Amazon announces delivery by DRONE: Online retailer claims airborne robots will soon bring packages to door in 30 minutes

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has announced the online retailer has secretly been testing drones that will delivery packages directly to people's doors
The operation has been underway at a special lab in Seattle
Bezos says they hope the 'octopters' will be fully operational in four to five years

Amazon has unveiled its secret research project which it claims will be the future of home delivery - packages delivered by drones.

The Internet shopping giant’s chief executive Jeff Bezos says that he wants to use octocoptors to replace postmen and cut delivery times to just 30 minutes.

Customers would have their order dropped onto their front lawn by the machine which would fly through the air from a nearby warehouse with it clasped in a metal grabber.

Coming in for landing: Amazon have announced plans to roll out a drone delivery service in 'four to five years' that could allow customers to receive packages within 30 minutes of placing an order

Amazon say they have been working on their special 'drones' in a secret research lab in Seattle

Lift off: A promotional video for the Amazon Prime Air campaign shows exactly how the drone helicopters will deliver packages to your door all-but immediately after placing an order

It's here: A promo video for Amazon's Prime Air shows a man picking up his package as part of the same-delivery scheme

It is not clear if the drones are a PR stunt or a serious proposition, but speaking to US TV network CBS, Bezos said: ‘I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not.’
Bezos’ claims raise the prospect of a future where drones whiz across the sky all the time ferrying post around - and perhaps one day even letters too.
In the interview Bezos said that the drones would be able to carry goods up to five pounds in weight, which covers 86 per cent of the items that the company delivers.
Bezos said that he wants to launch the ‘Amazon Prime Air’ service within four to five years, though that will almost certainly be in the US before anywhere else.
He said: ‘These generations of vehicles, it could be a ten-mile radius from a fulfillment (delivery) center.
‘So, in urban areas, you could actually cover very significant portions of the population.
‘And so, it won’t work for everything; you know, we’re not gonna deliver kayaks or table saws this way. These are electric motors, so this is all electric; it’s very green, it’s better than driving trucks around. This is all an R& project’.

Bezos said that the octocoptors would be autonomous so would not need a pilot to guide them. Instead they would use GPS tracking to find their way to and from the address.
Bezos said: The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say: ‘Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood’.
Getting approval from the US Federal Aviation Authority was going to be the ‘hardest thing’, Bezos said, but he thinks that it ‘will happen’.

Bezos has long been considered a retail visionary and is credited with turning Amazon from an online book retailer into the $61billion (£37billion) a year juggernaut that it is today.
No technical details were released of the octocoptors but they have eight blades, hence the name octocoptor, in case one set breaks so it can stay in the air.
Amazon’s version has an orange top with the company’s logo on it.

Similar devices are made out of lightweight carbon fibre material, can travel six metres a second and cost around £9,000 ($14,000) though the Amazon prototypes are probably a lot more.

Drones have caused controversy in the US as they have been used by law enforcement across the country including Alameda County in California where County Sheriff Gregory Ahern bought one and gave a public demonstration of its uses.

Earlier this year the FAA published a document which paves the way for police, businesses and hobbyists to use drones on a wide scale by 2015.

It is thought that within five years 7,500 drones could be in use across the US if the rules changes go ahead.

Police in Britain too are already using drones and in 2010 the Air Robot used by Merseyside Police helped make the first ever arrest in the UK using such a device, though it was controlled by a policeman using a hand-held remote.

The following year however it crashed into the River Mersey when it ran out of battery, wrecking the £13,000 ($21,000) device.

Bezos unveiled the Amazon Prime Air service to CBS presenter Charlie Rose who said: ‘Oh my God!’ and looked visibly stunned when shown the technology.

Rose said: ‘If I had to bet on pulling this off versus not pulling this off, I’d bet on pulling this off’.

Interesting...