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?"

Comments

Crime?

[AmiMoJo]

It seems like it would be a lot easier to steal from a drone than it would be to steal from a person delivering a package.

Re:Crime?

[Vanderhoth]

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.

Re:Crime?

[ceoyoyo]

Or steal the drone....

Re:Crime?

[N1AK]

There have been documented cases of people following UPS etc vans and collecting the things they drop off on porches. Given that the person delivering the package can't magically get it inside the house unless it fits through the letterbox or I'm there their security isn't exactly amazing. A drone could drop the parcel in my rear garden without me having to leave my gate unlocked; furthermore it wouldn't be hard to have some kind of coded access box for them to use, or on a simpler level just deliver when they know I'm home so I can accept the item.

I honestly think you'd see a decimation of manual delivery jobs in the UK within less than 2 years of drone style delivery being legalised and viably regulated. It'll be cheaper, faster and offer more convenient delivery times without huge fees; there's basically nothing that manual delivery offers to remotely make up for that.

Re:Crime?

[Nerdfest]

Yeah, I had them leave two new Nexus phones sticking out of the box by the front door. They actually do it all the time, and even left a $1500 laptop sitting there. They, UPS, and others do it all the time. The good part is that I don't know anyone who's ever had something go missing. Yay Canada. I was reading something from someone from eastern Europe who came here about the things he found the most different about this country. Where he was from this was apparently unheard of , as anything left at your door would go missing. I'm guess that in some areas here it would be the same though.

I think having something dropped off by drone would call a lot of attentiopn to it sa well, as for a devemt amount of time it would be quite the novelty.

Re:Crime?

[sifi]

Surely the whole point is you wait until you know you're going to in for 30mins and then order it? It wouldn't have to leave it anywhere then.

Re:Crime?

[nospam007]

"I also have never known anyone who's had something taken from their doorstep."

Really?
I just put all my waste and junk in a used paper box with some gift wrapping around at the front door and it disappears within minutes.

Re:Crime?

[ottothecow]

I don't understand all of the people talking about theft. Isn't the point of this that the drones are available to deliver something you want right away, directly to you?

The drones are about as fast as a pizza...do you routinely order a pizza and then leave the house to return hours later and wonder why your pizza is cold? No, this is for when you order something and want it immediately (otherwise you would be ok with a normal package). You place your order, they pack it, and the drone flies it over. You walk outside, say "Hey Drone!", grab the box, and walk back inside. I don't see why you would bother using the drone to deliver if you aren't going to be home for the next 5 hours...

I predict...

[Joce640k]

This is just a free-publicity stunt, timed for Xmas to get the word "Amazon" on all the news channels.

my guess is it's hype+leverage

[Trepidity]

It's possible Bezos really means it, but my guess is that two things are behind it:

1. Using the current drone hype to help position Amazon as exciting/technological/futuristic, rather than just a boring logistics company that owns warehouses and brown cardboard boxes. With Google working on self-driving cars, and Elon Musk proposing a hyperloop and working on a reusable rocket, Amazon might want to join the futurology game. Otherwise they risk being seen as a low-margin but very efficient (and high-volume) mass retailer, the online version of Wal-Mart.

2. Provide some leverage in negotiations with the delivery and courier companies they depend on by threatening to bypass them. Amazon may want at least a halfway credible alternative to companies like UPS/Fedex when negotiating rates, something to hang over their head as "if you piss us off enough, we're really going to do it, we're going to just deliver everything with drones".

Re:Hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

1. This technology
2. Drone capable of capturing other drones in flight
3. Arrrr!

Hacker's delight

[greichert]

How long till people start stealing the drones as they see one landing (by throwing a net on them for instance) and hack the firmware so they have their own drone?

Re:Hacker's delight

[N1AK]

Roughly as long as it takes for people to start jacking UPS vans when the driver gets out to put the parcel on the porch... Any drone that is going to have permission to do this is going to have tracking and cameras. Some chumps will shoot them or break them but the risk and reward balance is pretty obviously not going to encourage much of it.

Re:Hacker's delight

[Inda]

The children near me destroy shopping trollies just for the one-pound coin held within the locking mechanism. That coin will buy 2.5 cigarettes.

They'd love to take a hammer and screwdriver to a drone... and then I'd buy it off them.

Stupid media bait

[Anonymous Coward]

This story nicely demonstrates how the modern media has no time (or desire) to think on their own.

This system is completely impractical. Anyone who has any idea on the capabilities of octocopters can immediately see that this idea is DOA.

- Range is abysmal. If you are not within walking distance of a distribution center, you are not in range of one of these. They could offer 10x better service for those within walking distance of their distribution hub by offering in-situ instant pickup if you are happy to walk to the center.
- Payload is non-existing - 0.5kg is quite a bit for an octocopter. Lets say they make a bigger "cargo" version and manage to quadruple that. 2kg. Too little for anything useful.
- Octocopters are good-weather toys. They cannot be flown in heavy winds. "Sorry, no deliveries today, it's too windy". Yeah. Right.
- The technology just isn't robust enough to be scaled up to meaningful numbers - crashes due to mechanical faults are inevitable, potentially hitting something and as a minimum causing an expensive tech toy wreck for Amazon. Often.

So this is purely a silly story to get Amazon into headlines right around "Cyber Monday" so buyers would remember that Amazon exists.

Re:Stupid media bait

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Stupid media bait

[Stele]

It could grip it by the HDMI port.

Re:Stupid media bait

[u38cg]

So drive a truck full of octocopters to an area, send them off, ten minutes later they're all back. And something like 80% of deliveries are 2kg. As for wind, obviously it's only useful in suitable climates. But I suspect you're overestimating the amount of wind you get in many majro urban areas.

Re:Stupid media bait

[rolfwind]

Bezos said in the new 60 minutes, it will handle payloads of 5lbs, enough for 86% of it's sold merchandise.

Second, this system could be used in China sooner than here, and being tested by a large package delivery:
http://qz.com/120654/china-could-become-the-first-country-to-legalize-parcel-delivery-by-drone/

The technology just isn't robust enough to be scaled up to meaningful numbers - crashes due to mechanical faults are inevitable

The thing has 8 rotors. It needs 4 maybe to fly with stability. It has redundancy out the ass.

Octocopters are good-weather toys. They cannot be flown in heavy winds. "Sorry, no deliveries today, it's too windy". Yeah. Right.

Well, I'm sure amazon will have a zip code system and weather tie-in to mark the where and when availability that shows are hides the "Delivery by Air" button. Since this will be purely a convenience feature with a corresponding fee, it's not a business breaker.

But for me, this type of system would make much more sense in fastfood delivery systems.

Who wouldn't pay a buck or two to have it delivered at the location marked by smart phone GPS, instead of fighting traffic and using up gas/time?

Re:Stupid media bait

[Junta]

There are regular payload FPV flights currently out to over 3 miles.

I assume you meant 30 miles (and the record is currently just shy of 35 miles), 3 miles would be rather sad. That is 30 miles being in the ballpark of record setting RC FPV without payload.

Amazon is suggesting a 10 mile range for their design currently.

now to take the amazon of today and make a technology with a 10 mile range anything more than a 'gee-whiz' factor for urban areas would require a pretty dramatic change. When people think warehouse-level stock with insane coverage, they think 'wal-mart'. The nearest walmart to my parents house is 18 miles as the crow flies. One source claimed the average distance to a wal-mart from average house in US was 30 miles (which I think is a bit far but couldn't find quality data in short notice). Amazon would need a real-estate footprint on the order of 9 times as much as wal-mart to cover the market. Even assuming Amazon only has ambitions to service urban areas, they are still looking at a footprint roughly on the order of wal-mart. Amazon has been eating into brick and mortar in no small part due to having so low a footprint, not having to stock everything everywhere, and so on and so fourth. If Amazon gets some regulatory precedents set for this to happen, Wal-Mart can swoop in and implement it in pretty short order.

Re:Stupid media bait

[Rich0]

It's a simple question of weight ratios. A one kilogram octocoptor could not carry a three kilogram PS4.

Depends on whether the PS4 is region-coded to Europe or Africa.

Bravo Bezos for global PR coup

[keysdisease]

The NY Times, WashPost, BBC, Deutche Welle, Straits Times, South China Morning Post, Sydney Morning Herald and I'm only 1/2 was thru my RSS feeds. Now Starbucks, flying my morning latte through my kitchen window, that would be news!

Suggestion

[Rik Sweeney]

Mount a camera on the drone and let me watch my package flying over the landscape via the "Track my package" option.

my first order

[Chrisq]

will be this.

"4-5 Years"

[FuzzNugget]

For the uninitiated, that's marketingese for "we have no fucking clue."

Re:I predict "safety"

[Rich0]

Hate to break it to you, but the only aircraft that have to meet the safety standards that Boeing and Airbus meet are those running published airline routes.

The news helicopter flying overhead is regulated to a lower standard. The private jet carrying some CEO across the country is regulated to a lower standard. Larry Elison flying his own personal jet is regulated to an even lower standard still, and the guy buzzing over your house in the plane he built himself is regulated to the lowest standard of all.

That said, there are standards, and the FAA has standards for drones as well. The level of rigor largely depends on:
1. How heavy the plane is (a little RC aircraft might give your kid a cut if it crashed into them, a cessna would squish them like a bug).
2. Whether the operation is recreational or commercial (flying is expensive, so not too many people are put at risk if their free airplane ride is a bit risky - but self-sustaining operations are a different story).
3. Whether a commercial operation involves an airline route (if the CEO is paying for the plane he is riding on, chances are he's going to not be cheap on the maintenance budget - when you just buy a plane ticket you're at the mercy of the megacorp maintaining the plane).

For the most part commercial operations tend to be much safer than flying, and recreational operations tend to be about as safe as riding a motorcycle - more hazardous than a car, but not outside the realm of normal activity. Planes by their very nature tend to be fairly light, so their damage potential for those not in the cabin is actually pretty low when compared to the analogous ground-based activity (cars, trucks, trains, freighters, etc).

I'm sure the FAA would consider this a commercial operation and regulate it accordingly. Right now the regulations are actually so tight that anything but experimental/developmental use is impractical (usually you have to have human operators able to take manual control, observers watching the drone, etc). I imagine that they'll only remove the leash when somebody comes up with a system that is fairly robust. Besides, a drone capable of carrying a package any distance is going to be expensive - you wouldn't just want to be losing them due to failures all the time.

+1 for "Rainbows End"

[Daetrin]

Yet another thing, along with self-driving cars, Google Books, and Google Glass, that Vernor Vinge's 2006 novel seems to be on track for.