Amazon should finally offer drone delivery. After a full-scale test in the United States, the Prime Air service should soon be extended to other countries, if all goes as planned. A small revolution.
That’s it, Amazon will finally offer its first deliveries by drone, almost ten years after launching this project. Called Prime Air, this service will first be deployed in Lockeford, a city of 3,500 inhabitants in California, in the course of 2022, without a more precise date. This test phase will collect consumer opinions and improve the delivery system. Amazon hopes to be able to deploy this device in the long term in other American cities, then in other regions of the world. Suffice to say that delivery by drone in France is not right away!
This project has been planned for a long time already, since Jeff Bezos announced it in 2013. But the teams preferred to take their time to create a reliable navigation and detection system in order to obtain an efficient and viable mode of delivery over the long term. term. “The people of Lockeford will play an important role in shaping the future. Their feedback on Prime Air, with drones delivering packages to their backyard, will help us create a service that will safely scale to meet the needs of customers around the world, while adding another step of innovation to the story. aviation in the city“says Amazon on his blog.
Amazon Prime Air: state-of-the-art drones?
The e-commerce giant has taken time to develop its technology so that it can be precise, autonomous and reliable. “Our algorithms use a diverse suite of technologies for object detection. Using this system, our drone can identify a static object in its path, such as 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 themexplains Amazon in its press release. Several attempts have already been made, however, without success since five drones have crashed in just four months. A serious incident even occurred in June 2021, causing a forest fire after the explosion of one of the machines.
The firm promises that “thousands of everyday products” will be affected by delivery by drone, but without once again revealing their precise nature. These will be packages that can weigh up to 2.3 kg of products, i.e. the size of a “big shoe box“, which will be transported up to 24 km, before being deposited in the gardens, according to a spokesperson for the group contacted by AFP. Amazon announced to communicate more details on the products concerned in the coming weeks.
Delivery by drone: a delay that benefits the competition
Amazon’s delay left the field open to its competitors, who were also able to launch their test programs. Thus, the American retail giant Walmart announced at the end of May the extension of the tests of its drone delivery service. It already plans to make it available in 34 locations in the United States by the end of the year. The drones will thus be operational in six American states (Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah and Virginia) with the possibility of reaching up to 4 million homes and ensuring more than 1 million deliveries per year, a specified the company, which is therefore well ahead of Amazon.
Walmart customers will be able to order their goods between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. and, for a delivery fee of $3.99 – or 3.75 euros – per order, will have them delivered by drones within half an hour. Each delivery from Walmart will be able to weigh up to 4.5 kg, a weight much higher than that announced by Amazon. Other competitors have also set out to develop such a service, like Google, which had to suspend deliveries to Australia due to crow attacks.
Amazon must, meanwhile, wait for certification from the Federal Aviation Administration as well as that of local authorities to be able to take off its first drones. It will therefore be necessary to be patient again before watching the sky to see if the delivery drone is coming…