Dec 23, 2016 07:00 AM EST By Erwin Castro, UniversityHerald Reporter

The French postal service will soon start using a drone and hopes that the trials of their new drone delivery program will eventually lead to a full-scale postal service that delivers mail and parcels to far-flung remote areas in the country.

According to Recode.net, the French postal service Le Groupe La Poste will soon conduct trials of a new drone mail delivery program after it was granted approval from the French aviation regulatory authority.

The DPDgroup, a subsidiary of the French national postal service, has been working on a drone delivery project since 2014. The French agency has also teamed up with a French drone specialist, Atechsys.

In September 2015, DPDGroup has demonstrated its first drone delivery flight in which it delivers a package weighing just three pounds a distance of nearly nine miles.

For now, it still an experiment and not a not fully launched program, but non-residential customers and tech companies are also participating in the experiment.

The flight tests, which will be conducted once a week, mark the first time the French postal service will use drone technology to deliver postage on a regular postal route.

The experimental tests will take place in the Provence region in a southeastern portion of France, just between Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume and Pourrières.

Overall, the new drone delivery program appears to be a smart move for the French Postal Service as it could reduce the costs and time while enhancing the efficiency of mail delivery. At the same time, the French postal service also hopes to use drones to deliver parcels in hard to reach areas such mountainous regions, where last-mile delivery is said to be an expensive and unpopular option.

Using people to deliver mail can be very difficult these days. These traditional mail delivery often lead to more delivery delays, especially if there are road accidents or bad weather conditions. Further, using the new drone delivery program instead of people in a truck to transport goods eliminates the need to pay a driver or to maintain an expensive delivery truck while also offering environmental benefits through reduced fossil fuel footprints.

Recently, the drone technology has turned the table to become the next big thing in consumer service. Unfortunately, technological and regulatory barriers still exist to further drone technology adoption, especially in the consumer and logistic services.

However, drone manufacturers and technology providers are quickly developing groundbreaking technologies like a new breed of night vision technology, geo-fencing and collision avoidance system that will make drone delivery service easier and safer.

This is not the first time the drone will be using in delivery and consumer service. US tech giant Amazon has recently released a video of its first customer drone delivery in the British countryside.

In China, JD.com has launched a new drone service that carries drone deliveries to more than 100 routes across mainland China, according to South China Morning Post.

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