Three years ago, Amazon had revealed their plans for drone deliveries for the very first time.
They call it Prime Air - a special delivery option for Amazon Prime Customers where a fully autonomous drone delivers the order within 30 minutes.
Yesterday, Amazon announced that the very first drone delivery was successfully completed in Cambridge, UK.
The whole process, from ordering to the point of actually receiving the goods took only 13 minutes!
""Prime Air has great potential to enhance the services we already provide to millions of customers by providing rapid parcel delivery that will also increase the overall safety and efficiency of the transportation system"-Amazon
And what did the first ever customer of Prime Air order? An Amazon Fire TV Stick, and a bag of popcorn.
Whatever the customer has ordered gets packaged for delivery (the drone can carry up to 2.7 kg/ 5lbs) and then it flies up to 400ft high to deliver the package to the customer by itself, without any human interaction, and returns to the amazon center.
The first trial customers are located in Cambridge, close to a custom-built Amazon fulfillment center.
Amazon has only started with "a handful" for now, but want to expand and offer the service to dozens of customers in the local area soon.
The customer can only order via drone during daylight though, and only when the weather conditions are suitable (no rain/ snow/ fog).To make this possible, there was a lot of work behind the scenes required -
first of all, of course the technology to build a fully autonomous drone had to be developed and tested.
But then being allowed to try it wasn't that easy either, Amazon received a special permit that allowed them to execute drone flights beyond line-of-sight, which is normally illegal.
Of course, we are still very far from having drones deliver every amazon package, all over the world.
The company still has to face some major challenges - navigating in an urban area like London for example will be a lot more difficult for the drone than flying in the spacious countryside.
But still, this is a big step!
It shows that Amazon really wants to bring this idea to life, and that they're serious about it - proving everyone wrong who first laughed about this idea 3 years ago, or thinking it was a joke.
"One day, seeing Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road."-Amazon
Images: 1, 2, 3, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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© Sirwinchester
Where is a Postal Worker when we need one?
Hahahaha!
Imagine the day when a drone will fly through the air and deliver your favourite beer or whiskey to you. Magic!
With the mail service these days if you order three year old scotch it will be well aged by the time you receive it!
That would be awesome, let's see how soon we can reach that point!
Seeing a drone carrying a bottle of Jameson....I might even shed a tear. :)
Yeah, I read about this yesterday... a single qualified customer, for items stocked at the distribution center within a few miles of where said customer lives... don't hold your breath!
Oh yeah, and if you live in Australia, well, you're screwed cause of the strict aviation laws.
There's definitely still a loooooong way to go until this is ready for mass adaption, it was just a small start!
And yes, the strict laws pretty much everywhere will be a big challenge, amazon even only received a permit for limited testing in the UK
even if this was only a test, I'm pretty impressed! A fully autonomous drone is a big step, andI'm excited to see where this project will take us and when people from around the world will be able to get their packages like this!
I'm also interested to see where this will go, and how quickly it'll be available to the greater public
Wild. It's a brave new world!
Yes, and the future starts now! :)
As cool as this is I feel like if it toes take of people will start to steal from them.
Hmm, that's a good point. They definitely need some kind of security lock mechanism.
For now the drone only lands in people's backyards, but what do you do if someone doesn't have a backyard and you need to deliver it to the front door?
I wish I could order food via drone and have it delivered outside my window on the 15th floor :)
And have it within 13 minutes, while it's still hot hahaha! Yes that would be amazing, maybe we'll get to that point in the future!
Fun technology!
But imagine all packages being delivered like that in the future; we'll be seeing congestion on a whole different level 8-).
Definitely, and that paired with self-driving cars and delivery robots on the sidewalks... humans will have to look out for the robots then!
And there will be a new kind of mail robbery as well, especially in the countryside, using the shotgun that just flew in.
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😄😇😄😇This is really just too cool for words!😄😇😄😇
Now I just need muh' flying car... ;)
Frickin awesome! Love the fact that they've used the UK to test this out :-)
#TheFutureWorks
Cg