Amazon has been announcing plans for close to a decade to start delivering packages using drones. Finally, about a month ago, the company began using these devices in the US locations of Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas. However, it seems that the use it has had by users has been, to say the least, scarce.
According to information from ‘The Information’ or ‘Business Insider’, during this first month in operation, Amazon’s MK 27 drones have delivered to less than 10 homes. Despite these results, the company continues to intend to expand deliveries to the two North American states. However, they are running into a major problem: the standards set by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
To comply with current regulations and be able to operate, the drone must make deliveries under the supervision of human beings; Therefore, the premise of making shipments cheaper and speeding them up by dispensing with workers is not being fulfilled. Amazon’s ‘gadgets’ currently require surveillance even to move from one street to another.
“In order to cross the street while still complying with FAA rules, Amazon employees had to act as observers to make sure no vehicles approached when the drone needed to cross the street,” says ‘The Information’, a medium that He has consulted internal sources of the technology.
In accordance with US Federal Aviation Administration regulations, among other things, the company’s drones cannot fly over people, power plants, schools and institutes during school hours or other buildings considered high risk. Likewise, the deliveries of the packages can only be made in spaces that are located a little more than 6 kilometers from the take-off area of the device.
All this causes deliveries to be remarkably limited. Drones even must be 30 meters from any human being while they’re running, so the user can’t even get close to the device to pick up their package.
Indeed, the technology company has been pushing for a decade to make drone deliveries a reality through the Amazon Prime Air plan. In 2013 Jeff Bezos, founder of the technology giant, stated that he expected the project to become a reality in “4 or 5 years”. Something that didn’t happen. During these ten years the company has invested more than 2,000 million dollars in the effort without having achieved any real success beyond having started operating in two US locations with the limitations explained.
Despite this, the company goes ahead with the plan. A few months ago, he announced the next generation of MK30 drones, which he plans to start using in deliveries in 2023. According to Amazon, they will be able to deliver 2.2-kilogram packages just one hour after the user has placed the order. through the ‘app’.