Food Delivery Giant Meituan Unveils Drones for Delivery Service, Offering New User Experience

At the 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference on Thursday, Meituan‘s delivery UAV was officially launched.

Meituan will also cooperate with Jinshan District in Shanghai to promote the construction of China’s first urban lower-air logistics demonstration center.

Wang Puzhong, head of Meituan‘s on-demand delivery business, said, “The lower-air logistics network in cities is expected to provide an important opportunity for technological innovation in the coming decade or two.”

Having explored drone deliveries since 2017, Meituan is committed to finish one order in 3 kilometers within 15 minutes. As reported in April, the company plans to raise about $10 billion through equity and debt deals to develop autonomous delivery vehicles and UAVs.

Meituan has completed the initial development of autonomous flying drones, automated airports and drone dispatching systems. More than 90% of the core system components are independently developed by the company itself.

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Early this year, one of Meituan‘s drones delivered the first order for real users in Shenzhen. In June, when Shenzhen was hit by the pandemic, Meituan built an aerial channel for the delivery of supplies to the city’s Nanshan District to fight the pandemic and deliver emergency supplies to residents in the quarantine zone.

As of June 2021, Meituan‘s UAV completed more than 200,000 flight tests and delivered more than 2,500 real orders.