Amazon Touts Safety as It Prepares for 1-Hour Drone Deliveries

Amazon underscored safety in a Friday blog post outlining plans for its drone delivery service that's to launch this year in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas (see 2206130024). The electric drones are designed to deliver sub-five-pound packages to customers in under an hour. To ensure safe delivery, the company used aerospace standards for a robust drone design and employed a “sense-and-avoid system” that detects and avoids obstacles in the air and on the ground, such as other aircraft and people and pets in backyards, it said. “Our drone can encounter new, unexpected situations and still make safe decisions -- autonomously and safely,” Amazon said. If the environment changes, and the drone’s mission commands it to come into contact with an object that wasn’t there previously, “it will refuse.” Amazon is creating an automated drone-management system to plan flight paths and ensure safe distances between aircraft and other aircraft in the area “and that we’re complying with all aviation regulations,” it said. The company has been working on the drone delivery technology for over a decade with a team of safety, aerospace, science, robotics, software, hardware, testing and manufacturing experts “to ensure our system meets the rigors required for an aerospace product,” it said. The company tests its drones in private and controlled facilities and has logged thousands of flight hours, putting them through “rigorous testing” and evaluation in accordance with regulatory requirements, it said. In the past two years of testing, Amazon has made over 188 updates to its system, including for noise and equipment ergonomics, it said. Amazon got an FAA part 135 air carrier certificate, giving it authorization to operate as an airline and deliver small packages via drone, it noted. As part of the process, it submitted over 500 safety and efficiency processes that it will use to conduct deliveries later this year in California and Texas, it said.