Federal regulators have given Amazon key permission that will allow it to expand its drone delivery program, the company announced Thursday.
In a blog post published on its website, Seattle-based Amazon said that the Federal Aviation Administration has given its Prime Air delivery service the OK to operate drones “beyond visual line of sight,” removing a barrier that has prevented its drones from traveling longer distances.
With the approval, Amazon pilots can now operate drones remotely without seeing it with their own eyes. An FAA spokesperson said the approval applies to College Station, Texas, where the company launched drone deliveries in late 2022.
Amazon said its planning to immediately scale its operations in that city in an effort to reach customers in more densely populated areas. It says the approval from regulators also “lays the foundation” to scale its operations to more locations around the country.
Businesses have wanted simpler rules that could open neighborhood skies to new commercial applications of drones, but privacy advocates and some airplane and balloon pilots remain wary.
Amazon, which has sought this permission for years, said it received approval from regulators after developing a strategy that ensures its drones could detect and avoid obstacles in the air.
Furthermore, the company said it submitted other engineering information to the FAA and conducted flight demonstrations in front of federal inspectors. Those demonstrations were also done “in the presence of real planes, helicopters, and a hot air balloon to demonstrate how the drone safely navigated away from each of them,” Amazon said.
The FAA’s approval marks a key step for the company, which has had ambitions to deliver online orders through drones for more than a decade. During a TV interview in 2013, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said drones would be flying to customer’s homes within five years. However, the company’s progress was delayed amid regulatory setbacks.
Last month, Amazon said it would close a drone delivery site in Lockeford, California — one of only two in the nation — and open another one later this year in Tolleson, Arizona, a city located west of Phoenix.
By the end of the decade, the company has a goal of delivering 500 million packages by drone every year.
—Haleluya Hadero, AP Business Writer
Войдите, чтобы добавить комментарий
Другие сообщения в этой группе
There are so many ways to die. You could fall off a cliff. A monk could light you on fire. A bat the size of a yacht could kick your head in. You’ve only just begun the game, and yet here you are,
Former Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg launched Meeno less than two years ago with the intention of it being an AI chatbot that help
The most indelible image from Donald Trump’s inauguration in January is not the image of the president taking the oath of office without his hand on the Bible. It is not the image of the First Lad
Ernest Hemingway had an influential theory about fiction that might explain a lot about a p
The first 100 days of Trump’s second presidential term have included a surprising player that doesn’t seem likely to go away anytime soon: Signal.
The encrypted messaging pl
Cancer research in the U.S. doesn’t rely on a single institution or funding stream—it’s a complex ecosystem made up of interdependent parts: academia, pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology start
Dive into the exhilarating world of innovation with FC Explains, a video series that spotlights the game changers and visionaries from Fast Company’s prestigious Most Innovative Companies list. Th
