DoorDash Takes Flight: Building Its Own Drone Delivery Business

DoorDash is building a drone delivery business, including its own aircraft, as part of an effort developed by its robotics and autonomy team. This new business, called DoorDash Air, will eventually operate within the company's delivery app, marking a significant expansion of its services.

A Leap Forward in Drone Technology

The company unveiled the new business after receiving a Part 135 air carrier certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. This certification allows DoorDash to legally operate a commercial drone delivery service in the United States. While the company didn't provide a detailed timeline for when its aircraft would be used in operations, it's likely to begin with limited pilot programs, where unmanned aircraft travel short distances while remaining within the line of sight of the operator.

Autonomy and Beyond Visual Line of Sight

If DoorDash wants its drones to fly autonomously over longer distances, it will need the FAA to approve its Beyond Visual Line of Sight technology. This certification has been granted to companies like Amazon, Wing, and Zipline in recent years. Despite the new program, DoorDash is maintaining its existing partnerships with Wing and Flytrex.

A Common Thread

DoorDash's foray into sidewalk bots and drones may seem well outside its core business model, but the company's co-founder and chief product officer, Stanley Tang, argues that there is a common thread. In a blog post announcing DoorDash Air, Tang wrote, "We didn't start with the question, ‘What's the coolest autonomous tech we could make?' We started from first principles: What's the actual customer problem that needs to be solved?"

The Autonomous Delivery Platform

The company's Autonomous Delivery Platform is a software that can correctly determine what mode is used to deliver a package. This operating system works with Dot, human delivery drivers, and, soon, the drone. DoorDash Labs has already developed software to handle the coordination challenge, and this complexity is part of Tang's recruitment pitch to engineering hires.

A New Era in Delivery

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. The company's foray into drone delivery is a significant step towards creating a more efficient and automated delivery network. As Tang noted, "Most autonomy companies work on one layer. At DoorDash, you're working on all of them simultaneously; nobody else is running all these systems on one network.""

• DoorDash Air is a significant expansion of the company's services, allowing for commercial drone delivery in the US
• The company has received a Part 135 air carrier certification from the FAA
• DoorDash is maintaining its existing partnerships with Wing and Flytrex
• The company's Autonomous Delivery Platform is a key component of its drone delivery system
• The company is tackling the full stack of challenges, from hardware and embedded systems to routing algorithms, and deciding in real-time whether human drivers, drones, or a sidewalk bot is the best option to dispatch a delivery