Google Unveils Project Wing Drone Delivery Service

Google has developed a new delivery system that utilises autonomous drones for goods deliveries, in what is the latest effort to come out of the company's secretive tech research arm Google[x].

Project Wing is still years away from being used as a delivery service but has been revealed by Google following two years of development.

"Throughout history there have been a series of innovations that have each taken a huge chunk out of the friction of moving things around," said Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at Google[x].

"Project Wing aspires to take another big chunk out of the remaining friction of moving things around in the world."

A promotional video showing the delivery system at work in a remote area of Queensland in Australia was published by Google, displaying a drone equipped with rotors to allow for vertical take-off and landing.

"The goal of being here is to show that the hard work over the last two years has resulted in a reliable system that can do autonomous delivery," said Nicholas Roy, founder of Project Wing.

"We also really just want to get out and learn what it's like to actually deliver to the neighbour Neil and see what it's like from their perspective. It's years from a product but it is sort of the first prototype that we want to stand behind."

Project Wing is the latest move by a major tech firm to develop unmanned delivery drones. Last year, online retailer Amazon announced its own drone delivery service called Prime Air.

A recent ruling by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US, however, has meant that the flying of unmanned drones to deliver packages "for a fee" is not permitted.