Amazon Prime Air, an upcoming delivery service that will deliver Amazon shipments via drone, looks as though it will be available sooner rather than later.
Amazon Vice President Paul Misener spoke with Yahoo Tech’s David Pogue about the service and provided specifics.
Drones will deliver packages within 30 minutes of ordering on Amazon. The delivery range will have to be over 10 miles and the packages can only weigh up to 5 pounds (according to Misener most Amazon deliveries do not weigh more than that).
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Amazon is working on making service available in urban, rural, and suburban areas. Those in high-rises and apartments in cities will likely have packages delivered to rooftops or common areas such as courtyards.
The company has not worked out a pricing model yet, and still must work out regulation details with the FAA.
“We’ve proposed to regulators around the world, including the FAA, a certain kind of an airspace design that would keep the drones separated from the aircraft.
We were thinking: Manned aircraft above 500 feet. Between 400 and 500 feet there’d be a no-fly zone – a safety buffer. Between 200 and 400 feet would be a transit zone, where drones could fly fairly quickly, horizontally. And then below 200 feet, that would be limited to certain operations. For us, it would be takeoff and landing. For others, it might be aerial photography. The realtors, for example, wouldn’t need to fly above 200 feet to get a great shot of a house,†said Misener.
The drones Amazon are in the process of developing are highly automated and have sensor technology. This allows them to avoid colliding into structures and to circumvent obstacles in their path.
Read the entire Yahoo Tech interview here.