I know that this is an old topic from the FAA busting a guy for running beers to ice fisherman (back in the good old days when drones were new) to Amazon trying to figure out how to deliver things... but I'm just wondering if anyone else here has heard of this company and have considered signing up.
I had a look at their website and nothing there tempted me to sign up.
I went through their FAQ and found that none of myquestions were answered.
Here are some of my thoughts when I look at their explanation of how it works:
How does Zing work?
When a user orders food from a restaurant, a local drone pilot within range is notified. Once the food has been prepared, the drone pilot will place the drone down and use the app to start the delivery.
You are just sitting around with a fully charged battery waiting (and waiting) for the bat alarm to go off
The drone will fly to and descend at the restaurant autonomously using Zing’s proprietary system.
You set your drone on your launch area, complete with it's 325 gram cargo cage and trust Zing to fly it to a restaurant somewhere.
You trust them to navigate through any obstacles in your neighbourhood (trees, wires, winds etc) to a restaurant and find a safe spot to land there.
How many restaurants have a safe landing spot in an obstacle-free area, where there's no risk from people, cars, dogs etc?
The drone pilot then makes the final descent and picks up the food manually using the Zing app.
What happened to
descend at the restaurant autonomously using Zing’s proprietary system?
You trust the restaurant guy to put something of unknown weight in the cage and secure it properly without injuring himself or the drone.
Once the drone pilot is ready, they will tap a button to continue the autonomous flight to the user’s location.
You trust Zing to fly your overweight drone and wind-catching cargo-cage from a restaurant to another unknown location, safely navigating whatever obstacles may be along the way.
They will drop off the food manually in the same way they picked it up from the restaurant.
And now the customer will avoid spinning props, remove their precious takeaway food and secure the cage.
The drone then flies home and lands autonomously where the pilot will put in a new battery to prepare for the next delivery.
And you trust Zing to somehow get your drone back to where it started and you wait again with a new battery.
Three launches, three landings, flying with an unknown weight in a large wind-catcher, autonomously through unknown obstacles, trusting persons unknown to load and unload your cargo cage and somehow observing all regulations.
No mention of range/battery issues - I'm sure Zing would be taking care of that for you.
What could possibly go wrong?
Any regulation issues are covered by Zing's simple one line statement:
Please follow all FAA laws and regulations while using Zing products within the United States.
So you are only doing daylight deliveries where you are able to see the restaurant and the hungry customer from your launch point.
All this for an unspecified (but probably very small ?) payment, when/if any hungry Zing customers living near you place an order with a participating restaurant that's also nearby.