Nearly a decade after Jeff Bezos first announced drone delivery, Amazon says it’s finally ready to begin air-dropping packages — literally.
The most recent drone model will drop packages from 12 feet within the air.
related investing news
“If the drone encounters one other aircraft when it’s flying, it’ll fly around that other aircraft. If, when it gets to its delivery location, your dog runs underneath the drone, we can’t deliver the package,” said Calsee Hendrickson, who leads product and program management for the Prime Air drone program.
Hendrickson gave CNBC a primary have a look at the drone, the MK27-2, on Thursday. She said it can start making deliveries in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas, by the top of 2022. Some residents within the small rural town of Lockeford have expressed concerns about privacy and safety. Amazon insists the drones are secure.
“We wish to confer with the drone as being independently secure, which implies that it has the facility to make the choice. It saw something that had a heat signature underneath the drone and was capable of not deliver a package and return back to the station. However the drones do have an operator in command that’s overseeing the whole airspace,” Hendrickson said.
The drone is about five-and-a-half feet in diameter and weighs 80 kilos, in response to Hendrickson. It could only carry packages weighing lower than five kilos, and deliveries must fit in a single box concerning the size of a shoe box.
An Amazon drone operator loads the only shoebox-size box that may fit inside its MK27-2 Prime Air drone
Amazon
The box is loaded into the back and secured inside, then the drone takes off vertically, just like a helicopter, using six propellers. Once within the air, it rotates right into a forward position and the hexagon surrounding the drone serves as its wings. Hendrickson said it flies at about 50mph. Once on the delivery location, it descends vertically, scans the realm to be sure that it’s clear, then drops the box from a hover 12 feet above the bottom.
The drone can fly 12 kilometers roundtrip, and is fully autonomous. The drone needs ample clear space beneath it to drop the box.
Amazon says hundreds of things are eligible for drone delivery, a small percentage of the vast assortment available on its marketplace.
“We have made sure that every one of those products are each able to being okay once they are delivered, and our packaging, which is displayed behind me as well, is a special packaging that ensures that the integrity of the product remains to be intact after the delivery,” Hendrickson said.
Prime Air has been slow-going because it began testing in 2013. It made a single drone delivery in 2016 but has reportedly hit major setbacks since, resembling high turnover and crashes.
It reached a key milestone in August 2020 when the Federal Aviation Administration gave Amazon approval to operate the drones.
On Thursday, Amazon also announced the following model, the MK30, which it says will launch in 2024.
Amazon says the MK30 is smaller, shall be 25% less noisy than the MK27-2, and can give you the chance to fly in light rain.
Amazon’s David Carbon, VP of Prime Air, unveiled its next drone model, the MK30 in Westborough, Massachusetts, on November 10, 2022.
Erin Black
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the proper height of the package drop, and to make clear customers don’t must be home for a drone delivery.
