Amazon Prime Air Releases Photos Of Prototype Delivery Drone — How Soon Until Drones Deliver Packages To Your Door?
Amazon Prime Air delivery drones are one step closer to a reality!
As MSN reports, on Sunday the online retailer revealed photos and videos showing a prototype delivery drone that may soon be delivering packages to your door.
On the https://t.co/JIs0vKtMyb Top Prop from amazon Prime Air pic.twitter.com/3ZvCLZPfaH
— I.co.uk & I.uk (@Idotcodotuk) November 30, 2015
In the video below, hosted by former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson, Amazon shows a hypothetical situation “in the not-too-distant future” where a family needs a new pair of football (“the kind you play with your feet”) shoes right away. Mom breaks out the tablet, presses a few buttons, a drone is launched, and 30 minutes later, the drone drops off its package and flies off.
The sophisticated drone weighs 55 pounds, flies at an altitude of 400 feet, tops out at about 55 miles per hour, and has a range of about 15 miles. It uses “sense and avoid” technology to, well, sense and avoid potential hazards in the air — such as other drones from competing retailers, maybe?
Unfortunately, there are some limitations to the Amazon Prime Air drone delivery service. Since the package weight limit is five pounds, the service is perfect for a book or a pair of shoes. For a new plasma screen TV, not so much. The second is that the prototype shown has a range of 15 miles, which means that unless you live within 15 miles of an Amazon distribution warehouse, drones won’t be delivering your packages.
Amazon has been promising that deliveries via drone, through its Amazon Prime Air delivery service, were “just around the corner” since 2013. However, with Sunday’s new release of prototype footage, “just around the corner” is now a tiny bit closer to actually happening.
“We’re excited about Prime Air — a future delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using small unmanned aerial vehicles, also called drones. Prime Air has great potential to enhance the services we already provide to millions of customers by providing rapid parcel delivery that will also increase the overall safety and efficiency of the transportation system.”
Of course, getting Amazon Prime Air off the ground, so to speak, has proved easier said than done.
The biggest problem has been the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which Amazon admits — delicately — on their website, “We will deploy when and where we have the regulatory support needed to safely realize our vision.”
Back in February, the FAA released a set of proposed rules for drones weighing 55 pounds or less – which is probably why the Amazon Prime Air drone weighs exactly 55 pounds, opines Tech Crunch writer Kaileen Gaul. Then in March, the FAA gave Amazon approval to begin researching and testing drone delivery service.
One of those proposed rules severely limits the potential of Amazon’s proposed delivery drone service: a drone must be within sight of an operator at all times. Whether cameras on board the drones will satisfy that rule is unclear, but if they FAA holds firm, drone delivery service will be dead in the water.
Regardless of the proposed rules, Amazon is moving full-speed ahead with its Amazon Prime Air delivery program. Besides the drone model revealed Sunday, the retailer has at least a dozen other prototypes in the mix. And the retailer isn’t just limiting its testing to the U.S. — Amazon is also developing and testing drones in the United Kingdom and Israel. In fact, says Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the U.K. is a “likely candidate” to be the first place to actually see drones flying deliveries.
As of this writing, there is still no firm date for when Amazon Prime Air might begin delivering packages by drone.
[Image via Shutterstock/marekuliasz]
