Take a Look at Wing’s Auto-Loading Drone Delivery System – CNET [CNET]

Wing marketing chief Jonathan Bass shows how a store employee hooks a package onto the autoloader to await drone pickup. The autoloader design, due to arrive later this year but now publicly revealed, is key to Wing’s plan to expand drone deliveries to broader regional drone delivery networks.

Wing drones carry up to 3.3 pounds in a recyclable waterproof box that is pulled up to the underside of the aircraft.

A Wing delivery drone lowering its hook down to an autoloader to retrieve a package for delivery.

Alphabet’s Wing showed a drone sending down a hook to snag a package from this prototype autoloader. A human places the package on the autoloader but doesn’t have to be there for the drone pickup.

A Wing delivery drone reeling up a package it’s hooked from an autoloader.

Alphabet’s Wing subsidiary flies 11-pound drones that deliver 3-pound packages over distances as long as 6 miles.

A Wing delivery drone delivers its package by lowering it from about 22 feet up using a tether.

Wing delivery drones pick up packages with a lightweight hook called a “pill” after its shape. The rounded bottom stops the hook from re-grabbing a package after delivery. The triangular protrusion to the left helps orient it properly in the autoloader. Its hollow design, resembling a whiffle ball, keeps the hook trailing the drone after dropoff so it can be reeled in gradually without interfering with the propellers.

Alphabet subsidiary Wing plans to start using drone autoloader stations later in 2023. The two diagonal bars channel the drone’s tether to the right place then orient the hook to snag the package.

Wing drones perch on wireless charging pads when not delivering packages.

Wing unveiled the final look for its drone delivery autoloader stations that retailers will be able to use to send packages to customers.

Each Wing delivery drone weighs about 11 pounds and can fly even with several of its 16 propellers broken. If it sustains worse damage, it lands automatically.

Wing CEO Adam Woodworth at the Alphabet subsidiary’s Palo Alto, California, offices