Imagine a world where any thing you required, any object you wanted, or any necessity you needed could be delivered to your doorstep. You might be thinking, yeah, that’s called ordering things on the internet, but Amazon is looking to completely revamp the world of e-commerce–which is weird considering they basically have the gold standard for delivery–with drones.
This isn’t really breaking news, as the company has been working on plans for this for quite some time. Amazon has invested considerable resources and research into designing a system that might work, and also into battling the new FAA rules governing drones.
The company recently released a video to showcase exactly what such a system might look like. Prime Air promises to deliver items in less than 30 minutes from the warehouse to your doorstep. The drones themselves–though they’ll vary in design depending on need and environment–will weigh around 55 pounds and fly under 400 feet. They can carry up to five pounds of additional weight.
The drones are loaded with sensors that allow them to keep track of other things in the air that would be flying at that height, as well as locate a safe landing spot. They have the ability to identify things like hot air balloons or even other drones that would be flying in their airspace, and Amazon claims they are completely safe to fly up to 10 miles from the warehouse. This flies in the face–pun–of the regulatory standards established this year by the FAA, so Amazon has to keep a lid on any actual launches of the the service until the government catches up with the technology.
They’ve written several papers on the idea that separate airspace where specific aircraft are regulated to specific levels. For example, one block for commercial drones would be under 500 feet. The idea would be to establish for equippage levels: Basic, Good, Better, and Best. Each of those would have different specifications and be relegated to a particular area of airspace depending on capabilities.
For now, Amazon is trying to drum up excitement from the public with the launch of a new video–featuring Jeremy Clarkson–to showcase what their technology could bring to the table for customers.
The video tells the riveting story of a child who’s football/soccer shoe has been partially consumed by the family bulldog on the day of the big game. Mom orders a new pair of Pumas on Amazon, puts out the landing pad, and within 30 minutes, it’s game time for the little girl. She also orders a bone for the dog.
The video offers a few different interesting angles. It explains how the basic sensing technology works and showcases how this prototype would lift vertically off the ground, but fly horizontally. It also gives a decent idea of how large the drones are and how low they would fly to the ground. For the consumer, it shows how the technology will solve little annoyances.
While we probably won’t be seeing swarms of delivery drones in the air anytime soon–I assume they’ll need a decent air traffic control system–we could be seeing the future of e-commerce and mail in the making.
