The FlyTrex Mule, a small octocopter of the size of a small box, is capable of carrying up to 6 lbs – the equivalent weight of a crate of beer.
Designed for making deliveries to customers (albeit small loads in comparison to Amazon’s drones), it can fly for up to 14 miles, at a speed of about 45mph.
However, unlike Amazon’s drones that land outside the delivery address, it drops the packages to the ground, attached to a cord. Once the bag is on the ground, the cord releases and the package is left for the recipient to receive the goods.
The company behind the FlyTrex drone is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Rather than creating drones that will be sold as hardware to businesses wanting to start offering drone deliveries, the company has focused on providing the cloud-based back-end to allow customers to operate the drones remotely.
CEO and cofounder of the FlyTrex, Yariv Bash, says that more than 80% of the deliveries made by Amazon to its customers weigh less than 6lbs. He believes it’s more important to focus on the infrastructure behind a drone system rather than the drones themselves.
“It’s one thing to design a nice drone to deliver goods, but it’s much more complicated to take charge of the whole system,” Flytrex CEO Yariv Bash told ISRAEL21c.
Businesses can control every delivery made by the drone using the Flytrex API. However, The Flytrex drone charges companies for each take-off and the number of drones it flies.
FlyTrex hasn’t given the complete information about the project. However, the firm is working on a deal with a postal agency to be able to start delivering packages in the next year in an unknown ‘urban environment.’
