Google X Project Wing

Google X Reveals about Project Wing

Google X reveals about Project Wing The latest news from Google X, the titan of web secretive special projects lab, is that it is engaged in a drone-based delivery system known as Project Wing. Initially the core purpose of Project Wing was to deliver defibrillators to heart attacks patients within just two minutes. However, Google reported that there had been issues regarding integration of the technology with US current emergency service and 911 systems, and thus the purpose of this project shifted to general problems and conditions where the usual courier help does not reach at the earliest.

Where most of the small and medium scale autonomous drones generally revolve around quad-copters, Google has taken a new approach for Project Wing with a tail-sitter design. As the name suggests, the new Project Wing aircraft takes-off and lands on its tail (vertically), however it flies horizontally just like a usual plane. This approach of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) was earlier tested in some of the aircrafts designs but the thrust vectoring was found to be more feasible for manned flight.

One of the best features of Project Wing aircraft is that it weighs just below 19 pounds with five feet of wingspan and four electric motors. The aircraft has external sensors and radios for auto flight. However, there is an additional camera installed which can be used in emergency situations by remote pilot.

There has been a video released for the same aircraft, in which it can be clearly seen that the parcels are dropped from altitude. This is to avoid people directly snatching and pulling the parcels from the aircraft. This is risky, considering the four propellers of the drone whizzing at a high speed. Thus, the air drop solution is deemed to be more practical as it allows the items to be dropped from a height and stay above low altitude obstacles, such as humans, cars, animals, cables, trees, etc.

As mentioned earlier in the article, the prime purpose of Project Wing was to deliver defibrillators to heart attack victims but its integration with 911 systems could not work. As for now, it seems like Google X is focusing on just creating a safe and functional autonomous drone delivery system, with no particular goal in view. According to the director of Google X labs, Astro Teller, “Throughout history there have been a series of innovations that have each taken a huge chunk out of the friction of moving things around. FedEx overnight delivery has absolutely changed the world again. We’re starting to see same-day service actually change the world. Why would we think that the next 10x — being able to get something in just a minute or two — wouldn’t change the world?” Note that drones are a multiuse technology all around the world.

Before the autonomous drone delivery system, Google announced its self driving cars which the company plans to launch soon. With all such innovations and advancements it would not be surprising to see the future embedded in Google’s hemisphere.

Related Study: http://www.researchomatic.com/Use-Of-Drones-129751.html