The Greek city of Trikala will be the first in Europe to pilot fully automated ‘delivery droids’ in the city center.
The project is a collaboration of e-Trikala, the University Research Institute of Communication and Computer Systems (EPISEY) and the University of Genova, Italy in the context of the European program SHOW.
For their first task, the droids started at the “Elves’ Mill,” delivering letters written by children from the Elves’ Post Office to “Father Christmas.”According to the municipality, the “droids” are trained through the use of lasers and a charted route to not only move along a preset course but also recognize obstacles in their path, modifying their movements according to the movement of pedestrians, bicycles, and other unpredictable barriers they may encounter.
The city of Trikala has become a technology hub. Recently, it became the first Greek city to complete a successful test of delivering medicinal drugs via an unmanned drone. The red drone, with four rotor blades, took off from the northwestern city of Trikala and flew three kilometers (half a mile) to Leptokarya to deliver its cargo.