Ready for Takeoff

France’s national postal service, Le Groupe La Poste, has begun a testing program to bring delivery by autonomous drone to the country. This announcement comes on the heels of Amazon successfully completing its first drone delivery over in the U.K.

A subsidiary of the postal service, DPDgroup, has been working on making drone delivery a reality in the European nation since 2014. The group partnered with French drone-making company Atechsys to provide the drones, which can fly up to 19 km (12 miles) at speeds of up to nearly 31 km/h (19 mph) while carrying a parcel weighing up to 3 kg (6.6 lbs).

The drone test route covers about 15 km (9.3 miles), which is the distance between two depots in the southeast of the country, Saint-Maximin-La-Sainte-Beaume and Pourrières in the Provence region of France. The packages are dropped off and picked up from these designated depots.

A Looming Problem

Any advancement in autonomous robotic technology always brings about a renewed debate surrounding jobs and unemployment. Experts say that robots will continue to replace humans, with some estimating that anywhere from 47 to 81 percent of jobs could be eliminated by technology.