Ever wish a delicious Chipotle burrito would fall from the sky on command? That dream is about to become a reality for some lucky Virginia Tech students.
As Bloomberg reports, Chipotle has teamed up with Google's parent company, Alphabet, to deliver burritos by drone. No, we are not making this up.
The experimental service, approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, begins this month and lasts just a few weeks, so get your flying burrito while you can. Virginia Tech is one of the FAA's six approved drone test sites, and as Bloomberg explains, the university aims to become a leader in new transportation technology research, so the experiment is thought to be a win-win for all parties.
In a Thursday blog post discussing the initiative, Astro Teller, director of Alphabet's X moonshot division, said Project Wing plans to run "hundreds of flights and deliveries" during the test with Chipotle.
"We want to learn how people feel when they're receiving a package by air, and taking someone's time and/or money changes things more than a little," Teller wrote. "And we want to feel the pressure of unexpected circumstances that show us how we can get better."
The team already anticipates a few challenges: ensuring burritos remain warm and intact, and the extra pressure of multiple orders racking up during the lunch rush.
"We believe that within the next decade, [unmanned aircraft systems] will be able to serve many important purposes — possibly delivering medicine and batteries to cut-off areas after a natural disaster or helping firefighters improve communication and visibility near a wildfire," Teller wrote. "Food is a natural place to experiment; it's one of the most common quick delivery items around the world. by opening the skies to tackle familiar issues now, we can start paving the way for applications … that so far are just dreams."
Alphabet, meanwhile, has been working on its drone delivery system for quite some time, but this marks a big step for its Project Wing unit. "It's the first time that we're actually out there delivering stuff to people who want that stuff," Dave Vos, who heads Project Wing, tells Bloomberg.
As for how this will work, exactly: Chipotle's burrito makers will prepare orders in a food truck at the test site before the grub is sent out via drone. Bloomberg says Project Wing will attach the burritos to "self-guided hybrids that can fly like a plane or hover like a helicopter," which will "hover overhead and lower the Chipotle edibles with a winch."
The aircraft will fly via automation, with human pilots standing by to take control if necessary, the report notes. Alphabet plans to share its data and lessons learned from the experiment with the FAA to help the agency develop new drone delivery rules.
"Last year while discussing the entrepreneurial spirit at Virginia Tech, I jokingly speculated we might one day have quadcopters delivering ramen noodles around campus — apparently I wasn't off by much," Virginia Tech President Tim Sands said in a statement.
Project Wing is Alphabet's answer to drone-delivery services from rivals like Amazon and Walmart. Last year, division leader Vos said he wants delivery drones in the air by 2017. Looks like he's about to get his wish.