Robohub.org
 

Amazon requests FAA permission to test delivery drones


by
14 July 2014



share this:
Amazon_PrimeAir

In April this year, Amazon.com issued a shareholder letter that stated: “The Prime Air team is already flight testing our 5th and 6th generation aerial vehicles…″ Fast forward three months to the first half of July, and the company is on its 9th generation of drones, which can fly up to 50 mph (~80 km/h) and carry up to 5 pounds (~2kg) of payload — enough for 86% of the products Amazon sells.

The rapid development of Amazon’s drones was facilitated by intense indoor testing, including test flights in their research lab in Seattle. Some of the features they were testing included agility, flight duration and redundancy. Most importantly, the company claims to have developed sense-and-avoid hardware and software that will allow its drones to automatically avoid collisions.

In order to progress further with development, outdoor testing in more realistic conditions is necessary. Since Congress gave the FAA power to grant innovators “expedited operational authorization”, Amazon is asking to be exempted from the lengthy and complex FAA approval process, citing innovation as a driving factor.

If the exemption is granted, that would allow the company to test Prime Air drones in its own backyard, “with additional safeguards that go far beyond those that of FAA”. One of the safeguards is geo-fencing, a technology that defines geographical boundaries within which drone flight must be confined and beyond which the drone is automatically deactivated. That technology is already available and used on many commercial drones, DJI Phantom being one of the first:

An exemption would also allow Amazon to test the safety, communication, and air traffic control of their drones outside the six testing sites where the FAA currently allows unmanned aerial vehicles to be operated.

If an exemption is not granted, dronologista predicts that Amazon will simply move its drone operations abroad. Canada is already very hospitable to commercial drone operators, for example.

The full text of Amazon’s Petition for Exemption can be found here. Detailed articles about the issue can be found at Forbes and Cnet.

Videos courtesy of Amazon and DJI Innovations.

 



tags: , , , , , ,


Dronologista Aviation & Drone Enthusiast
Dronologista Aviation & Drone Enthusiast





Related posts :



Robot Talk Episode 127 – Robots exploring other planets, with Frances Zhu

  03 Oct 2025
In the latest episode of the Robot Talk podcast, Claire chatted to Frances Zhu from the Colorado School of Mines about intelligent robotic systems for space exploration.

Rethinking how robots move: Light and AI drive precise motion in soft robotic arm

  01 Oct 2025
Researchers at Rice University have developed a soft robotic arm capable of performing complex tasks.

RoboCup Logistics League: an interview with Alexander Ferrein, Till Hofmann and Wataru Uemura

and   25 Sep 2025
Find out more about the RoboCup league focused on production logistics and the planning.

Drones and Droids: a co-operative strategy game

  22 Sep 2025
Scottish Association for Marine Science is running a crowdfunding campaign for educational card game.

Call for AAAI educational AI videos

  22 Sep 2025
Submit your contributions by 30 November 2025.

Self-supervised learning for soccer ball detection and beyond: interview with winners of the RoboCup 2025 best paper award

  19 Sep 2025
Method for improving ball detection can also be applied in other fields, such as precision farming.

#ICML2025 outstanding position paper: Interview with Jaeho Kim on addressing the problems with conference reviewing

  15 Sep 2025
Jaeho argues that the AI conference peer review crisis demands author feedback and reviewer rewards.



 

Robohub is supported by:




Would you like to learn how to tell impactful stories about your robot or AI system?


scicomm
training the next generation of science communicators in robotics & AI


 












©2025.05 - Association for the Understanding of Artificial Intelligence