When drone technology first started to emerge as a new viable, flyable conveyance the pitch by engineers and companies emphasized the pragmatic: Drones would be a way to make unmanned deliveries, for example, of textbooks to students who live far away from schools. Many years later, and the promise for drone tech's future is now reportedly in delivering pizzas to government-approved landing zones, because this is what 2021 looks like.

　　The Wall Street Journal has filed a report indicating that Pizza Hut Israel is now exploring and fully expecting by June to "test sending drones to drop multiple orders" at designated spaces like parking lots--"delivery drivers will collect orders from these makeshift drone ports and take them on the final leg to customers." In other words, customers will not yet be able to accept a delivery directly from a drone, so there's still something to look forward to.

　　"Drone delivery is a sexy thing to talk about, but it's not realistic to think we're going to see drones flying all over the sky dropping pizzas into everyone's backyards anytime soon," Ido Levanon told the Wall Street Journal. Levanon is the managing director of Dragontail Systems Ltd., the technology firm coordinating Pizza Hut's drone trial.

　　On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of thing people in the know would say to temper expectations so when they reveal something like this actually will be possible, people will lose their minds in excitement. Despite the far-flung wackiness to the topic overall, the path for pizza-drone deliveries is seriously being explored around the globe--along with Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are also exploring practical concerns to assure a path for pizza-drone deliveries and other use cases. No solid, plausible timeline has firmed up elsewhere--so there's a lot riding on Pizza Hut Israel's plans for this summer.

　　In the meantime, brands are making all sorts of unexpected and exciting things possible. Hey, if KFC can make a game console that generates enough heat to keep fried chicken crispy, Pizza Hut can get us freakin' drone deliveries.

　　Image credit: Getty Images/Carlos Becerra/Stringer

　　David Wolinsky on Google+