The Myriad Opportunities Presented by Amazon Prime Air
Opportunities abound in the latest tech dream from Amazon’s R&D lab.
Amazon Prime Air hit the headlines recently and triggered an intriguing reaction.
Many believed it was purely a PR stunt designed to keep the company in the headlines during the biggest online shopping day of the year. It certainly succeeded at that. If the whole story is baloney then there is perhaps just one lesson that can be salvaged: that drones provide great PR opportunities. There is however the risk that drone stories will go the way of flying car stories and fail to deliver on sky-high expectations despite great leaps in technology.
Amazon’s delivery drones are not just a great PR idea but also a tech wet dream. If it is even slightly operationally feasible then the dream will come true. Let’s look at whether this is likely from a number of pragmatic perspectives: technical, legal and safety.
On the technical side, the concept is entirely plausible. Payload carrying drones already exist. Autopilot software that follows GPS waypoints also exists. It’s not clear from Amazon’s film whether or not their drone was developed in-house. If it was then there are considerable opportunities for the design, manufacture and supply of parts and software. If it was designed by a third party, the opportunities are even greater. Presumably Amazon picked the best drone developer they could find. If it emerges that a third party was used then it will provide a considerable boost to the drone development market as “the Amazon contract” and the prospect of others like it drive an increase in R&D spending.
The Federal Aviation Authority in the US are currently in the process of reviewing the regulatory environment surrounding Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The current outright ban for commercial purposes is being ignored by innovative pioneers who are banking on an update soon. What better shot to fire over the bows of a government agency in the midst of consultation than a huge, consumer-focussed PR campaign?
One thing many critics picked up on from Amazon’s announcement was the potential hazard posed by the delivery drone. The prospect of the drone landing in a front garden is fraught with danger. What if little Lucy is playing on the front lawn as the drone descends? And what if it became tangled in overhead wires, branches or even birds on its way down? Safely navigating an unpredictable environment is one of the remaining technological challenges for drone developers. Cameras, depth perception, even thermal imaging, may all play a part. Safety measures on the drones themselves could also play a part including guards around the props and engine cut-out systems. There are also ways to avoid this situation altogether. What if delivery drones landed on rooves rather than in gardens? They would be most suited to apartment blocks where one landing pad — accessible to the concierge — could service hundreds of apartments. A single landing pad would also mean a single flight path making route planning much simpler. It would also make it simpler to retrieve delivery containers as shown in the Amazon demo.
It is striking how similar the reaction to delivery drones has been to the reaction to the first motorcars. Doubtless we will have the equivalent of a person walking in front of each drone with a flag now … and teenagers racing them at a hundred miles an hour in a few years time. In the meantime there are many exciting innovations to come as the pieces of this puzzle are put together.
