By Scott Mayerowitz, AP Business Writer
 |
|
This undated image provided by
Amazon.com shows the so-called Prime Air unmanned aircraft project that Amazon
is developing. Amazon says it will take years to advance the technology and for
the Federal Aviation Administration to create the necessary rules and
regulations, but CEO Jeff Bezos said there's no reason drones can't help get
goods to customers in 30 minutes or less. (Amazon, Associated Press)
|
NEW YORK (AP) — Jeff Bezos’ idea to let
self-guided drones deliver packages may be too futuristic for Washington to
handle.
The Amazon CEO is working on a way to
use the small aircraft to get parcels to customers in 30 minutes or less. While
flight technology makes it feasible, U.S. law and society’s attitude toward
drones haven’t caught up with Bezos’ vision.
Amazon.com Inc. says it’s working on
the so-called Prime Air unmanned aircraft project but it will take years to
advance the technology and for the Federal Aviation Administration to create
the necessary rules and regulations.
The project was first reported by CBS’
“60 Minutes” Sunday night, hours before millions of shoppers turned to their
computers to hunt Cyber Monday bargains.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in the
interview that while his octocopters look like something out of science
fiction, there’s no reason they can’t be used as delivery vehicles.
Bezos said the drones can carry
packages that weigh up to five pounds, which covers about 86 percent of the
items Amazon delivers. The drones the company is testing have a range of about
10 miles, which Bezos noted could cover a significant portion of the population
in urban areas.
Bezos told “60 Minutes” the project
could become a working service in four or five years.
Unlike the drones used by the military,
Bezos’ proposed flying machines won’t need humans to control them remotely.
Amazon’s drones would receive a set of GPS coordinates and automatically fly to
them, presumably avoiding buildings, power lines and other obstacles.
Delivery drones raise a host of
concerns, from air traffic safety to homeland security and privacy. There are
technological and legal obstacles, too —similar to Google’s experimental
driverless car. How do you design a machine that safely navigates the roads or
skies without hitting anything? And, if an accident occurs, who’s legally
liable?
Delivering packages by drone might be
impossible in a city like Washington D.C. which has many no-fly zones.
But technology entrepreneur and
futurist Ray Kurzweil notes that “technology has always been a double edged
sword.”
“Fire kept us warm and cooked our food
but also was used to burn down our villages,” says Kurzweil.
“It’s fascinating as an idea and
probably very hard to execute,” says Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative
Strategies who sees Bezos as an unconventional thinker. “If he could really
deliver something you order within 30 minutes, he would rewrite the rules of
online retail.”
Amazon has already done that once. In
1995, with investments from family and friends, Bezos began operating Amazon as
an online bookseller out of a Seattle garage. Over nearly two decades, Amazon
grew to become the world’s largest online retailer, selling everything from
shoes to groceries to diapers and power tools.
Amazon spends heavily on growing its
business, improving order fulfillment and expanding into new areas. Those
investments have come at the expense of consistent profitability, but investors
have been largely forgiving, focusing on the company’s long-term promise and
double-digit revenue growth.
The company spent almost $2.9 billion
in shipping last year, accounting for 4.7 percent of its net sales.
There is no prohibition on flying
drones for recreational use, but since 2007, the Federal Aviation
Administration has said they can’t be used for commercial purposes.
“The technology has moved forward
faster than the law has kept pace,” says Brendan Schulman, special counsel at
the law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP.
Schulman is currently challenging that
regulation before a federal administrative law judge on behalf of a client who
was using a radio-controlled aircraft to shoot video for an advertising agency.
Autonomous flights like Amazon is proposing, without somebody at the controls,
are also prohibited.
The FAA is slowly moving forward with
guidelines on commercial drone use. Last year, Congress directed the agency to
grant drones access to U.S. skies by September 2015. But the agency already has
missed several key deadlines and said the process would take longer than
Congress expected.
The FAA plans to propose rules next
year that could allow limited use of drones weighing up to 55 pounds. But those
rules are expected to include major restrictions on where drones can fly,
posing significant limits on what Amazon could do. Many of the commercial
advances in drone use have come out of Europe, Australia, and Japan. In
Australia, for instance, an electric company is using drones to check on remote
power lines.
“The delay has really been to the
disadvantage of companies here,” Schulman says. “Generally, the government
wants to promote the advancement of science and technology. In this case, the
government has done exactly the opposite and thwarted the ability of small,
startup companies to develop commercial applications for this revolutionary technology.”
Amazon isn’t the only company awaiting
guidelines. A Domino’s franchise in the United Kingdom released a test flight
video in June of the “DomiCopter,” a drone used to deliver hot pizza.
“We think it’s cool that places like
Amazon are exploring the concept,” says Domino’s spokesman Chris Brandon. “We’d
be surprised if the FAA ever let this fly in the States — but we will surely
stay tuned to see where this all goes.”
Matt Waite, a journalism professor at
the University of Nebraska and head of the university’s Drone Journalism Lab,
says a bigger problem for Amazon is that the rules are not expected to allow
autonomous drones, so a remote pilot would have to be in command of the
aircraft at all times.
Indeed, the FAA said Monday that it is
moving forward with “regulations and standards for the safe integration of
remote piloted (drones) to meet increased demand.” The agency reiterated that
“autonomous (drone) operation is not currently allowed in the United States.”
Given the slow pace at which the FAA
typically approves regulations, Waite calls Bezos’ prediction of four or five
years for approval unrealistic.
Safety concerns could be the real
obstacle in delaying drones for widespread commercial use.
“You’re putting a device with eight
rapidly spinning blades into areas where people are assumed to be,” Waite says.
“The threat to people on the ground is significant.”
It’s not hard to imagine that the
world’s biggest online retailer has some significant lobbying muscle and might
be able to persuade the FAA to alter the rules.
Amazon spokeswoman Mary Osako says the
company has been in contact with the FAA “as they are actively working on
necessary regulation.”
One of the biggest promises for
civilian drone use is in agriculture because of the industry’s largely
unpopulated, wide open spaces. Delivering Amazon packages in midtown Manhattan
will be much trickier. But the savings of such a delivery system only come in
large, urban areas.
Besides regulatory approval, Amazon’s
biggest challenge will be to develop a collision avoidance system, says Darryl
Jenkins, a consultant who gave up on the commercial airline industry and now
focuses on drones.
Who is to blame, Jenkins asked, if the
drone hits a bird, crashes into a building? Who is going to insure the
deliveries?
There are also technical questions. Who
will recharge the drone batteries? How many deliveries can the machines make
before needing service?
“Jeff Bezos might be the single person
in the universe who could make something like this happen,” Jenkins says. “For
what it worth, this is a guy who’s totally changed retailing.”
If Amazon gets its way, others might
follow.
United Parcel Service Co. executives
heard a presentation from a drone vendor earlier this year, says Alan Gershenhorn,
UPS’ chief sales, marketing and strategy officer.
“Commercial use of drones is an
interesting technology, and we’re certainly going to continue to evaluate it,”
Gershenhorn says.
The U.S. Postal Service and FedEx
wouldn’t speculate about using drones for delivery.
No comments:
Post a Comment