Amazon announces new drone tech for delivery

What about when it's raining or really windy?

This idea will never get off the ground.

This seems an unsecured way of delivering goods, someone could easily down one of these crafts by firing at it with even a fairly low powered projectile, then steal the pacakage.

They seem quite fragile and I assume this'll only work with quite small objects. But main questions are...

How sophisticated can they make the flying systems, if it needs to be controlled by a pilot back at base, you'll need a pilot for each drone, which doesn't seem like it would save money compared to putting hundreds of parcels in one van for 24hr delivery. If they can actually fly from postcode to postcode automatically, how well can they avoid obstructions, power lines etc, where on the property do they know to drop the package?

This seems an unsecured way of delivering goods, someone could easily down one of these crafts by firing at it with even a fairly low powered projectile, then steal the pacakage.

This raises the question of will private drones be allowed to cross borders?

Assuming the vid isn't a spoof, how would the authorities ever allow all this junk to be flying around in our airspace, endangering helicopters, power lines and not to mention birds and people, as the packages drop out of the sky due to, er, unanticipated mechanical defects.

Still, I presume Amazon's tax-evading, government-manipulating planners have already prepared the necessary political bribes....

Obviously its a prototype but you could arm them with defence weapons, the US military drones are badass and can take out an enemy of democracy unseen from 10 miles up, if some scally kid was firing a catapult at one of these drones to try and nick the package it could strafe him with air to ground cannon.

My main fear is how accurate their GPS is, it might get the street right but what about if it has the wrong house. I don't want my neighbours getting my delivery of condoms and sex toys.

Big difference between 24 hour and 30 minute delivery though. I think it's awesome but would kill the high street

Weapons eh...I see.

My concern isn't so much it finding the house, as a good GPS system should be okay, it's more how does it know where the front door is? Also if it left it in the front garden it could be stolen, so you'd have to be in.

Yeah but what I mean is the cost to Amazon and to the user. If it costs you over £10 say, since as it is 24hr delivery costs over £5, would it really be worth it, is it that urgent to get your item bar using it once as a novelty? Also as I say, if each drone (expensive) needs a pilot (expensive), it doesn't seem like a great money saver compared to using normal logistics. I mean Amazon gets 1000's of orders..per hour no doubt. Are they really going to have that many drones at each distribution site? If not it may be able to fly to you in 30 mins (..I'd question that) but if your parcel is no. 547 and they've only got 20 drones on the go..it's going to take a while.

Weapons eh...I see.

My concern isn't so much it finding the house, as a good GPS system should be okay, it's more how does it know where the front door is? Also if it left it in the front garden it could be stolen, so you'd have to be in.



Yeah but what I mean is the cost to Amazon and to the user. If it costs you over £10 say, since as it is 24hr delivery costs over £5, would it really be worth it, is it that urgent to get your item bar using it once as a novelty? Also as I say, if each drone (expensive) needs a pilot (expensive), it doesn't seem like a great money saver compared to using normal logistics. I mean Amazon gets 1000's of orders..per hour no doubt. Are they really going to have that many drones at each distribution site? If not it may be able to fly to you in 30 mins (..I'd question that) but if your parcel is no. 547 and they've only got 20 drones on the go..it's going to take a while.