Unmanned vehicles can deliver packages that
weigh up to 2.3 kg, says company's CEO
AFP
Washington: A demo video posted on the company's website showed
the tiny robotic devices picking up packages in small yellow buckets from
Amazon's fulfillment centers and then whizzing through the air to deliver the
items to customers just 30 minutes after they made their purchase on
Amazon.com.
"I know this looks like science fiction. It's not," Bezos told
CBS television's "60 Minutes" program. "We can do half-hour delivery... and we
can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms), which covers 86
percent of the items that we deliver."
The mini-drones are powered by electric motors and could cover
areas within a 10-mile (16-kilometer) radius of fulfillment centers, thus
covering a significant portion of the population in urban areas.
They operate autonomously and drop the items at the target
locations thanks to GPS coordinates transmitted to them.
"It's very green, it's better than driving trucks around," said
Bezos. Amazon said the octocopters would be "ready to enter commercial
operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place," noting that the
Federal Aviation Administration was actively working on rules for unmanned
aerial vehicles.
It projected a more optimistic timeline than Bezos himself for
the project to be activated, saying the FAA's rules could be in place as early
as 2015 and that Amazon Prime Air would be ready at that time.
Bezos hinted that part of the motivation behind the mini-drones
was to make sure Amazon remains on the cutting edge of the retail industry.
"Companies have short life spans... And Amazon will be
disrupted one day," he said. "I would love for it to be after I'm dead."
No comments:
Post a Comment