Amazon – Experimenting with Autonomous Flying Delivery Drones

Amazon is a household name that any online shopper might be familiar with. This online retailer giant, is about to make a mark in the delivery of goods with the help of ‘Drones’. Delivery of ordered goods to customers is about to be made easy with the coming of the ‘Drones’.

Drones or Octocopters are delivery machines that fly in the air to deliver goods to customers. A Drone can carry a weight of up to 2.3 kg within 30 minutes soon after they place an order. Research for the same is going on and as per the records; it can take up to five years for bringing this service into action. The approval of the US Federal Aviation Administration is to yet approve the coming of drones for the purpose of common people’s use.

The service of drones that Amazon is planning is called Prime Air, and the company is doing everything to make the drones come into reality, as it wants to boost its growth with their help. Amazon has made the consumers aware of this technology through a video posted on its website. The video shows a drone picking package from a warehouse and delivering the package to the customer’s doorsteps.

Approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration can bring about a lot of changes in Amazon as a whole. The FAA has however approved the use of drones only for the government agencies and for the Police; the approval for a private company has yet to be seen.

By the year 2015, Civilian Air Space can be expected to be opened to every drone in US, and the whole of Europe will be making use of this technology by the year 2016. The regulations on drones are mainly placed for minimizing the risks of injury to people on the ground. The Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), as per Dr Darren Ansell, an expert of UAV, do not have the capability to avoid flying into people on the ground. According the Dr Darren, delivering goods to homes in residential areas that are densely populated, is sometimes risky, and this is the reason why such regulations prevent UAV for private companies.

Security of the goods too has to be taken into account. Since there is no one to look after the goods in the aircraft, there are chances of the packages to be captured and stolen. But Amazon is determined to bring this technology for commercial operations, and is doing every possible step to make this dream of theirs come to light at the earliest.

The authorities of the Amazon dream of a day when Prime Air Vehicles are considered normal as the mail trucks that are found on the road, and they expect that this dream of theirs would come into reality by the year 2015.

With the announcement of implementing of drones in future by Amazon, other companies like United Parcel Service too have started trying its own version of delivery of packages through drones recently. It is expected that the coming of drones for the delivery of goods, can make a great change in the years to come.

• About the Author

About Seema Shyam Stelzer

If you ask me whether writing is my passion, then I will fail to answer this question. Never in my life did I think that one day I will become a writer by profession. Yes, I did participate for writing competitions during my college days, and yes I did win a few too. But I did not plan to become a professional writer. It is true that whatever you receive is planned by the Almighty beforehand. And I believe Almighty had his own plans in turning my life towards a field I was totally unaware of. I came to the world of creative and content writing by chance. There was a period in my life when I felt I had something important waiting for me, when I quit my job for the sake of my family. As a mother of two, I had certain responsibilities towards my family and wanted to be available for them all the time and this was the time when I thought of using my writing skills some way or the other to earn a small income. Fortunately for me, I got the chance to work under some of the wonderful personalities of the field, who guided me the right way. These are the people who taught me how to become dedicated towards a particular work even when no one is there to watch you.