Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries
https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/30/drone-crash-near-kids-leads-swiss-post-and-matternet-to-suspend-autonomous-deliveries/
A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles.
The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one.