Inside Amazon Prime Air: Multiple Drone Models, Smart Flightpaths, 2 Kilogram Parcels

Amazon has revealed a range of further details on how it plans to deploy its next-generation delivery drones. Despite Amazon’s drones being created to operate efficiently in various environments, chances are they won’t be able to travel much more than 10 miles from their home-base and will be restricted to carrying packages that weigh less than five pounds.

Packages will still be delivered to a customer’s doorstep even if he or she isn’t home. Misener expanded on this when talking to Pogue, saying that Amazon is looking at ways to make drone deliveries to areas that range from rural farmhouses to high-rise city skyscrapers. The company hopes you’ll be able to receive your package just 30 minutes after ordering. Delivery specialist DHL has tried out its own “parcelcopters”, while retail heavyweight Walmart in October declared its own intentions to start testing drones. They then have access to Amazon Prime Video and other services. In a recent interview with Yahoo Tech, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy, Paul Misener, provided exciting new insight into the flying delivery machines.

In an interview with Yahoo Tech, Misener said that the drones use “sense-and-avoid technology”, which is useful when delivering parcels to houses. But the 5 pound weight limit was decided on after Amazon found that most items it sold weighed less than that.

Misener says Amazon’s delivery drones – if designed correctly – won’t be obnoxious and noisy; engineers are working hard to dampen the noise.

“These drones are more like horses than cars, Misener said”.

“I can tell you, it is very real”, he emphasized.

Amazon Prime Air is the next big project being worked on by the online retailer. “Between 200 and 400 feet would be a transit zone, where drones could fly fairly quickly, horizontally”.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that the idea of drone delivery was first introduced by Amazon, and now all that really stands in its way is a framework that will regulate a whole new generation of aircraft and a whole new industry.

Rubbishing claims that the drones will blot out the sky, Misener concluded: “It’s not gonna be some science fiction, Hitchcock scenario; that’s a bit of an exaggeration”.

As hard and futuristic as the engineering hurdles might seem, the “automation technologies already exist”, Misener assured.

“These folks are completely focused on making this a reality – and demonstrating that it is safe before we begin operations”, he says. The regulatory issues are hard.