In a 9-page legal letter, with 28 itemized conditions and limitations, the FAA issued an exemption to Amazon to enable Prime Air to test in US airspace.

The FAA letter, dated April 8th, was filled with pages of legalese, but still limits testing to VLOS (visual line of sight) instead of autonomous flight, and flight controlled by a human operator. Amazon’s drones can not fly faster than 100 miles per hour, fly higher than 400 feet above ground level, and can not weigh more than 55 pounds, according to the letter.

[In February, the FAA provided a very limiting exemption stating that operators would need to see the drone with “unaided vision,” and the drones couldn’t fly over people. As a result of this frustrating situation, Amazon leaked a story of their testing in more accomodating airspace in Canada.]

Interestingly, three insurance giants – AIG, State Farm and USAA – also received FAA exemptions to use drones to observe, catalogue and manage damage caused by natural disasters.

“The potential use of UAS provides us one more innovative tool to help State Farm customers recover from the unexpected as quickly and efficiently as possible,” said Wensley Herbert, a Vice President of Claims at State Farm, in a statement announcing the new regulatory permission.

 

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

• As drone use flourishes, the FAA waivers, and Amazon is forced offshore
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• Is package delivery using drones feasible?
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DroneDeploy, a San Francisco startup, just received $9 million in Series A funding adding to the $2 million in seed funding it received last September and an undisclosed amount of initial funding from AngelPad in 2013. DroneDeploy makes a cloud-based user-friendly and simplified app to control and manage drones for outdoor landscape mapping and agricultural monitoring and delivers processed data back to the user so that they can make meaningful decisions based on that data.

3D Robotics received $50 million in February to accelerate the pace of innovation in the burgeoning new drone industry.

Across the world, businesses of all types are finding value in the use of drones and the data resulting from their flights. According to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (AUVSI), the UAV market is estimated at $11 billion, and is expected to grow to $140 billion over the next 10 years. Hundreds of new startups dot the globe and venture money is flowing liberally. Commercial use of drones up until recently has been banned by the US Federal Aviation Agency. However, with a series of waivers, the FAA has tacitly agreed to commercial use under certain limitations. The principle restraint is that the drone always be in sight of the operator. But this doesn’t work for large farms and companies with rapid delivery plans like Amazon.

Back in December 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made a surprise announcement in a 60 Minutes interview with Charlie Rose wherein Bezos revealed a secret R&D project to fly packages directly to buyer doorsteps in 30 minutes. It wasn’t idle talk – Charlie and the 60 Minutes cameras actually saw a Prime Air drone sitting on a tabletop.

In February 2015, the FAA responded to a waiver request from Amazon by granting a waiver limiting Amazon’s drones to line of sight. They said that operators of commercial unmanned aircraft would need to see the drone with “unaided vision,” nor could the drones fly over people. Amazon’s request was for the FAA to allow Amazon to conduct outdoor trials at a special site in Washington State.

A revealing story by The Guardian, a UK newspaper, described a British Columbia site where Amazon’s roboticists and engineers are now developing their unmanned delivery service.

Amazon is testing its drone delivery service at a secret site in Canada, following repeated warnings by the e-commerce giant that it would go outside the US to bypass what it sees as the US federal government’s lethargic approach to the new technology.

The largest internet retailer in the world is keeping the location of its new test site closely guarded. What can be revealed is that the company’s formidable team of roboticists, software engineers, aeronautics experts and pioneers in remote sensing – including a former Nasa astronaut and the designer of the wingtip of the Boeing 787 – are now operating in British Columbia.

The end goal is to utilise what Amazon sees as a slice of virgin airspace – above 200ft, where most buildings end, and below 500ft, where general aviation begins. Into that aerial slice the company plans to pour highly autonomous drones of less than 55lbs, flying through corridors 10 miles or longer at 50mph and carrying payloads of up to 5lbs that account for 86% of all the company’s packages.

The company’s decision to set up camp in Canada, after frustration in its attempts to persuade US regulators to allow it to launch its drones in Washington state, takes Amazon’s quarrel with the federal government to a new level. Last week a senior Amazon executive appeared before a US Senate subcommittee and warned that there would be consequences if federal regulators continued to act as a drag on its ambitions to launch a drone delivery service called Prime Air.

What Paul Misener, the company’s vice-president for global public policy, did not tell senators was that at the very moment he appeared before them, Amazon drones were buzzing in the skies just north of the border.

In another part of the extensive Guardian story, the reporter compared other aviation authorities to the US:

Traditionally, the US has been at the vanguard of both tech and aviation innovation, but the approach of the the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), a US regulatory body, has been markedly tentative so far compared with that of regulators in Canada and Europe.

The federal agency recently published its guidelines for commercial use of small drones. The new rules will take at least two years to come into effect, a delay which Amazon finds unacceptable.

The contrast between the relative rigidity of the FAA’s approach to drone testing and the relatively relaxed regulatory regime in Canada is startling. Under the Canadian system, Amazon has been granted a virtual carte blanche regarding its entire fleet of drones within its designated airspace, having gone through a licensing process that took just three weeks.

By comparison, it takes the FAA many months to grant approval. Sources familiar with the process told the Guardian the US regulator insists on an initial 23-page application, a review of 75 pages of further documentation and a four-hour presentation at FAA headquarters followed by a three-hour site visit, together with ongoing reporting and record-keeping obligations.

The US does have a complex airspace, but it’s no more complex than in Europe, where regulators do allow testing, and it’s certainly not complex beneath 500ft or in rural areas of Washington state where Amazon had planned to operate.

The numbers speak for themselves. The FAA has received more than 750 requests for outdoor drone testing licenses from American businesses, Amazon’s among them, but so far has granted just 48. Canada’s equivalent civil aviation authority, Transport Canada, released 1,672 commercial drone certificates last year alone.

The FAA has stated that at the present time it does not believe that drones can be flown safely under autonomous control, thereby insisting that humans must keep them in eyesight at all times. That doesn’t work for Prime Air, hence the serious ongoing lobbying effort by Amazon. This story will play out over time because Amazon isn’t the only company limited by the line of sight ruling. The question is whether the beneficiaries of the delay will be American consumers and businesses, or their offshore competitors.

• Commercial drone regulations: Canada vs. US
• How Canada handles beyond visual line-of-sight drone operations
• FAA regulations draw inspiration from Canada, but miss key aspect
• Amazon requests FAA permission to test delivery drones
•  Commercial opportunities to create more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs when FAA opens airspace to UAS

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Volume can reach 300 items a second on special sales days and that volume feeds the activities at 96 Amazon warehouse/distribution centers around the world. Amazon’s goal is to sell everything to everyone and their warehousing and shipping methods have been of constant interest because of their success at being able to deliver as promised. For robotics-interested people, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems and their robotic shelf-to-picker system for $750 million two years ago. Interestingly, in this 60 Minutes interview, no mention was made of Kiva or that method of pick and pack. [Why was that?]

“The secret is we are on our 7th generation of fulfillment centers – and we’ve gotten better every time,” Bezos said during the interview. An example of this type of improvement is that Amazon can now store twice as many goods in its centers as it did 5 years ago.

A portion of the 60 Minutes piece was about Amazon and its web services group AWS. Little known facts emerged from this part of the interview: AWS hosts Netflix and the CIA as well as providing the cloud for itself and other big enterprises and governmental institutions.

Bezos’ straight talk was evident throughout. Consider this example:

Charlie Rose: A lot of small book publishers and other smaller companies worry that the power of Amazon gives them no chance.

Jeff Bezos: You’ve got to earn your keep in this world. When you invent something new, if customers come to the party, it’s disruptive to the old way. The Internet is disrupting every media industry. People can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling.

In an Overtime piece one can also see the genius in Bezos when he described the process of moving so many goods through the system – including the new PrimeAir: “It’s a symphony of people, a symphony of software and … a symphony of robots.”

Amazon has a not-so-secret lab in Silicon Valley, Lab 126. Charlie Rose pressed Bezos for any big surprises that might be forthcoming and Bezos showed him their new concept delivery system using an octocopter. The robot aircraft could haul a package of up to 5 pounds (approximately 86% of Amazon’s sales fit this category) and autonomously deliver it within a 10-mile radius from the fulfillment center. Branded as Amazon PrimeAir, a video showing how it works has already been viewed by over 9.5 million youTube viewers.

Media of all types had a field day with the 60 Minutes broadcast and the video of Amazon PrimeAir in action. Amongst the most prominent of the naysayers was CNN Money who didn’t see the bigger, long-term picture Bezos is planning for: “The world isn’t ready for Amazon drones. Besides being illegal, the sensor technology to avoid collisions isn’t there yet.”

Certainly the best one-liner came from a Tweet from a reporter at Bezos’ own Washington Post: “So basically free stuff from Amazon if you’re a good shot with a rifle.”

Most seemed to miss the point that concept cars, planes and… octocopters are needed ideas awaiting technologies to fill in the gaps which will turn the concept into economic reality and a feasible product.

Amongst the more informed, Michael Toscano, President of AUVSI, commented:

Amazon’s concept delivery system demonstrates the promise of unmanned aircraft systems. It underscores how this innovative technology will transform the way industries operate. Whether it is improving agriculture output, helping first responders, advancing scientific research, or making business more efficient, UAS are capable of saving time, money and lives.

While Amazon demonstrated that deliveries via UAS are technically feasible, the commercial use of UAS is currently prohibited in the United States. The FAA, however, is currently working to establish rules for commercial use. Even Amazon has acknowledged the regulatory framework needs to be in place before it can launch its service, and this is going to take until at least 2015.

Like many other companies and industries, Amazon is testing UAS now so that it can be ready to recognize the benefits of the technology once UAS are fully integrated into the U.S. airspace in the coming years.

The wider use of UAS will have a huge economic impact in the U.S. for both the public and commercial sectors. Our economic study released earlier this year found that the UAS industry will have an $82 billion economic impact and create more than 100,000 jobs in the first decade after integration.

Certainly there will be many technological, insurance and regulatory hurdles before we see a fleet of Amazon PrimeAir, or FedEx Today, or even Papa John Pizza Express. With the endorsement of Jeff Bezos, the tip of the iceberg has been reached and it’s all downhill from there. His optimistic viewpoint is that we’ll see Amazon PrimeAir in four to five years.

Amazon announced yesterday that it is developing a drone delivery service called Prime Air that will aim to get packages into customer’s hands within 30 minutes. They are planning to launch as soon as FAA regulations are lifted — as early as 2015. Amazon states that safety will be their top priority. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos says, “Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98BIu9dpwHU

Amazon has not been shy when it comes to investing in novel delivery systems — their $775 million investment last year in Kiva Systems brought large-scale automation to their warehouse floors in an effort to improve efficiency.

Connect the dots:

Check out this new video by Mark Mueller out of Raffaello D’Andrea’s Flying Machine Arena at ETH Zurich, and note that D’Andrea is the tech wizard behind Kiva’s robotic warehouse — the video shows a novel failsafe algorithm that allows an unmanned aerial vehicle to recover and land safely following propeller loss. According to Mueller, the algorithm allows the vehicle to remain in flight despite the loss of one, two, or possibly even three propellers. (Full disclosure: I consult with D’Andrea’s lab on communications.)

See also:
Amazon Promises Package Delivery By Drone: Is It for Real? – Evan Ackerman on Automaton
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos looks to the future –  Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes
Amazon Prime Air: 5 Predictions About the Retailer’s Delivery Drones – Doug Aamoth on TIME
UPS researching delivery drones that could compete with Amazon’s – Ben Popper on The Verge