Google's secretive drone delivery project just got cleared for testing — here's everything we know about the program

Google

Google's parent company Alphabet has a bold plan to make commercial drone deliveries a reality by 2017 as part of Project Wing, and it got a huge boost in that direction Tuesday.

Google X, the division of Alphabet responsible for Project Wing, got approval from the White House to test Project Wing on a U.S. site, Bloomberg reported. The drones will be tested at one of the six sites approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). 

Here's everything we know about Project Wing:

Google X has been working on Project Wing since 2012, but was only unveiled to the public in August 2014.

Source: Tech Insider

Google is using five-foot, single wing drones capable of hovering thousands of feet in the air. The drones can take off vertically.

RAW Embed

Source: Tech Insider

The drones would lower packages to the ground using a winch. A patent filed October 2014 outlines how robots on wheels could then take these packages and deliver them to a safe holding location.

The ground robots will be notified of an upcoming delivery and will travel on wheels to the given location to receive the package. You can read more about how that system could work here.