Wing LLC is a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, dedicated to developing drones for product delivery. The company has logged hundreds of thousands of delivery hours using a drone model called the Hummingbird, which operates in Dallas and in cities across Australia and Finland and has the capacity to carry loads of just under one kilogram. In mid-July, Wing presented its strategic vision for moving forward with its drone delivery solutions: a “library” of flying devices.

Wing understands that the delivery business is very diverse, and therefore it must offer different types of devices to ensure efficient operations. The solution is to offer a wide range of components—all based on the Hummingbird—so that its engineers can quickly design a model tailored to specific needs. The company presented two examples. One is a very small drone for delivering small packages, such as a bottle of medicine. The other is designed to carry packages weighing up to nearly 3 kilograms.

The basic principle is efficiency. For drones like Wing’s, the most efficient ratio is when the payload accounts for about 25% of the drone’s mass. In the case of cars—the most commonly used means of package delivery in the U.S.—the payload often accounts for only 0.1% of the vehicle’s mass.

Wing has several types of applications in mind, ranging from drones for delivering small packages in densely populated areas to long-distance drones for logistics flights.

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