Back in December when Amazon announced that it wanted to use drones to deliver packages to Prime users in only 30 minutes, many folks thought that sounded farfetched. Word has now surfaced from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that the government wants to trial its own delivery service in Dubai using drones.
The service would feature drone aircraft to deliver items to citizens such as driver’s licenses and other government documents. A prototype drone was unveiled this week and the UAE government plans to test the drone for six months.
The battery-powered quadrotor will carry packages in an upper cargo compartment. It also will have fingerprint scanners and retina scanners to ensure delivery to the correct person. The team behind the drones says they could cost as little as $1100(USD) each, and carry loads up to 3.3 pounds distances up to 1.86 miles.
Assuming a successful test in Dubai, the government wants to roll the drone aircraft out to the remainder of the country in the next year.
[via The National via The Verge]
Apple has rolled out a patch for three previously unknown zero-day exploits that were used to hack into the iPhone 6 of Ahmed Mansoor, an award-winning human rights activist based in the United Arab Emirates. Security company Lookout and internet wat...
NASA wants whatever help it can get for its journey to Mars, and it's willing to forge some unusual partnerships to make that happen. Case in point: the agency has reached an agreement with the United Arab Emirates that will have them cooperating on...
The world's first 3D-printed office building opened this week in Dubai, Reuters reports. The 2,700-square-foot, single-story building was built in just 17 days using a gigantic, 20-foot tall 3D printer and a special mix of concrete, fiber reinforced...
Desert countries are frequently victims of their elevation. They tend to be mostly flat, making it tough for air to climb upwards and form rain clouds. The United Arab Emirates thinks there's a direct solution to this, however: make your own mounta...
Apparently, the World Drone Prix was just the tip of the robotic sports iceberg. Dubai has announced that it's holding the World Future Sports Games, a broader competition, in late December 2017. The tech-focused event will include drone races as w...
While there are plenty of efforts to make drone racing a serious sport, Dubai is determined to outdo them all. It's about to host the World Drone Prix, which will robotic fliers against each other in high-speed (over 62MPH) competition. Over 100 team...
With Uncharted 4 slipping into 2016, Sony's PlayStation 4 doesn't have much in the way of exclusives this fall. But in its ongoing battle with Microsoft and the Xbox One, the company does have a fallback to stay competitive: price-cuts. After dropp...
