Drone delivery is officially coming to Walmarts in North Richland Hills, marking the latest North Texas expansion for a drone service owned by Google’s parent company.
After nearly an hour of discussion, city council members unanimously approved landing spots for Wing drones at two Walmart locations — 9101 N Tarrant Parkway and 6401 NE Loop 820.
Wing, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., first made its way to the Dallas-Fort Worth area with two sites in Frisco, in Lewisville and with Walgreens in Little Elm.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Walmart considered transitioning to just online shopping and pick-up, said Ivan Jaime, Walmart government and public affairs director.
"The fact of the matter is, there is still a lot of people that like to do their shopping in stores," he said. "So we're really trying to invest back into the stores."
Wing drones fly away from air traffic and hover over the delivery spot from 23 feet, dropping off packages using a tether which detaches from the drone if grabbed or it catches on to something.
The drones will operate between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., but they have Federal Aviation Administration approval to expand to all daylight hours, said Bailey Edwards, Wing’s head of government and community affairs.
During a city Planning and Zoning Commission meeting this month, Edwards said the drones are built specifically for residential delivery and can deliver to a person’s front yard or backyard.
Wing drones have a load capacity of about two-and-a-half pounds and travel within a six-mile radius. When not in operation, the drones will have a fenced landing spot at the front corner of the stores’ parking lots powered by a generator. The landing spots will take up about 18 parking spaces.
Drone deliveries would include a fee of $3-$6.
The drones do not have a live video feed, but are equipped with low-quality sensor cameras, the company says.
During public comment at Monday night’s meeting, resident Tracy Bennett asked whether the camera data was saved or deleted.
A Wing spokesperson said in a statement that the low-resolution, black-and-white cameras are used for navigation, safety, and operation reliability. The cameras do not film live feed of people, including flight supervisors.
Images from the drones are saved in Wing’s servers and deleted off the drones.
Wing also posted a video explaining its drone cameras on its YouTube page.
Council member Blake Vaughn said concerns about drone video may be warranted, but it was not up to council to determine whether or not the drones would film.
"We need to recognize they're going to fly these drones regardless," he said. "We're just going to give them a landing spot here to serve the customers of our city."
Vaughn said approving the drone landing spots for one of the large retailers of the city would benefit people in the long run.
"We want those retailers to succeed and we want that convenience for the citizens of our city," he said.
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