Amazon recently announced that it will be using small drones that can fly within 15 miles of their distribution sites to deliver small packages to its customers by 2015. They are developing the technology, the processes, and working on developing many of the rules and regulations that will be required to allow them to deliver packages to customers using drones.
These drones are small flying vertical lift helicopters, that can lift up to three or 4 pounds and deliver it to a customers doorstep. Something that might have been considered science fiction a few years ago is close to reality if they are successful. Even if the are late you can be sure it is going to happen sometime in the near future.
Drone Delivery
The delivery service will be a premium service to be sure. Probably expensive, but it can be a fast service. Order in the morning and receive your order in the afternoon by drone! There is a lot to work out. GPS coordinates better be correct, otherwise these packages will end up in the wrong locations.
What Will USP and Fedex Do?
Amazon has made this announcement. You can be sure that major companies such as UPS and Fedex will be looking into the same technology to augment their delivery operations. It will be interesting to understand if the economics of this new delivery mechanism will support a mature drone delivery approach. Regulations, processes and the business model must all be developed. This will be done in the next couple of years to make drone delivery a success.
We will be watching this energy saving trend as it matures in the future!
There Can Also be a Sinister Side to this Technology
As long as the good guys have the technology and use it for good things, we are all ok. But what if the bad guys gain access to the technology. They can use this same technology to deliver everything from drugs to cigarettes. There are many items that could be delivered across the border by drone and even into jails if needed. Fly a drone in under cover of darkness. Deposit an item in the corner of the exercise yard and fly out. Next day during the exercise period the person the package was intended for picks it up and hides it for later use.
There are so many potential uses for this kind of technology it is actually kind of scary! What do you think about this particular technology and it its potential?