Amazon airs futuristic mini-drone delivery plan

Want that Amazon order in just 30 minutes? Company CEO Jeff Bezos says he hopes to soon deploy an armada of mini-drones able to drop small packages at your doorstep.

The online retail giant’s revolutionary project still needs extra safety testing and government approval, but Bezos believes that Amazon Prime Air would be up and running within four to five years.

“These are effectively drones but there’s no reason that they can’t be used as delivery vehicles,” Bezos told the CBS programme 60 Minutes.

“I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not,” he said.

“We can do half-hour delivery... and we can carry objects, we think, up to five pounds (2.3kg), which covers 86% of the items that we deliver.”

A video posted on the company’s website shows a prototype drone. The body of the device is about the size of a flat-screen monitor, and it is attached to eight small helicopter rotors and sits on four tall legs.

The claws under the belly of the “octopeter” then latch onto a standard sized plastic bucket that rolls down a conveyer belt at Amazon’s distribution centre. Inside the bucket is the order. The drone lifts off and whizzes into the air like a giant mechanical insect to deliver the package just 30 minutes after clicking the “pay” button on Amazon. Then it buzzes back into the air and returns to base.

The mini-drones are powered by environmentally friendly electric motors and can cover areas within a 16km radius of fulfilment centres, thus covering a significant portion of the population in urban areas.

The drones operate autonomously and follow the GPS co-ordinates they receive to drop the items off at target locations. “It’s very green, it’s better than driving trucks around,” Bezos said.

He also claims they are safe; the prototype has redundant motors that will keep it in the air and prevent it from crashing. “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 neighbourhood,’” Bezos said.

Amazon said the octocopters would be “ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place”, noting that the Federal Aviation Administration was hammering out rules for use of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Amazon projected a more optimistic timeline than Bezos himself, saying the FAA’s rules could be in place as early as 2015, and that Amazon Prime Air would be ready at that time.

Bezos hinted that part of the motivation behind the mini-drones was to make sure Amazon remains on the cutting edge of the retail industry. “Companies have short lifespans... And Amazon will be disrupted one day,” he said. “I would love for it to be after I’m dead.”

If the plan succeeds other retailers or even local pizza outlets could also start home deliveries via drone.

FAA chief Michael Huerta earlier said he expects some 7,500 small unmanned aircraft buzzing in the US skies in the next five years.

Michael Toscano of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, predicted a booming market for civilian drones will lead to 100,000 jobs over the next decade.