Friday, December 6, 2013

Commentary:Amazon Drones No Time Soon

Those who think they will see urban delivery drones within a few years will have to think again.The drones are being tested,said Craig Berman,Vice President of Global Communications at Amazon.They're still years away.They can carry objects up to five pounds and deliver them in thirty minutes,but there's a lot of work that needs to be done.
It's not science fiction.We see it as something that's viable,but years down the road.With a ten mile radius,they can travel from a fulfillment center to a customer and back.They are robotic aircraft.We would just input GPS coordinates into autonomous vehicles.
We're excited about it.Over 80% of our items weigh less than five pounds.There's gonna be a lot of experimentation.I don't want to get too far ahead.It's really early in the process.*
For instance,they don't have a see and avoidance system yet.It's not possible in five years.We're interested in this from a known location to a known location,delivering vaccines on a lifesaving basis,said Johnathan Downey,CEO of Airware.We're focused on commercial applications such as agriculture and land management.
They are better suited to remote parts of Africa than dense,built-up environments such as US cities.Whether it's books and whether it's Amazon I'm sceptical-certainly about its being in the next three or four years,the Airware chief confided.
There's no platform to build on top of.Sensors and low level electronics are being invented for a common platform for the various applications.There are no regulations yet,either.*
Commercial drones are currently illegal.The FAA says it will carefully develop regulations for remotely piloted drones within several years,not even mentioning autonomous ones.*
It's a powerful concept,but is at the intersection of the two hardest challenges in the drone world today:reliable sense and avoid technology and regulatory approval for autnomous flights over built-up areas,observed Chris Anderson,3D Robotics CEO.*
In sum,Amazon's announcement was a bit premature from both a legal and technical point of view.A ten year time frame for an urban drone seems more reasonable than five years,given that the concept is still in its infancy and the government isn't in a hurry.

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