The Aichi prefectural government, in cooperation with Toyota city among others, will start flying small drones above a scrapped section of a railway line to deliver groceries for those who find it hard to get out and about in sparsely populated areas.
The results of the demonstration will be made public so that private companies can refer to the collected data should they consider participating in the project.
The project is aimed at building a system in which residents can order daily necessities from retail stores online and then have them delivered by drone to a communal point in the area where they live.
There will also be an experiment in which compact electric vehicles will be used to deliver groceries to individual homes for people who have difficulty receiving them at shared points.
The demonstration will take place on a 1.9-kilometer-long defunct section of the Meitetsu Mikawa Line between Nishinakagane Station, which was scrapped in April 2004, and Higashihirose town in Toyota. Line operator Nagoya Railroad Co. will undertake the project, while KDDI Corp. and other companies will cooperate in the demonstration under the assumption that the city-owned site will be used exclusively as an air route for drones.
The drones will be operated at flight level 3, which means they can fly beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of an operator without assistance in an uninhibited area. The project operators have already conducted aerial laser surveillance and created three-dimensional maps of the route to enhance safety.
The two-day demonstration will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday. For safety reasons it will not be open to the public.
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