Prime Air: Amazon plans to launch a drone delivery service in California

Nothing has been heard of Amazon delivery drones for a long time. Now Prime Air’s drone delivery service will become a reality before the end of this year, Amazon promised in a statement on Monday. The plan is to deliver the packages by drone in Lockford, California.

Even the employees don’t seem to believe in the project anymore, because Amazon joked in its announcement of its planned entry into the drone delivery service: “The promise of drone delivery often feels like science fiction. We’ve been working on it for nearly a decade, to make it a reality.” incident”. But now the challenge of being able to quickly, inexpensively and securely deliver goods using a drone in less than an hour appears to have been met. It is particularly difficult to create a logistics network that can be used to deliver goods to large communities.

Teams of hundreds of scientists, engineers, aviation experts and futurists “worked hard” to create what writes amazon. Lockeford will become a kind of pilot project. It is important that the locals play. They are supposed to provide feedback on how the transaction is going when the drones are delivering the ordered goods in their gardens or backyards. With only this information, a reliably working and scalable service can be set up.

Dodge obstacles safely

The heart of Prime Air is the Sense and Avoid system. It is intended to enable flight operations without visual contact with the pilot. The drone must transport cargo over greater distances and be able to independently, “safely and reliably” avoid aircraft, people, animals and obstacles. The system must recognize whether it is a stationary object such as a house or a moving object such as an airplane. Once the drone detects such an object, it will automatically change course to avoid it safely, Amazon promises. Upon delivery, the drone operates in a similar manner and ensures that no person, animal or thing is within a certain radius of the delivery location.

Drones for commercial operations

About twenty different drones have been developed since Prime Air was founded. The most recent development is the MK27-2, a six-engine hexagonal helicopter. The delivery plane is designed in such a way that its rotors run quietly. Amazon said it worked closely with the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to obtain flight certification that would allow the operation of such drones. However, Amazon does not yet have permission to commercially operate such drones, He writes for the American technology magazine The Verge. Wing, a subsidiary of Google and UPS already has this permission.

Initially, Lockeford residents will only be able to order a selection of items suitable for drone transportation. It should be in the thousands to start with. With order confirmation, customers receive an estimated arrival time and can use the status tracker to track where their delivery is at the moment. Then the drone descends to the customer’s garden, hoveres at a safe height, delivers the package and rises again. Amazon isn’t providing any more detailed information about the process, but it does confirm that it will show Prime Air’s progress over the next few months with photos and videos.

Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos first announced drone delivery in 2013. His goal: Customers should receive their goods within 30 minutes of ordering. There have been setbacks again and again such as accidents and project staff dissatisfaction. Then, in 2019, the vertically flying drone should enable entry into the drone delivery business. But nothing came of it either.

(olp)