14 DAY TRIAL // If the US government gets to play around with drones, why wouldn’t Amazon, right? Well, at the very least, the company is planning to use the drones for a brand new delivery system.
Dubbed “Prime Air,” the company has been working on the new delivery service for a while, but they won’t be ready any time soon, but rather sometime in the next four or five years.
Until then, Amazon is settling for piloting a series of tests and looking into the regulations required, which certainly make up for a lengthy list.
During an interview for CBS, Jeff Bezos appeared to be particularly proud of Amazon’s latest plan, but he admits that they will only be fully autonomous and start operating sometime in the near future. They’ll be able to carry packages of up to five pounds (2.26 kg) , which adds up to some 86 percent of all deliveries made by the company.
They won’t be going very far from the delivery centers either. According to the Amazon chief, the drones will only make deliveries 10 miles (16 km) away from the fulfillment centers. This means that in urban areas, the cover will be pretty significant.
The company has also revealed some exciting new footage from some of the latest tests, allowing viewers to see exactly how the deliveries will take place.
Once a purchase is made and the Prime Air delivery system is chosen, the package gets put in a yellow box which then gets picked up by the drone. Not too long after, the drone flies off to the destination, drops off the package on the front porch and zooms off.
It’s unknown how drones will actually handle apartment buildings deliveries, but that’s apparently a work in progress.
The really cool thing about the new delivery system is that the items will be on your doorstep in thirty minutes, something you can’t get anywhere else unless you go out and buy an item yourself from a brick and mortar shop.
