drone News Updates

Drone-delivery technology company Flytrex announced it has raised $7.5 million in Series B funding, according to a Jan. 8 press release. This round brings the company’s total to $11 million.

The day after Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com Inc.’s midyear sale, a company drone took off from a playground in the city of Xi’an to deliver one of the orders in a football-sized box to a village in the mountains to the south.

In a bid to achieve the practical use of self-driving flying cars in the 2020s, the government will establish a public-private council possibly within this year to discuss safety issues, technological development and other matters, Japanese newspaper The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

A three-year, $5.9 million study in central Ohio will use drones to monitor traffic on a 35-mile highway, and provide new information used to prevent crashes between manned and unmanned aircraft.

Amazon.com wowed the world in 2013 with a video purporting to show what the future of the delivery industry would look like. But are we any closer to that now? The answer seems to be no — at least in Japan.

Uber Technologies Inc. plans to deliver food by drone in San Diego as part of a wide-reaching commercial test program approved by the federal government May 9, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said.

At Memphis International Airport, drones may soon be inspecting planes and delivering airplane parts for FedEx Corp. In Reno, Nev., they will test airlifting life-saving defibrillators to patients. And customers in Virginia could be awaiting Alphabet Inc.’s flying devices to get goods they ordered.

A who’s who of technology and aviation companies won U.S. approval to push the edge of the envelope in drone flights, from testing people’s tolerance for delivery devices hovering over their rooftops to ensuring farmers’ drones won’t hit crop dusters.

Retailers, railroads and electricity companies are pressing for U.S. government approval to fly drones longer distances. Regulators, geared to an aviation industry that can take five years to get a new jetliner in the air, are struggling to adjust to the breakneck pace.

>Deliveries by drones took a step closer to being allowed in the U.S. after a federal advisory panel agreed on a framework for allowing law enforcement to routinely track the small devices.