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Amazon completes its first drone-powered delivery
It's already been three years since Amazon first revealed its somewhat audacious plan to make deliveries by drone. But the company is quite serious about this, and today it is announcing that it completed the first Amazon Prime Air delivery on December 7th. The shipment, which took 13 minutes from order to delivery, was sent to a customer in Cambridge, England, where Amazon is operating a custom-built fulfillment center.
Amazon explores using street lights as delivery drone perches
Amazon's Prime Air delivery drones already have a glaring problem: how do you keep them charged and sheltered when dedicated facilities are likely to be few and far between? The company has an idea. It recently received a patent for a "UAV docking station" concept that would offer a temporary perch for drones in need. If a drone runs low on battery or needs to take shelter from an impending storm, it would only have to travel to a station on top of a street light, cell tower, church steeple or another high-up location. The drone could even drop off a package for another drone, turning a delivery into an aerial relay race.
Computer vision is key to Amazon Prime Air drone deliveries
For all of Amazon's grand plans regarding delivery drones, it still needs to figure out concepts we take for granted with traditional courier methods. Namely, figuring out how to drop off your latest order without destroying anything (including the UAV itself) during transit and landing. That's where advanced computer vision comes in from Jeff Bezos' new team of Austria-based engineers, according to The Verge. The group invented methods for reconstructing geometry from images and contextually recognizing environmental objects, giving the drones the ability to differentiate between, say, a swimming pool and your back patio. Both are flat surfaces, but one won't leave your PlayStation VR headset waterlogged after drop-off.
Amazon exec explains how Prime Air delivery drones will work
Amazon vice president Paul Misener doesn't know if the company already has a pricing scheme for its Prime Air service, but he knows everything else there is to know about the delivery drones. He talked about the project at length in an interview with Yahoo Tech, where he explained how it will work and how Amazon plans to solve the issues it's facing. The exec confirmed earlier reports that the online retailer is developing different types of UAVs for different locations.
Amazon proposes a delivery drone flight plan
Following the FAA's recent relaxation of commercial drone flight regulations, Amazon is forging ahead with plans to employ the machines for deliveries. But first, the company has proposed some ground rules to keep the fledgling industry flying safely and out of the way of manned aircraft. Currently the FAA only allows drones to climb to 400 feet and they must remain within the pilot's line of sight. They also cannot be operated within five miles of an airport. Amazon's proposal builds off these initial restrictions with faster, long-range drones flying between 200 and 400 feet up. Slower and short-range drones would operate below 200 feet.
Amazon's delivery drones could be in the air within a year
Commercial drone operations like Amazon's highly-touted delivery service could commence in about a year, according to a senior official from the Federal Aviation Administration. FAA Deputy Administrator Michael Whitaker told a congressional committee on Wednesday the necessary regulations for commercial UAVs to operate in public airspace will "be in place within a year." That's way shorter than the 2017 start date that the FAA originally figured on. And when the rules are finally settled on, Amazon will be ready. "We'd like to begin delivering to our customers as soon as it's approved," Paul Misener, Amazon's VP of global public policy, testified at the hearing. "We will have it (the technology) in place by the time any regulations are ready. We are working very quickly."
Amazon doesn't want states regulating courier drones
If you thought Amazon was already fighting tooth-and-nail for permission to fly delivery drones in the US, you haven't seen anything yet. The internet shopping giant has warned a House oversight committee that states and cities "must not be allowed" to regulate unmanned aircraft that get the Federal Aviation Administration's approval. There should be only one set of rules for airspace, purpose and qualifications, Amazon says. It's not hard to see why the company would be nervous -- it could be very tricky to run a nationwide courier drone service if some states have strict requirements or ban these services entirely.
Amazon is hiring someone to oversee its courier drones
Want Amazon's Prime Air courier drones to enter service as quickly as possible? You can now do something about it... provided you have years of aviation experience under your belt, anyway. The online retailer is hiring a Flight Safety Manager that will oversee its drone flight tests and make sure these robots deliver their goods without a hitch. Amazon still has plenty of regulatory and technological hurdles to overcome before a position like this is more than a novelty, but its very existence is proof that the company is serious about unmanned aerial shipping. If you want to get a sense of what a drone safety job would entail, you can head below to check out 3D Robotics' flight demo from Engadget Expand.
NASA explains why you won't get a drone delivery anytime soon
Delivery drones are great at exactly one job right now: generating buzz. However, NASA has told the New York Times that actual widget-shipping drones from Amazon or Google are still far in the future. And the space agency should know: it has taken on the task of developing an "air traffic control" (ATC) system for drones flying below 400 feet. Such a system would be run by computers without human aid, and take into account weather, air traffic, geographic obstacles and other factors. The space agency is quite familiar with existing air traffic issues, as it has been advising the FAA on the NextGen system for "real" planes. Armed with that know-how, it sees a number of problems for UAV couriers.
Amazon asks the FAA for permission to play with its drones outside
Keep laughing at Amazon's Prime Air drone delivery video if you want to (cough, Netflix), but the company is moving forward as though it's serious. Bloomberg points to a letter filed today with the FAA asking for permission to take its unmanned flying machines out of their test facility, "to do what thousands of hobbyists and manufacturers of model aircraft do every day." The FAA is still putting tight controls on the commercial use of drones, but Amazon Global Public Policy VP argues that one day its Prime Air drones will be as common a sight as mail trucks on the road are today. He says that the company's indoor tests in Seattle have brought its "highly automated" small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS, for short) to ninth-gen vehicles -- CEO Jeff Bezos told shareholders it was on the 5th and 6th gen in April. They can travel at 50mph carrying 5 lb packages (which covers 86 percent of Amazon's deliveries) easily, and have been tested for agility, flight duration, redundancy plus other factors. The FAA has yet to respond to the petition, but who knows, maybe soon area residents can keep an eye on the sky and go Blu-ray hunting.
Amazon Prime Air drones revealed on 60 Minutes, aim to deliver in half an hour (video)
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took to 60 Minutes to reveal the company's latest delivery method: drones. In what is likely a cunning reminder of the e-tailer's upcoming Cyber Monday sales, these bots will apparently be capable of delivering packages up to five pounds (86 percent of orders are apparently less than that), with the aim of getting them to your house in under half an hour. The system is called Prime Air and the octo-copter drones, which wait, ready to deliver, at the end of conveyor belts, have a range of 10 miles. As Amazon puts it, "Putting Prime Air into commercial use will take some number of years as we advance the technology and wait for the necessary FAA rules and regulations" and Bezos himself added in the TV segment that it won't be before 2015 at the very earliest. While it sounds like they''ll take their time to get here (if they ever do), we've at least got a video of the drones in action -- it's right after the break.
