Amazon wants to take Prime Air delivery to the next level

Jul 12, 2014 21:04 GMT  ·  By

A few months ago, we were all laughing off Amazon’s plans to start delivering packages via drones. Opinions split between wondering if they were really serious about this or if it was all a marketing ploy. After confirming that they were very much intending to put the plan into motion, Amazon has now requested permission to test drone deliveries outside of Seattle.

The online retail giant has requested permission from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to run tests in its own backyard, as revealed by a letter published on the FAA’s site.

While the company has been testing the drones inside its warehouses for a few months now, it now wants to take them outside in order to continue developing the innovative Amazon Prime Air project. With this idea, Amazon wants to deliver lightweight packages to customers within 30 minutes of an order if these live within a certain range of its warehouses.

In the past five months, Prime Air drones have been under development, Amazon writes, adding that tests have included flight ranges, as well as the development of sense-and-avoid sensors. Furthermore, the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been perfected to be able to carry five-pound packages while travelling at 50 miles per hour.

The idea may seem rather new since Amazon has announced the project a few months back, but the drones are apparently at the eighth and ninth generation models, indicating that they’d actually been working on the project for a while.

“Current FAA rules allow hobbyists and manufacturers of model aircraft wide latitude in flying their sUAS outdoors. Because Amazon is a commercial enterprise we have been limited to conducting R&D [research and development] flights indoors or in other countries. Of course, Amazon would prefer to keep the focus, jobs, and investment of this important research and development initiative in the United States by conducting private research and development operations outdoors near Seattle,” Amazon says.

The company states that it is in the public interest for the FAA to allow Amazon an exemption to test the drones outdoors in the United States because it advances Congress’ goal of getting commercial sUAS flying in the United States safely and soon.

“It is necessary step towards realizing the consumer benefits of Amazon Prime Air and, at this point, Amazon’s continuing innovation in the United States requires the requested exemption for outdoor testing in support of our R&D,” Amazon writes.

The company’s goal is to make seeing drone delivering packages as common as seeing mail trucks on the road.