Wing, a delivery drone company in Australia, has temporarily suspended its activity after discovering that an Australian crow almost shot down one of its units . The drones, which allow you to quickly take orders from the store to the home, have propellers in much of the upper hull. The crows, however, seem to have found the weak point: the rudder.
Ben Roberts, a citizen who claims to always receive orders through Wing, has been able to record a sequence in which an Australian crow is observed battling against one of the delivery drones that the company has in your fleet. In the clip, just a few seconds long, you can see how the drone reaches its destination and begins to descend slowly to leave the package on the ground.
In the background you can hear the song of a crow , which does not take long to locate the flying object and land on the back with the aim of knocking it down.
The delivery drone, despite the sudden movements, stays in the air and manages to stabilize . Finally, the bird gives up and the device can leave the package without problem. Roberts assures in his LinkedIn profile that it has been a couple of Australian crows that have tried to attack the drones recently, and what is shown in the video has been the closest they have come to shooting them down.
Wing ensures that birds do not pose a risk to its delivery drones
According to Gizmodo, the company has temporarily withdrawn the delivery drones . Possibly to avoid further incidents. The drone could fall on a human and cause serious damage, or on the road, causing a traffic accident.
Wing, however, assures that it is highly unlikely that a bird will shoot down one of his delivery drones . It further alleges that they are “very strange events”, and they usually occur during the nesting season, where the birds “pounce on moving objects.” Therefore, it is likely that the service has suspended delivery for a few days, until the influx of these birds decreases.
It is not the first time that a company suspends its delivery drones indefinitely due to the risk of falling. In Switzerland, an order delivery program using drones had to stop its activity after one of its units crashed in a place near a group of children , according to the portal FAZ El The team had a stop that prevents collision, but the propellers cut it off.