will admit that next month. It will be cool if they can get this delivery pilot working then.