Japan, perhaps more than any nation on Earth, has a deep history with autonomous drones. Its companies have been using them for decades to assist with agriculture, infrastructure inspection, and construction. Today one of Japan’s biggest tech companies, Rakuten, announced it was forming a joint venture with the American startup AirMap. The goal is to develop a robust traffic management system for unmanned aerial vehicles, allowing large numbers of drones to operate autonomously in the same airspace.
Rakuten, which is best known as an e-commerce company, has been experimenting with drone delivery since June of last year. Like Amazon, it wants to enable customers to order something online and have it delivered to their doorstep, or...
via The Verge
