Amazon has been working on getting a drone delivery program off the ground for a while now, but some new patents show the company isn't out of wild ideas. As TechCrunch reports, Zoe Leavitt, an analyst for CB Insights, has discovered a recent Amazon patent
for an "airborne fulfillment center utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles
for item delivery" — i.e., a giant flying drone mothership zeppelin
warehouse.
The patent envisions the airborne fulfillment center
(AFC) in the form of a giant airship, that would fly at high altitudes
of around 45,000 feet in the air, and would then deploy individual
drones to deliver Amazon's goods to customers. Additional, smaller
airships would be used to return the drones back to the AFC, resupply
the mothership with more inventory and fuel, and shuttle workers to the
flying factory. Due to the aerial deployment, drones would be able to
have a much wider delivery range while consuming less power as they
descend to deliver packages. And the mobile nature of the warehouses
would allow Amazon greater flexibility in managing inventory in the face
of changing demand. For example, the patent offers a hypothetical case
of deploying a AFC near a sport stadium to allow for immediate delivery
of team merchandise and snacks during a game.
For now, the flying drone warehouses remain just a patent
— Amazon has given no indication that it will actually be darkening the
skies above our cities with huge, drone-swarm-deploying blimps anytime
soon. Given that the drone delivery program is still mired in a sea of
regulatory tape in the United States, it could still be a while before
we even see terrestrial Amazon drones, which have just begun testing in the UK.
That said, it’s clear that the scale of Amazon’s drone dreams — as seen
in the airborne fulfillment center patent — could go far beyond what
anyone had imagined.
Source : TheVerge
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