Drone over Patterdale, U.K. Photo © John Mills - millstastic, flickr

Just imagine. You’ve won Lotto 6/49 and are keeping your grandmother’s bit of property in the family. But what’s really amazing in this new, fantastical life of yours is the drone that delivers drinks to you on your terrace in Tuscany, picks up your mail, and delivers your meals from that quaint little place run by Guido’s nonna just off the town square. Oh, and it keeps an eye on your dog and wayward teenaged kids, too.

Okay, so that’s all fantasy.

But a group of fisherfolk in the middle of a frozen lake in the middle of frozen Minnesota got to experience a brief, tantalizing taste of the fantasy this winter. Lakemaid Beer, a craft brewer based in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, used a drone to fly a 12-pack of lager to GPS coordinates provided by anglers huddled in a shack on Minnesota’s Lake Mille Lacs.

And last August, people attending a music festival in South Africa got to skip the line in the beer tent and the ice in central Minnesota to have their drinks drone-delivered onto their heads. The unmanned aircraft hovered 15 metres above the coordinates it had been programmed to deliver to, and parachuted beverages down onto customers.

Look up, Rusty. Look way up….

Read the rest of this editorial at the Victoria Times Colonist….

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