12/5/2023 0 Comments Amazon drone delivery testingWhat I think is going to happen is that Amazon will have its drones take off autonomously and fly along premapped safe corridors at altitude using GPS plus some (relatively) primitive vision systems that allow the drone to avoid really obvious things like hot-air balloons. The only thing to do is, as the press release says, keep a human in the loop to do the challenging bits rather than relying on tech that may not usefully exist yet. Near-term, I have serious doubts about Amazon’s “sophisticated sense and avoid technology” and “high degree of automation.” If they’re trying to deliver useful payloads and do onboard sense and avoid at the same time over a practical distance using hardware that they can cost-effectively manufacture and deploy at scale, as far as I know they’ve still got a lot of work to do. Thing 2: Amazon will keep humans in the loop. This is what continues to bug me about how Amazon presents Prime Air: “Prime Air vehicles will take advantage of sophisticated ‘sense and avoid’ technology, as well as a high degree of automation, to safely operate beyond the line of sight to distances of 10 miles or more.” The operative word here is “will.” Eventually. Thing 1: Obstacle avoidance is still not solved.Īdmittedly, I’m reading between the lines and making some assumptions, but I still have no reason to believe that Amazon has managed to solve the problem of navigating drones autonomously around trees, power lines, people, and pets. There are three things that are worth talking about here: It will also help identify what operating rules and safety regulations will be needed to help move the drone industry forward. This ground-breaking work will help Amazon and the Government understand how drones can be used safely and reliably in the logistics industry. ![]() In other words, it’s relatively informative, as press releases go:Īmazon has today announced a partnership with the UK Government to explore the steps needed to make the delivery of parcels by small drones a reality, allowing Amazon to trial new methods of testing its delivery systems.Ī cross-Government team supported by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has provided Amazon with permissions to explore three key innovations: beyond line of sight operations in rural and suburban areas, testing sensor performance to make sure the drones can identify and avoid obstacles, and flights where one person operates multiple highly-automated drones. ![]() Here’s the stuff worth caring about from the press release, which amounts to about a third of the press release. ![]() To help move things along a bit, Amazon has decided to take its next phase of delivery drone testing to the United Kingdom. For many companies, “grind” is the right word, especially if they’re trying to do research and development in the United States, where regulations tend to be overly cumbersome and inflexible. Whether or not it’s a realistic or practical or good idea, urban commercial drone delivery is grinding remorselessly toward a thing that is going to happen.
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