Last week, UPS and CVS completed the first commercial medical prescription drone delivery in the United States under a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) program. The deliveries were made in North Carolina via a cable that lowered the prescriptions to the ground as the drone hovered about 20 feet above each destination. One of the packages was delivered to a customer with limited mobility, which often makes it difficult to visit the nearby store to pick up a prescription.

Both flights were conducted within line of sight of the operator. Representatives of UPS said that this operation is only a part of a larger-scale evaluation for the delivery of retail products, but many safety and regulatory hurdles must be overcome before this type of delivery could become mainstream.