matternet en · PROPN
Etymology
From matter + net.
Meanings
-
A network of autonomously controlled, multi-rotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that transport small packages of a standardised size.
Over the matternet, so the vision goes, hospitals could send urgent medicines to remote clinics more quickly than they could via roads, and blood samples could be sent and returned within hours. A farmer could place an order for a new tractor part by text message and pay for it via mobile money-transfer. A supplier many miles away would then take the part to the local matternet station for airborne dispatch via drone.
2012 December 1, “An internet of airborne things”, in The Economist, volume 405, number 8813, archived from the original on 11 Mar 2023, page 3 (Technology Quarterly):