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Amazon Reveals "Prime Air", Their Plans For 30-minute Deliveries By Drone
Z80xxc! writes "Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed during a CBS 60 Minutes interview that the company is working on a service called 'Prime Air' to deliver packages by autonomous octocopter drones within 30 minutes of hitting the 'buy' button. The plan still requires more testing and FAA approval, but Bezos predicts it'll be available to the public in the next 4-5 years.
With a lot of backlash against drones, and some towns even offering bounties to shoot them down, will this technology ever take off, or is this just another one of Amazon's eccentric CEO's fantastical flight ideas?"
I had the same thought until I realized my wife's Xmas order was left on our front step last week by Canada Post. Normally they just leave a door hanger telling us where and when we can pick up the package.
The drone would be a neat idea if I could have it drop the package in the backyard instead of out front. 30-60 minutes isn't really a bad amount of time to wait for a delivery, on par with Pizza. The major issue being you'd have to be near a deployment center, I imagine the only Amazon deployment centers in Canada are in Toronto and Ottawa.
Mount a camera on the drone and let me watch my package flying over the landscape via the "Track my package" option.
Summation 2
Anyone who has any idea on the capabilities of octocopters can immediately see that this idea is DOA.
That list would include you. You have no idea what you are talking about.
There are regular payload FPV flights currently out to over 3 miles.
There are heavy lift competitions with multicopters that can lift a human being. 2 kg is nothing even for a small copter.
Good weather toys? Your comment on this proves you have no experience with multicopters. In fact multicopters handle wind better than any other small craft.
Octocopters are relatively robust and can still fly with multiple motor losses (although with cargo would be a problem). The technology is rapidly advancing though. I have over 1000 flights on my quadcopter with no maintenance and not a single fault.