In August, South African festivalgoers will get a chance to test out the world’s first booze delivery service executed by an unmanned aerial vehicle. Capetown’s Darkwing Aerials will use the four-day OppiKoppi outdoor music gathering to debut the OppiKoppi Beer Drone, an octocopter that is capable of air-dropping parachute-affixed cold ones to fans who’ve prepaid via a GPS-enabled smartphone. Witness a test run in the clip above.
While the device’s creators plan to operate their fleet by hand this year (as many as three copters), if all goes well they hope to have a handful of the things fully automated and running on a GPS grid for future events. Presumably, those brewskies will have to be personally packed every time though. For this inaugural run, all of the beer will be provided gratis and will only be available within a designated area.
“There’s going to be one campsite designated to the beer drop,” Darkwing co-founder Dean Engela told CBS News. For attending locals (and all others who might consider a flight to Capetown in order to experience free beer falling from the heavens), that area is known as District 9. Obviously there is a slight potential for Silver Bullet-sized danger and generalized paranoia, but, “The campsite will be notified that there will be drones in the air.”
No word on whether the Tacocopter people have pulled it together yet.
