For this week’s round-up of commercial drone industry news, we look at how drones are inspecting offshore wind turbines in the Baltic Sea, the expansion of Walmart’s drone delivery service, and the newest DRONERESPONDERS Chapter.              

Autonomous Off-Shore Wind Turbine Inspections

Quali Drone, a Danish start-up, has successfully carried out drone inspections on offshore wind turbines in the Baltic Sea. Their program features automated flights that provide real-time data on the infrastructure, mainly to assess damage. These inspections can be carried out while the wind turbine is running, which is essential for identifying issues that wouldn’t be noticed when the wind turbine is off. “Using a drone for this ‘significantly increases’ safety while reducing the cost and CO2 emissions associated with traditional blade inspections, which can only be done while the turbine is offline.”

Walmart Adds Hundreds of Stores to Drone Delivery

 Walmart plans to add 150 stores to their drone delivery service in 2026, and to continue scaling up to a total of 270 by the end of 2027. Their partnership with Wing has proven successful so far with stores in Texas and the Atlanta metro area already providing this service. “The expansion will provide drone delivery to more than 40 million Americans,” Wing estimated. The service will be offered in Los Angeles. St. Louis, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Miami, “with additional locations to be specified at a future date.”

The delivery service is designed for small, last-minute items, and are typically delivered within 30 minutes. Home drone deliveries received approval from the FAA in 2019 and have been steadily growing since, with major brands like Amazon and DoorDash utilizing this tool.

DRONERESPONDERS Adds Fifth Group to Chapter      

California Public Safety Coordination Group (CALGRU) joins the many other state chapters of AIRT, a leading non-profit for training, education, and use of Drones for Good ®.

CALGRU’s non-profit mission is to “enhance education, knowledge sharing, policy alignment, and operational coordination among unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and counter UAS stakeholders across the State of California.”

Multiple public safety agencies who actively work with UAS make up this group. This will include members of fire services, law enforcement, emergency services, transportation, environmental protection, and more. As part of CALGRU, this group will engage in coordination calls, working groups, and support for stakeholders during events where drone services are needed.

Other state groups are in Florida, Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina.