By James Simons-
Amazon has announced it plans to start delivering packages by drone before the end of the year. Dispensing with drivers altogether and slinging products through the air, the tech giant has marked out Lockeford, California as the test bed.
Under new plans a human being dropping something off at a front door, the drone will fly to a customer’s back garden, hover and release the package softly onto the ground before flying away again.
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Its bespoke service will only be available for Prime customers and, obviously, will only be used for small packages. The promise of drone delivery has been in the works for almost a decade, its main aim being to deliver items to customers quickly, cost-effectively, and safely in less than an hour.
Amazon says it has created a sophisticated and industry-leading sense-and-avoid system that will enable operations without visual observers and allow our drone to operate at greater distances while safely and reliably avoiding other aircraft, people, pets, and obstacles.
Amazon says its drones have a ‘sense-and-avoid system’ that’ll keep them from hitting stationary and moving objects while out on deliveries.
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The drones are set to identify obstacles in order to avoid them and, when descending at a customer’s home, they make sure the surrounding area is empty for landing, Amazon added.
The company says it has built two dozen different prototypes of drone since creating its ‘Prime Air’ division back in 2013. The Federal Aviation Administration in the US gave it clearance to start flying the drones back in 2020. Amazon aims to make its drones fly up to 15 miles (24km) with the ability to deliver packages weighing no more than 5lb (2.3kg) in less than 30 minutes.
Amazon said it was working with the Federal Aviation Administration and local regulators to secure permits for the program, according to a blog post that also touted Lockeford as a site for flight experiments.
“Lockeford residents will play an important role in defining the future. Their feedback about Prime Air, with drones delivering packages in their backyards, will help us create a service that will safely scale to meet the needs of customers everywhere,” the blog post stated, predicting that drone deliveries “could one day become just as common as seeing an Amazon delivery van pull up outside your house.
Royal Mail has announced plans to increase its use of drones for deliveries with the creation of 50 new ‘postal drone routes’.
The British postal service said it was aiming to use up to 200 drones over the next three years, servicing all corners of the UK. The first routes for the new service include the Isles of Scilly, Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands and the Hebrides.
‘On-time delivery regardless of our customers’ location or the weather, whilst protecting our environment, is our goal,’ said Simon Thompson, chief executive of Royal Mail.
‘Even though we go everywhere, Royal Mail already has the lowest CO2 emissions per parcel delivered. This initiative will help reduce our emissions even further,’ he added.
Amazon’s new hexagon-shaped drone looks different from the experimental robotic aircraft that made Amazon Prime Air’s first aerial drop-offs in England in 2016 and in California in 2017.
“Our newest drone design includes advances in efficiency, stability and, most importantly, in safety,” Wilke wrote in a blog post. “It is also unique, and it advances the state of the art. How so? First, it’s a hybrid design. It can do vertical takeoffs and landings – like a helicopter. And it’s efficient and aerodynamic – like an airplane. It also easily transitions between these two modes – from vertical mode to airplane mode, and back to vertical mode.”
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