Amazon's futuristic drone delivery plan
The US online retailer's revolutionary project still needs safety testing and federal approval, but Bezos believes that Amazon's "Prime Air" service may be up and running within four or five years.
"These are effectively drones but there's no reason that they can't be used as delivery vehicles," Bezos told CBS television's "60 Minutes" programme.
"I know this sounds like science fiction. It's not," he said. "We can do half-hour deliveries and carry objects of up to about 2.5kg. This covers about 86% of all items that we currently deliver."
A video posted on the company's website shows a prototype drone. The body of the device is about the size of a flat-scree monitor, and is attached to eight small helicopter rotors that sit on four legs.
The Octopeter delivery drone
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 centre. Inside the bucket is the order.
The drone lifts off and whizzes into the air like a large 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 16km radius of the fulfillment centres, sufficient distance to cover a significant portion of the population in urban areas.
The drones operate autonomously and follow GPS co-ordinates to drop the items off the target locations.
"It's very green, it's better than driving trucks around," said Bezos.
Drones won't land on your head says Bezos
He also claims the drones are safe. "The prototype has redundant motors that will keep it in the air and prevent it from crashing," he says.
"The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to. These drones 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, adding that the Federal Aviation Administration hammering out rules for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for applications such as home deliveries.
Amazon projected a more optimistic timeline than Bezos himself for the project, saying the FAA's rules could be in place as early as 2015 and that Amazon Prime Air would be ready then.
Bezos hinted that part of the motivation behind the mini-drones was to make sure Amazon remains at the cutting edge of the retail industry.
"Companies have short life spans and Amazon will be displaced as an online retailer one day," he said. "But I would prefer it to happen after I'm dead," he added.
If the plan succeeds other retailers like Wal-Mart, or even the local pizza store, could also start home deliveries using drones.
Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge
Source: I-Net Bridge
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