City Council approves Walmart site change to allow accessory drone delivery amid safety questions

The Red Oak City Council on Feb. 11 approved a zoning amendment permitting an accessory drone delivery docking and charging area at the Walmart store at 100 Ryan Drive, allowing the retailer and Zipline to operate a local drone-delivery site from the store’s west-side pickup area.

The council’s vote followed a public hearing and more than an hour of technical questions about aircraft safety, airspace coordination and neighborhood impacts. Connor Wilkinson, a Zipline representative, described the company’s delivery system, saying the aircraft generally cruise at about 300 feet and that its delivery “droid” carries up to about eight pounds within an initial two-mile radius (with technical capability to operate out to about 10 miles). He said Zipline performs more than 500 automated preflight checks per flight and operates an internally developed autonomy suite called “FlatIQ.”

“Zipline is the world's largest drone delivery service,” Wilkinson told the council, adding that the company had completed more than a million commercial deliveries and that, by design, the aircraft include redundancy and a whole-airframe parachute to mitigate failures.

Why it matters: Councilors and several…