The long-awaited drones from Amazon (AMZN) are finally making their debut in California to deliver packages for the online retailer's customers.
Amazon Prime members who live in Lockeford, California, will be the first customers to receive their deliveries from a Prime Air drone. A start date on when the deliveries would begin was not given by the company.
The internet behemoth has been working on developing and creating the drones for its delivery service for nearly a decade, the company said in a blog post on June 13.
Customers can expect deliveries for free in under an hour from Prime Air.
"The promise of drone delivery has often felt like science fiction," the company wrote.
The company has been working on how to deliver packages safely and efficiently on a large scale after developing two dozen prototypes.
Building a network that is able to deliver packages across many miles in various communities has remained a challenge for drone companies, including Amazon, the company said in the blog post.
"Our teams of hundreds of scientists, engineers, aerospace professionals, and futurists have been working hard to do just that — and later this year, Amazon customers living in Lockeford, California, will become among the first to receive Prime Air deliveries," the company said
Amazon's Prime Air will be able to deliver thousands of everyday items, but the company did not provide any details on which ones. Packages will be delivered in the backyards of homes in 2022, the company said.
Customers will place their orders online and will receive an estimated arrival time.
"For these deliveries, the drone will fly to the designated delivery location, descend to the customer’s backyard, and hover at a safe height," Amazon said. "It will then safely release the package and rise back up to altitude."
The launch of the drone deliveries in Lockeford in San Joaquin County will be critical to future deliveries because the feedback from customers will be incorporated in the company's future expansion plans.
One reason the drones help impact local communities is that they will lower carbon emissions.
Amazon is working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and local officials in Lockeford to obtain permission to make the deliveries.
Technological Barriers for Drones
Flying drones is beneficial for the environment as fewer deliveries from trucks are made, but creating an efficient drone system is still in the works.
The majority of drones are not able to "sense and avoid other aircraft and obstacles — and it’s easy to understand why that could pose problems," Amazon said. "Those systems will require visual observers along the route of every flight to help the drones avoid hazards."
Instead, Amazon has created a drone system that can operate without using humans to observe their flight patterns to increase the radious of the deliveries and avoid running into people or even pets.
"Our algorithms use a diverse suite of technologies for object detection," the Internet giant said..
"Using this system, our drone can identify a static object in its path, like a chimney. It can also detect moving objects on the horizon, like other aircraft, even when it’s hard for people to see them. If obstacles are identified, our drone will automatically change course to safely avoid them."
The deliveries will be made in the backyards of homes because the drone will make sure the location of the drop-off is clear of obstacles such as people or animals.
When to Launch?
The launch of Amazon's drone delivery service has faced its own snafus.
Back in 2013, Amazon launched the drone delivery service and was slated to start deliveries in 2018.
But after some hiccups, such as making layoffs during the pandemic, Prime Air also ran into other obstacles.
Those included an increase in workload and a work environment that included expectations that were not realistic, former employees told Wired in 2021.
Amazon's drone competitor, Alphabet's ( (GOOGL Get Alphabet Inc. Report) Wing began its initial deliveries in the suburbs of Dallas in April.
Retailers such as Walgreens Boots Alliance ( (WBA Get Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. Report) have sought ways to make deliveries quicker to meet the increased demand from consumers.
Walgreen's began using drones to deliver prescriptions to consumers in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and is the first major retailer to adopt drone deliveries for consumers and is the largest customer for Wing.
A test delivery was made on April 7 in a Walgreens parking lot in Little Elm, a Dallas suburb. The delivery showed the drone placing a package on the driveway of a home.
Customers were only able to choose from 100 items from Wing’s drone-delivery app, but they include over-the-counter medicines and a number of household essentials, a Walgreens spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal.
Wing eventually wants customers to be able to use their own drones to receive deliveries. The company was founded in 2012 and has made deliveries in Finland and Australia.
The drone company said its devices can travel six miles within six minutes for up to 65 miles per hour with a package as heavy as 3.3 pounds.
Wing made 200,000 commercial deliveries in Australia through of March and was making the equivalent of 1,000 deliveries daily. Wing has a partnership with Coles, one of Australia’s major supermarket chains.
