Textbook rental service Zookal entered a partnership with University of Sydney engineers to deliver textbooks through robotic flying drones from a new company, Flirtey.

Flirtey is still in the process of seeking regulatory approval from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority but hopes that it can send its first drones flying in Australia by March. Zookal is set to release an initial fleet of 6 Flirtey drones across Australia and later will launch the same service in the United States by 2015.

Flirtey was co-founded by Zookal CEO Ahmed Haider and Matthew Sweeney of Software company Vimbra.

"Parcel delivery is an important part of any ecommerce business and it is a core part of ours. We recognised that as the business grew, the current options would be unsustainable from a cost and performance perspective," Mr Haider stated as reported by Techworld Australia.

"This joint venture with Flirtey gives us an opportunity to provide a significantly faster and more efficient delivery of goods while reducing our ecological footprint and costs. We expect the use of drones will cut our delivery costs from $8.60 to 80c per delivery, and because they are battery powered, the environmental impact is minimal," Mr Haider added.

Mr Haider als noted that the favorable climate in Australia is an important factor that will make the drones delivery successful.

"As one of the few countries in the world to allow commercial drone activities, Australia is uniquely placed to create a new drone industry and shape the development of regulations in this space. Flirteys currently operate in summer weather, which is one reason that Sydney is a great city to pilot the technology. Flirtey is working on weather proofing our UAVs for all conditions, rain, hail or shine."

The robotic drones work through rechargeable lithium polymer batteries and can carry packages of up to 2kg in a range of 3 km. The drones use GPS to locate the address to where the packages will be delivered. Drones can be tracked via Android smartphone users.

Delivering packages via robotic flying drones had been tested in some other countries before.

In China, SF Express had already tried sending out packages through drones in Sept.

A pizza company had also tested delivering pizzas through drones in June.