I just saw this come across the news.
I just had to place a post about this.
If you watched 60 minutes you are already ahead of me on this.
Want that Amazon order in just 30 minutes?
Company CEO Jeff Bezos says he hopes to soon deploy an armada of mini-drones able to drop small packages at your doorstep.
Amazon Drone Program
This still needs more testing and approval from government agencies, but it appears Amazon is experimenting with drone helicopters to deliver about 85% of their products they sell that weight less than 5 lbs.
Amazon is looking to the future using this science fiction approach to making deliveries as fast as a half hour for products these little drones can deliver.
Basically they will GPS these little drones called Amazon Prime Air.
The body of the device is about the size of a flat-scree monitor, and it is attached to eight small helicopter rotors and sits on four tall legs.
The claws under the belly of the “octopeter” then latch onto a standard sized plastic bucket that rolls down a conveyer belt at Amazon’s fulfillment center. Inside the bucket is the order.
The drone lifts off and whizzes into the air like a giant mechanical insect to deliver the package just 30 minutes after clicking the “pay” button on Amazon.com. Then it buzzes back into the air and returns to base.
The mini-drones are powered by environmentally-friendly electric motors and can cover areas within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius of fulfillment centers, thus covering a significant portion of the population in urban areas.
The drones operate autonomously and follow the GPS coordinates they receive to drop the items off the target locations.
“It’s very green, it’s better than driving trucks around,” said Bezos.
He also claims they are safe; the prototype has redundant motors that will keep it in the air and prevent it from crashing.
“The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say, ‘Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood,'” Bezos told CBS.
Amazon said the octocopters would be “ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place,” noting that the Federal Aviation Administration was hard at work hammering out rules for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Amazon projected a more optimistic timeline than Bezos himself for the project to be activated, saying the FAA’s rules could be in place as early as 2015, and that Amazon Prime Air would be ready at that time.
Bezos hinted that part of the motivation behind the mini-drones was to make sure Amazon remains on the cutting edge of the retail industry.
“Companies have short life spans… And Amazon will be disrupted one day,” he said.
“I would love for it to be after I’m dead.”
If the plan succeeds other retailers like Wal Mart, or even the local pizza store, could also start home deliveries via drone.
The feedback on Twitter has been from amazed to humorous
This story could qualify for one of thos Onion stories but it was shown on CBS.
What next!!
Oh will the skies be littered with drones by Amazon, Wal Mart, or even the local pizza stores.
What do you think should the government allow the skies to be filled with drones??
To Your Success
Ed