Amazon drones, meet your mothership
Posted: Fri Dec 30, 2016 2:36 am
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's -- Amazon. The online retailer has its head in the clouds with plans for an airship hosting a swarm of delivery drones.
This isn't what I imagined from Amazon's cloud-based technology.
In recently discovered patent images, Amazon drafted a plan to have an airship 45,000 feet above the Earth, storing a fleet of drones and packages to deliver. Amazon said these unmanned aerial vehicles would take "little to no power" to transport goods to consumers' doorsteps if they are dropping down and gliding instead of lifting off and taking flight.
Amazon has been pushing to make drone deliveries mainstream since it announced Prime Air in 2013. It made its first drone drop-off on December 15, in a trial run in the UK. The company has filed multiple patents -- including the airship warehouse -- for drones since announcing its plans. But they might all just stay that way, considering Amazon's complaints about the Federal Aviation Administration's snail-like pace for UAV regulations.
One of the perks of having a sky center instead of a traditional warehouse, Amazon noted, was that it could move to spots where the weather is better and demand is higher. It pointed out football games as an example: The airship could fly to the stadium and drop off jerseys and snacks for fans. More:
https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-drones ... othership/
PS: They have a spiffy diagram of said airship at the link I provided.
This isn't what I imagined from Amazon's cloud-based technology.
In recently discovered patent images, Amazon drafted a plan to have an airship 45,000 feet above the Earth, storing a fleet of drones and packages to deliver. Amazon said these unmanned aerial vehicles would take "little to no power" to transport goods to consumers' doorsteps if they are dropping down and gliding instead of lifting off and taking flight.
Amazon has been pushing to make drone deliveries mainstream since it announced Prime Air in 2013. It made its first drone drop-off on December 15, in a trial run in the UK. The company has filed multiple patents -- including the airship warehouse -- for drones since announcing its plans. But they might all just stay that way, considering Amazon's complaints about the Federal Aviation Administration's snail-like pace for UAV regulations.
One of the perks of having a sky center instead of a traditional warehouse, Amazon noted, was that it could move to spots where the weather is better and demand is higher. It pointed out football games as an example: The airship could fly to the stadium and drop off jerseys and snacks for fans. More:
https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-drones ... othership/
PS: They have a spiffy diagram of said airship at the link I provided.
