Your food delivery might not get stuck in traffic anymore.
Flyby Robotics, an end-to-end drone automated food delivery company, partners with food retailers to deliver customers their food through the airways. The Hollywood-based startup raised $4 million last month in a seed funding round led by Hollywood-based MaC Venture Capital, with participation from Weekend Fund, Anthemis and Evening Fund.
“I think it’d be so cool to just be able to order drone delivery to get lunch wherever I am, and to pay less and wait less time,” co-founder and chief operating officer Cat Orman said. “But one of the things I’m the most excited to see is for this to transform the way that we order any goods. So not just food, but things like pharmaceuticals and really the whole future of retail.”
Orman founded Flyby in 2020 with Jason Lu while they were attending Yale University. The project was started as an idea that Lu, who is now Flyby’s chief executive officer, had while taking a class on policy and technology. Its goals now center on helping merchants to keep delivery costs low and reducing traffic, while exploring the potentials of drone-automated technology.
“I was really interested in the potential for consumer-facing technology to make really essential goods and services more accessible in heavily regulated spaces,” Orman said.
Flyby currently operates as a pilot program in Los Angeles, and plans to implement full operations later this year. The pilot program is also operating in Phoenix, and will soon extend into Las Vegas and Arkansas. During the live pilot, customers pay a flat $3 delivery fee. The company says delivery times are averaging under four minutes.
Orman said she has seen a lot of interest from retailers as its delivery system is affordable for businesses and avoids some of the hassle that they may experience with delivery drivers. The drone’s system is designed to carefully carry a product to ensure it isn’t spilled or jostled, and its landing pad can fit into a parking space at a business.
“You don’t have to be a multi-billion-dollar corporation or a global military superpower to reap the economic benefits of autonomous drones,” Lu said in a statement. “Our AI-powered autonomous systems allow any merchant to dramatically reduce the cost of delivery to their customers.”
Flyby’s drones weigh 19 pounds. The company said drones being proposed by other firms weigh much more and have higher operating costs. A heavier weight also costs more in liability insurance. The weight of Flyby’s drone groups them in with other commercial drones, such as those being used for real estate inspections.
Orman said the company’s drones operate into Class G airspace, which is uncontrolled, due to their size, operation distance from airports and the altitude at which they fly. Flyby has received support from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s Urban Mobility Labs.
