Deliveries by drones are expected to become a reality in Dubai from first quarter of 2018 which will cost nearly 30-40 per cent less than the traditional delivery mechanisms.

During the initial phase, the deliveries will be made in specific areas like Emirates Hills, The Meadows, The Springs, The Greens, Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim and the will be expanded to a wide range of customers to ship goods and products weighing 5kg or less to locations across Dubai.

Mohammed Johmani, CEO of Eniverse Technologies, expects his company to start operations from March 2018, depending on the approval from the government which has been initiated and is expected to take from six to 12 months.

"We shall start with five drones and increase it to 100 by 2022. We are talking with two major entities in the UAE to start using our services. This is futuristic project and it hard to test the demand, as we will be the first movers in the UAE market and one of the few globally," he told Khaleej Times in an interview.

He revealed that drone deliveries would be cheaper by 30 to 40 per cent compared to traditional delivery avenues and anything weighing above 5kg will not delivered.

A Strategy& report released earlier this week projected the GCC drone market to reach Dh5.5 billion ($1.5 billion) by 2022 with most of investment going into oil and gas sector at $633 million. Transport and logistics sector will see an investment of $20 million, Strategy& added.

The UAE's General Civil Aviation Authority has been working to establish a drone traffic control centre as of November 2016.

Dubai has been taking the lead in using drones for the deliveries of goods as different public entities are experimenting with deploying the drones to use this cost-effective measure.

Governmental entities such as Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) and Dubai Future Accelerator are conducting the trials for deliveries using drones in the coming month. RTA tested an autonomous air taxi in June 2017 and is expected to start trial operations in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Ride hailing app Uber announced in April that it plans to roll out a network of flying cars in Dubai by 2020.

Firas Alfanney, Data Center Group Sales Director, METAR, said the UAE is really leading the region in terms of technology innovations and "we have seen a lot of announcements like the usage of drones by fire fighters and deploying equipments to their desired destinations."

Eniverse Technologies has joined hands with San Francisco-based Skycart for the delivery of drones.

Source: Khaleej Times