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A freshly laundered shirt, covered in plastic, flaps in the wind as it takes flight from in front of Manayunk Cleaners in Philadelphia.
It wasn’t picked up by a breeze, though, rather a remote-controlled aircraft, which ferries the shirt across the sky on a delivery run to a nearby customer.
“I’m all about technology and I see a lot of these cleaners, it’s so old school. You come in…and you just pick it up. I needed to spice things up,” says Manayunk Cleaners owner Harout Vartanian.
The 24-year-old, who’s trying to attract a young clientele at his Main Street shop that opened last September, converted a four-bladed DJI Phantom quadracopter, designed for taking aerial photography, into a dry cleaning delivery machine.
“We fly it to your house, it makes a noise, you pick it up and that’s that,” Vartanian says. “We posted a video to YouTube and it went viral. And ever since then, people have been asking ‘Hey, can you deliver my clothes by drone?’”
It takes two people — a spotter and pilot — to complete a delivery. The UAS is launched from the sidewalk and once airborne, the clothes are attached to a makeshift hanging clip. Then, with clothes securely attached, the machine heads for its destination. But since it is small, it’s limited in how far it can go and much can be delivered in one trip.
“Right now, this particular model can only carry one to two pounds,” Vartanian said. He says that equates to a shirt or two. “There’s a higher-end model that we haven’t purchased yet, but obviously in the future that’s what we’re going to use. It carries around 5-10 pounds.”
So far they’ve focused the UAS deliveries on customers from nearby businesses to log some flight hours, according to Vartanian.
Tim Nedzwecky had clean towels for his dog grooming business, The Groom Room, flown over. He calls the service “awesome.” Asked whether he’s concerned the towels might get dirty on their flight, Nedzwecky says no.
“I think that if something happens, they’ll fix it,” Nedzwecky said.
Next, Vartanian says they’ll randomly select one customer a month to have their clothes delivered by air for free. Then he hopes to expand the programme and deploy a fleet of drones to deliver clothes to all customers.
While the UAS deliveries are not exactly practical, they do get attention.
People often stop to look at the device flying high over Main Street, sometimes nearly a dozen at a time.
“It’s pretty crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it. I was wondering what the hell that was, to be honest,” said Trish Pasquarello. The 24-year-old said she’d try UAS delivery because it would be easier than having to carry her clothes.
“It’s just something fun to watch,” says Bruce Cook. The contractor, who’s working on a project across the street from the cleaners, said he’s been watching the test flights for some time.
“It’s a novelty, it’s pretty cool, it’s cute, all that, but it’s not practical,” he said. “What would have been better, would have been if there had been a tractor-trailer coming down and met it.”
Vartanian doesn’t think his UAS falls under the FAA guidelines. He insists it’s “just a toy” and is being used as a way to promote his business.
“It’s amazing. It’s something new, it’s definitely a step towards the future,” he said. “[Customers] have never seen anything like this and hopefully they’ll get used to it because that’s what we’ll plan on doing.”
[ Projects using QuadCopters for delivery are abundant – we’ve covered several in recent months:
You can judge for yourself how serious they all are…Ed.]
Source: NBC 10 Philadelphia
This is exactly what will kill the UAS industry. The first time one of these idiotic endeavors get’s someone seriously injured that will end the industry. Law will be passed and rightfully so.
At the least a serious injury, at worst someone will get killed.
High speed propellers.
A couple pounds travelling at 20 mph.
What could go wrong! IDIOTS!
This is also illegal. Commercial use is prohibited…. Hopefully, people like this will attract the attention of the federal government and the stupidity will end. I love my quad, but idiots like this need to be stopped.