Mumbai restaurant uses drone to deliver pizza

A Mumbai restaurant has taken the aerial route to beat Mumbai's traffic snarls, using a drone to execute a delivery, PTI reported.

The agency reported Francesco's Pizzeria chief executive Mikhel Rajani as saying all had read about (global e-commerce giant) Amazon's plans of using drones but the outlet successfully carried out a test-delivery by sending a pizza to a customer located 1.5 km away on 11 May.

"All of us had read about Amazon's plans of using drones. We successfully carried out a test-delivery by sending a pizza to a customer located 1.5 km away from our outlet on May 11," Francesco's Pizzeria chief executive Mikhel Rajani told PTI

He added though it was only a test-flight, its results however confirmed that it could be used routinely in a few years.

According to Rajani, a four-rotor drone took off with the order from the outlet in central Mumbai's Lower Parel area and delivered it to a high-rise building in adjacent Worli area. He claimed it was for the first time that the ubiquitous drone had been used for such a purpose in the country.

The eatery, which had been in operation for two years, had made a video of the delivery, he said, adding an auto engineer friend helped with making the flight possible.

Rajani whose family business is textiles, said the drone saved time and costs for a company like his, which would otherwise need to depend on a two-wheeler borne agent for pizza delivery.

Meanwhile, according to IANS the experimental pizza delivery had raised security concerns, with Mumbai police and civil aviation authorities seeking explanation from the company.

Mumbai police officials would seek explanation from the company, while according to Air Traffic Control (ATC) officials norms stipulated taking permission prior to flying any object in the sky.

However, a company spokesperson dismissing the security concerns of the police and aviation authorities said, in order to ensure that security was not breached, small aircraft of the type were not allowed to fly an altitude over 400 feet.

Also they were barred from flying over any security establishments in and around the city, the spokesperson added.

Furthermore, after an eight km flight, the drone's battery automatically drained out making it non-operational.

He added, in the experiment a few days ago, the drone used for delivering the pizza cost around $200, which is considered a long-term ecological alternative for such purposes as it consumed less than 65 watts energy, or equal to that consumed by a small light bulb.