Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just killed the postal service/delivery game and most likely made executives at UPS and FedEx pretty nervous.
In Jetson-esque fashion, Bezos unveiled Amazon Prime Air, a service that delivers packages with an autonomous drone, during a CBS 60 Minutes interview that aired last night. The unmanned drones are expected to deliver packages to customers within 30 minutes of the time they place an order and could roll out as early as 2015.
Here’s how it works:
The package is pulled off the lines by the octocopter, and then using GPS it is directed to the delivery address. When it arrives it releases the package on the doorstep. Because the octocopter has eight blades, Bezos said, if one broke the drone would still be able to safely drop off a package.
Voila.
But we’ll have to wait a while to get our packages delivered via futuristic magic. And it’s not because we don’t have the technology. Bezos and his team have to figure out how to ensure that the boxes aren’t dropping out of the sky and onto our heads.
“The hardest challenge in making this happen is demonstrating to the standards of the FAA that this is a safe thing to do. This is years of additional work at this point,” Bezos said.
How “trippy” is that? Watch the video above to see this Amazon Prime wizardry for yourself.
SOURCE: ABC | VIDEO SOURCE: Amazon, YouTube
