If you’re in Bali, you could be one of the very first people in the Republic of Indonesia to receive your food order via drone.
This after Grab – Grab is like the Uber of Southeast Asia, a ride-hailing and food delivery app – partnered with California-based drone maker A2Z Drone Delivery and SKYY Network, a commercial drone services provider focused on beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) operations for a pilot drone delivery pilot in the capital.
The three-months long proof-of-concept trial brings together SKYY Network and Grab to conduct food delivery missions between Café del Mar Bali and the Nuanu Creative City and test how drone-assisted delivery can be integrated safely and responsibly in support of existing ground-based delivery operations.
The trial project represents the first BVLOS food delivery operation in Indonesia and is being conducted under a certificate issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) of Indonesia, which applied the same stringent Specific Operations Risk Assessment (SORA) regulatory risk assessments that are the governing rules for commercial drone deliveries throughout Europe.
As the drone partner in the project, A2Z Drone Delivery will be supplying its A2Z Longtail Dual unmanned aerial vehicle, selected for its combination of long-range commercial capability and redundant safety features designed for operations in complex BVLOS environments.
The pilot program also deploys the company’s A2Z AirDocks, to automatically charge the aircraft between missions, eliminating the need for trained technicians to swap batteries, or load and unload packages.
The food delivery trial program connects the popular tourist destination, Nuanu Creative City, a 44-hectare creative city fostering innovation, culture, wellness, and community in Bali, with the hospitality services at Café del Mar Bali through an autonomous drone delivery route.
“Rather than representing a wider rollout, the initiative is a controlled proof-of-concept designed to generate real-world insights into infrastructure readiness, operational requirements, customer experience, safety and the integration of drone logistics with existing delivery workflows,” Nuanu Creative City said in a statement.
“Bali provides a diverse environment for this testing, with varied terrain, regional density and dynamic weather conditions. The pilot project will also operate within the relevant regulatory and safety frameworks from the Ministry of Transport, Bali Provincial Governments and Desa Adat, with the aim of understanding how aerial delivery can work effectively within existing local conditions.”
The trial will explore how drone-assisted delivery can improve accessibility and efficiency while complementing human delivery partners and prioritising safety, sustainability, and regulatory compliance.
In its own statement, A2Z said, while food deliveries are serving as the proving ground for the introduction of drone services to the region, choosing the Longtail Dual and multi-mission A2Z AirDocks would provide the partners with the platform from which they can scale additional drone services across a regional drone dock infrastructure that serves multiple use cases simultaneously.
“This drone delivery project is ideally suited to our commercial drone ecosystem in which our aircraft and docking solutions minimize the human interactions with the drones and payloads to reduce the unit economics of each individual logistics flight, a key element to enabling the project to scale to full autonomous fleet operations across the region,” said Aaron Zhang, CEO of A2Z Drone Delivery.
“The operational environment for this project is particularly challenging, with high winds being a constant challenge, a complex shared airspace that needs to be safely navigated, and flights operating over populated areas. Demonstrating that drone delivery can fulfill these missions safely and consistently will be a solid proof for the scalability of drone services throughout Indonesia.”
About the actual drone to carry the deliveries
Here is what A2Z said about why it thinks the drone was selected.
The Longtail Dual was selected for the Bali project in part because it is built for operations in complex BVLOS environments. These capabilities provide an important technology foundation as the trial partners evaluate drone delivery in an environment that includes challenging terrain, changing weather conditions, intermittent cellular connectivity and densely populated areas.
With a one-to-one flight-time to charge-time ratio, the Longtail Dual gets delivery aircraft back in the air quickly following a mission, elevating the commercial viability of drone deliveries that is so essential to scaling the operation. In addition to this rapid charging when the drones are perched on the A2Z AirDocks, the systems combine to offer more operation resilience. The Longtail Dual’s dual-battery architecture provides true battery redundancy, ensuring full flight control and operation on a single battery, which helps mitigate the risk associated with a potential power-system failure.
In the trial partners’ joint announcement of the project, Prisca Yosevine, Bali Nusra Region Operational Head for Grab Indonesia, discussed how the aerial deliveries are expected to be integrated into the holistic logistics ecosystem, saying, “Grab Indonesia is always open to innovations that can complement our services. Through this pilot project, we aim to gradually understand how drone technology can interact with the local delivery ecosystem. The technology is not intended to replace our Driver-Partners, but to complement their role and help us explore more efficient hybrid logistics models. Gaining these insights responsibly is crucial, with safety, regulatory compliance, customer experience and the essential role of our Driver-Partners remaining front and centre.”
The A2Z AirDock drone infrastructure provides for autonomous aircraft launch, recovery, and charging, enabling drone networks to operate remotely with minimal on-site intervention. Combined with Longtail Dual aircraft, a network of AirDocks can support repeatable missions between distributed locations and help operators establish persistent drone services over larger geographic areas.
For SKYY Network, this infrastructure serves as a platform from which it could seamlessly expand beyond individual delivery routes into a broader portfolio of autonomous services across Bali, including drone-as-first-responder (DFR) services, offshore logistics operations, and ship-to-shore port deliveries.
“Bali’s geography makes distributed drone infrastructure particularly compelling,” said Zhang.
“The opportunity goes beyond simply flying a drone from Point A to Point B and conducting a delivery. With autonomous docks distributed across a region, operators can begin thinking about drones as an always-available infrastructure layer supporting last-mile delivery, emergency response, maritime operations, inspection and other services, all operating simultaneously from the same shared dock network.”
The SKYY Network, a seasoned drone services provider with a track record for operating complex BVLOS operations that spans multiple countries, would be operating the drone delivery missions ferrying food orders to Nuanu. The pilot enables customers to place food orders through the ubiquitous Grab superapp.
"Bali brings a different set of challenges to what we've built across our network in Europe — moving from medical to food delivery, alongside controlled airspace adjacent Ngurah Rai International Airport's air traffic, tests our systems in new ways," said Rory Houston, CEO, SKYY Network.
“Together with Nuanu Creative City, Café del Mar Bali and Grab Indonesia, we're using this pilot project to understand how drone delivery can be deployed responsibly, safely and in a way that complements the existing delivery ecosystem.”
The delivery route operates in controlled airspace associated with Bali’s Ngurah Rai International Airport with A2Z’s proprietary CloudOS, the company’s in-house developed ground control station, serving as the software layer for managing delivery missions.