Healthy Future: ProTV shoutouts Cătălin Briciu and Virgil Ciobota for Nutriento’s innovative drone food delivery vision

Next year, we might be seeing the first food delivery drones. It’s a bold initiative that is in the focus of entrepreneurs from Cluj Napoca who dare to innovate how we order our food.

According to what the mentioned innovators studied, restaurants could deliver many more food orders if it wasn’t for the busy city traffic. Although the drones are pricey, the investment pays back. The rather futuristic concept starts gaining momentum as in Oradea there’s also a pilot project in the making. In the U.S. as well as in Australia and China, drones have started being used for delivering not only food but also cosmetics and medical equipment for those in need.

Can (healthy) food fly?

At the beginning of 2020, Cătălin and Virgil started their healthy restaurant in Cluj. They already have around 120 orders per day. Most of their clients prefer ordering at home or at the office. Due to the city traffic and the scarce number of delivery people, the delivery process can turn into a rather stressful daily concern. Thus, they came up with a potential solution: drone delivery.

‘This is something we plan on doing next year. We want to start with one drone that delivers to one specific neighborhood, perhaps even to one specific residential ensemble to be able to determine the viability of the drone alternative to food delivery. We are interested in discovering exactly how easy it can be to transport the food by drone, to bring it back and the transport once again, from a technical and user experience point of view’, declared Cătălin Briciu.

As for the other example mentioned earlier, Oradea’s approach to food delivery drones works on adapting large-sized drones but hasn’t yet met the testing phase.

‘The box (used for the delivery) has 4 sides designed with gripping slots for where it will be held by the drone. There’s a door-type of opening through which the deliverables are inserted within the box. It makes it easy to fly and land. The autonomy depends on the weights of the box and it ranges within 28 and 40 minutes, 40 minutes if the box is empty. The price for this type of drone starts at 6500 USD.’ explained Kolcsar Istvan, drone specialist.

Drone deliveries have been implemented already in the United States of America, Australia, New Zeeland, and some areas in China. Flight rules are strict: their itinerary is declared, with restrictions regarding the night flight, over the main roads, and over crowds of people.

This article has been translated. Find the original article from ProTV here.