I was personally impressed on Sunday when my order which I ordered at 15:00 on Saturday via my Prime account was delivered at 10:30 the next morning! Already Amazon offers delivery in some markets in as little as one hour with Amazon Prime Now, but that ‘old fashioned’ method still relies upon humans driving cars. Very quaint and traditional. Amazon’s next big idea is the deploy an army of drones to deliver packages over a wide area in as little as 30 minutes. Prime Air was unveiled as a concept several years ago, but Amazon is apparently at the latter stages of developing it.
Amazon founderJeff Bezos – said in December 2015 the United Kingdom could be the first to get deliveries through Prime Now Air, by the time U.S. federal regulators earlier this year approved Amazon’s request to test a particular drone outdoors, the technology was obsolete and the Seattle online retailer had already moved on to a new model. “The technology is very advanced already, the long pole in the tent – the critical path item – is the regulatory framework that needs to be constructed for this to be done,” Bezos told German newspaper Die Welt. “One of the regulatory agencies that’s moving fastest on this is the UK, so it’s possible that drone deliveries will start first in the UK.”
Amazon vice president Paul Misener confirmed that the online retailer is developing different types of UAVs for different locations. For instance, the drone it deploys to dry areas will be different from the one for wet, rainy locales. The machine used for suburban environments will also differ from the one meant to navigate high-rise buildings in cities. The developers are still working on a way to deliver to people living in apartment buildings, but those with houses can expect to see UAVs landing in their yards within 30 minutes of ordering. Despite the models’ differences, they’re all being designed to be as quiet as possible to avoid excessive noise when Prime Air becomes the preferred method of delivery among customers.
These drones are more like horses than cars — and let me explain why. If you have a small tree in your front yard, and you want to bang your car into it for some reason, you can do that. Your spouse might not be happy with you, but you can do it. But try riding a horse into the tree. It won’t do it. The horse will see the tree and go around it. Same way our drones will not run into trees, because they will know not to run into it.
Amazon thinks that in order to get delivery times to half an hour, the drones will need to have a range of about 10 miles. That probably means areas with Prime Now warehouses will serve as hubs for the drones. The drones themselves will weight about 55 pounds and have a maximum payload of five pounds. So, that giant TV you ordered will probably still make its way to you on a truck. Still, most things Amazon sells weight less than five pounds. Misener doesn’t know if it’s going to cost anything extra, though.
Other companies including Google ( and even Wal-Mart) are currently testing drone programs, but Amazon is the furthest along with the concept and is the only large tech company currently going through the regulatory maze.
