First accident of a Google delivery drone: it hits an electrical cable and leaves 2,000 houses without power for an hour

As delivery drones become more common, accidents are inevitable. And they can be quite serious.

A autonomous delivery drone of wingsa company belonging to GoogleI know has crashed into some electrical cables in Australialeaving 2,000 homes without electricity for almost an hour.

Luckily the drone has not caused personal or physical damage, except to itself: was completely incineratedto the point that the operators did not even have to pick up the remains, or remove it from the cables.

According to the Australian company Energex, via The Agelast Tuesday they detected that a delivery drone was caught in a power line in Queensland, as you can see in the opening photo of the news.

Google drone accident: did not see the power lines

The drone belongs to Wing, a company of Google which has been since 2017 handing out food and medicine in Australia and other countries. As explained by a company spokesman, the autonomous drone was performing a “precautionary controlled landing“, but did not see the cableand landed on him.

Wing immediately notified energexwho went to the scene of the events. The drone was intact, as can be seen in the photo. But “landed above 11,000 volts and although it did not run out of power, there was a trace of voltage through the drone and it caught fire and fell to the groundAccording to an Energex spokesperson, the drone was completely incinerated.

As a consequence of this power surge and the connection between the cables caused by the drone, 2,000 homes and businesses in the area lost power for 45 minutes. In addition, Energex had to cut power to another 300 homes for 2 hours, to carry out an inspection of the line.

A pretty big hassle for a simple delivery of a burrito, which is the most requested food for this service. Although it is also possible that transport medicines, another of his usual tasks. Luckily there was no damage, except for the drone itself.

In years of service wings Has made over 100,000 drone flightsso this Google delivery drone crash It seems an isolated event, within a service considered very safe. The Google company has apologized and is reviewing the artificial intelligence algorithm, to find out pwhy the drone did not see the power linesand landed on them.