From flying cars to flying parcels, new Malaysia is looking to the skies with the abundance of innovation and ideas that’s being brought forward to our fresh Ministers. At the recently held Parcel Drone Competition at Putrajaya, Pos Malaysia showcased its elaborate plans to use unmanned aerial vehicles to delivery items to places that could be potentially impossible for our friendly postman to venture into.

Vendors from various sectors were at hand to offer different solutions that can assist in making the logistic moving of small parcels to flood prone areas, or over ridges , simpler. One example is how the health ministry can deliver medicine to homes that are cut-off due to flooding or shipping much needed equipment to remote clinics without navigating through thick forests. Gobind Deo, Multimedia and Communication Minister finds the technology useful and recommends that national postage service should be looking using available technology to address challenges faced by human based delivery. The likes of Alibaba and Amazon are already beta testing drone delivery methods and we could be seeing these taking to skies more prominently in the very near future.

While the idea sounds cool (imagine a drone at your front door with Xmas present) there are many considerations before implementing such technologies. Aerial space have restriction especially at certain no-fly zones like military base or near airports, there is also the training of pilots and keeping it safe from harming people. And what about airspace pollution, the last thing we want is dozens of drones buzzing over heard every 10 minutes, a tight regulation is necessary when technology is involved you never know what they can morph into some day.