Alphabet’s Laura Ponto, head of public policy for Project Wing, is now the chairman of the board of the Commercial Drone Alliance, a prominent lobbying body for drone policy in the United States. Ponto’s new role fits in quite well with her past experiences, which include time at the Federal Aviation Administration, the US Department of Justice, and the US Department of Transportation. Her tenure at Alphabet began back in March and she immediately took over public policy and regulatory affairs for the moonshot project when she arrived. As the chairman of the board for the Commercial Drone Alliance, Ponto will essentially go from helping to direct and create drone-related policies of Alphabet to doing so on a national level with a dedicated organization made for that purpose rallying behind her. As a chairman, she will essentially have final say on all of the board’s major decisions and will be better equipped to align the Commercial Drone Alliance’s work with that of Project Wing and Alphabet.
The move gives Project Wing more regulatory pull when it comes to the laws that will dictate their future business. US authorities previously rained on commercial drone operators’ collective parade when it came to autonomous delivery drones, which is essentially just what Project Wing is working on, but eventually became a bit more open to the concept. In any case, laws to dictate the safety of the practice must be made and the green light must be given before any commercial operations can take place, and Ponto’s new position puts Project Wing in a perfect position to help those things happen.
Project Wing, for its part, is still working hard at creating the perfect system for automated drones, as well as getting work for those automated drones. To that end, the moonshot project is reportedly planning to create an online shopping hub where people can order all sorts of goods from various retail partners, then have those goods delivered by a drone in a matter of hours or even minutes. The fee for the service is said to be set at $6 when and if it launches, but for the time being, Project Wing is trying to net individual retail contracts with restaurants and other partners in order to begin building a business plan and give the drones and the AI behind them an opportunity to undergo real-world testing before any bigger plans come to fruition.