The estimated reading time for this post is 2 minutes
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It’s a bird!
It’s a plane!
It’s your Amazon package being delivered by a drone!
During a 60 Minutes interview with Charlie Rose on Sunday night, Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, announced plans to deploy drone aircraft to deliver Amazon packages to its customers, a service called Prime Air. According to Bezos, Amazon plans to use unmanned aircraft to deliver Amazon Prime packages to its customers’ doorsteps within 30 minutes of the order being placed. He hopes that Prime Air deliveries can begin in 2015.
Watch this demonstration of the process, including the drone in flight as it delivers an Amazon Prime Air package to a customer’s doorstep:
http://youtu.be/98BIu9dpwHU
Packages can weigh up to five pounds, which accounts for 86% of all orders according to Bezos. Drones will be able to travel a 10 mile radius from Amazon fulfillment centers.
Use of the drones isn’t a certainty, FAA approval is required before Prime Air is launched. The drones will be computer programmed to fly and then land at GPS coordinates.
You can watch the entire 60 Minutes video where Bezos explains Prime Air (the Prime Air coverage begins at 11:15):
What do you think of Amazon Prime Air? Would you like drones delivering your Amazon packages? Do you think the drones are cool, convenient or creepy?
Vote in today’s Wonder of Tech poll and let us know your thoughts. You can vote for more than one choice in case you think Amazon Prime Air is cool, convenient and creepy!
After 60 Minutes aired, fun ensued on Twitter with the following tweets anticipating what a missed delivery slip could look like:
I missed an Amazon drone delivery. pic.twitter.com/neJxYANj6p — B to A to the R R Y (@QuantumPirate) December 2, 2013
Uh oh, looks like I upset Amazon. pic.twitter.com/sgEi6YMbk1 — B to A to the R R Y (@QuantumPirate) December 2, 2013
In two years, children may be searching the skies for drones instead of for Santa’s reindeer. Hmmm…I wonder if drones will deliver to the North Pole? You can find out more about Prime Air at Amazon’s website.
Your Thoughts
What do you think about Amazon Prime Air? Are you excited about the idea of getting your Amazon packages within 30 minutes of placing your order? Will you look forward to see a drone land on your doorstep? Let us know in the Comments section below!
Mmm… Not sure what to make of this – sounds like the kind of news story you get on 1st April! If it’s not a joke, I reckon it’s going to be fraught with danger. Air traffic control might be an issue during the busy Christmas period – can’t you imagine them all having mid-air collisions! I think I’d rather have my postman deliver.
To be honest, at the moment I’m more concerned about the human ‘drones’ slaving away in Amazon’s huge warehouses, after an item on our news this week about their working conditions, which don’t sound great. I’m always delighted with the speed with which Amazon usually delivers things, even when you select their free delivery option, but I’m now wondering about the human cost. I suppose these drones will mean less human slaves and more redundancies, amongst other things.
A fascinating share, though, Carolyn – thanks 🙂
Hi Sue, That’s exactly what I thought when I heard this story, but when I saw the video of Jeff Bezos on 60 Minutes, I realized he was completely serious.
You’re right, the idea of drones brings up a host of issues. I imagine that Amazon’s drones would fly lower than airplanes but what if other companies start using drones and our skies become filled with these flying objects?
I agree with you, the speed at which Amazon delivers items is impressive but we are becoming a very impatient society. Two day delivery times may seem like an eternity if we can get our orders within 30 minutes. Remember when we had to wait six to eight weeks for most deliveries?
Actually, it is very cool. If they are able to deliver this technology in 2015, they will gain an edge over competition. This might even kill some of the brick-and-mortar businesses. 30-minute delivery seems to be next big thing in retail.
Hi Frank, Great point. The advantage stores have now is immediacy, but with 30 minute drone delivery that advantage could be diminished.
Brick and mortar stores are having a very difficult time competing with online stores. I’m afraid you’re right, drone delivery could make that worse.
Hi Carolyn,
When I first read about this, I thought it was a joke. But, I’m very excited to see them in real life. Unfortunately they probably won’t be in Norway anytime soon 🙂
Hi Jens, Yes, the reactions have been quite mixed to Amazon’s announcement of drone deliveries.
But you might get drone deliveries in Norway more quickly than we get them here in the US. Pizza delivery by drone has already happened in the UK: Domino’s Pizza in UK uses drone to deliver pizzas . I wonder if that drone could make it to your house…
Would you like your pizza delivered by a drone, Jens? Wouldn’t that be so very cool?
Well, they certainly use advanced drones in various militaries, don’t they?
The only problem bringing something like this into the main stream is potential misuse (people always find a way to misuses new advances).
Plus, this may interfere with airplanes (of course, these drones may be flying a lot lower, but what happens when we finally come to use flying cars? :D).
Of course, full fledged drones also mean that a lot of people will lose their jobs. And what about e-waste? How durable are these drones?
Another thing is that this feature encourages impatience within our species (Do we really need more of that?).
But, apart from all that, this certainly looks interesting 😀
Hi Jeevan, You bring up a lot of very interesting issues. Perhaps there will be three levels of altitude: planes, flying cars and drones. But what about jetpacks? Hmmm…
With all technological advances careers are ruined but that has never stopped tech from advancing. A lot of stablehands were out of jobs when horseless carriages were invented.
I was wondering about ewaste too, but more because of the plastic containers the packages are delivered inside. How are those returned to Amazon or do they contribute to burgeoning landfills?
Excellent point about our impatience as a species. Do we really need another reason for a false sense of urgency?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Jeevan!
Oh, yeah, totally forgot about Jet packs.
Of course.
New technologies will also invent new jobs 😀
Hopefully they will take care of that.
Nope, we really don’t!
No mention. Thank you for the reply, Carolyn (and sorry for the late reply). Have a wonderful weekend!
I am really excited about jet packs, Jeevan. Driverless cars will happen first, then jet packs perhaps someday. I read a very interesting book called, Where’s My Jet Pack? about cool tech that was promised but never arrived. The author does a very good job of explaining why we haven’t seen innovations such as driverless cars and jet packs. But I’m hoping that the book becomes obsolete soon due to the arrival of these in our daily lives.
I remember seeing a painting (or was it a photograph, I don’t remember) for people from 1913 imagining how world would be in 2013 (It’s certainly amazing..flying firefighters and so forth).
Why haven’t we achieved any of these? (I think the main reason is that every day we are finding more and more topics to argue about…..and all we do is just argue. Debates are certainly good, but we need to take action after we discuss).
Hopefully in a hundred years, things might be much better, where people learn to accept each other for who they are, instead of judging others based on their gender, nation, religion, sexual orientation or anything else (Who am I kidding? I think our species is destined to fight among ourselves).
Thanks for the link, Carolyn 🙂 Appreciate it! Hope you had a wonderful weekend 😀
Hi Jeevan, Unfortunately, there will always be people who are prejudiced against others, though the direction of many societies is towards increased tolerance for differences. The end to prejudice may never occur but the advancements in tech will continue.