Whatever Happened to Amazon's Drone Delivery Service?

The New York Times shows an enormous Amazon drone hovering over a driveway in the Texas suburbs. (Alternate URL here.) The drone lets go of a large brown package, which plummets to the ground. But 10 years after Amazon revealed its drone program, drone delivery is only "kind of" a reality, the Times argues - in one city in Texas. "The venture as it currently exists is so underwhelming that Amazon can keep the drones in the air only by giving stuff away."Years of toil by top scientists and aviation specialists have yielded a program that flies Listerine Cool Mint Breath Strips or a can of Campbell's Chunky Minestrone With Italian Sausage - but not both at once - to customers as gifts.... Only one item can be delivered at a time. It can't weigh over five pounds. It can't be too big. It can't be something breakable, since the drone drops it from 12 feet. The drones can't fly when it is too hot or too windy or too rainy. You need to be home to put out the landing target and to make sure that a porch pirate doesn't make off with your item or that it doesn't roll into the street... But your car can't be in the driveway. Letting the drone land in the backyard would avoid some of these problems, but not if there are trees. Amazon has also warned customers that drone delivery is unavailable during periods of high demand for drone delivery... A more complicated issue was getting the technology to the point where it was safe not just most of the time but all of the time. The first drone that lands on someone's head, or takes off clutching a cat, sets the program back another decade, particularly if it is filmed. The drones also struggled with real-world issues like Texas heat waves. During one heat wave the drones were suspended. And when they flew again, "a 54-year-old professor of civil engineering at Texas A&M ordered a medication through the mail. By the time he retrieved the package, the drug had melted." One of Amazon's customers tells the Times that Amazon's drones "feel more like a toy than anything - a toy that wastes a huge amount of paper and cardboard." Amazon claims that in the last 10 months their drones have delivered "hundreds" of items in Texas. Beyond that, Amazon recently announced that its drone deliveries would be expanding within the next 14 months, the Times points out - to Britain, Italy, and a new U.S. location. "Yet even on the threshold of growth, a question lingers. Now that the drones finally exist in at least limited form, why did we think we needed them in the first place?"

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