DETROIT — Ford Motor Company has unveiled plans to combine autonomous vans and delivery drones to transport goods directly to a customer’s doorstep.
Ford introduced the Autolivery concept at the 2017 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the International Business Times reported.
The concept is an electric self-driving van with deployable quadrocopter drones that can pick up and drop off packages at a person’s residence, according to Motor Trend.
In a demonstration video released by Ford, the process could start out with a customer placing an order through a mobile application.
Packages would then be loaded into compartments on the autonomous van.
Next, the Autolivery van would drive to the customer’s residence, where he or she could pick up the package from the van.
But if the customer needed a package delivered, the package would moved to the top of the van where on-board drones could access them.
The drones would then fly the package to the residence and drop them off at designated landing pads.
Ford envisions the end-to-end delivery service could be used for things such as online shopping orders, weekly groceries as well as medical supplies.
