• Amazon hires autonomous delivery robots
• Robots do not meet customer needs
• Amazon Air offers drone deliveries
Amazon is burying delivery robots
The program announced in 2019, in which Amazon researched small delivery robots, has already been buried again. In October 2022, an Amazon spokeswoman confirmed to the financial service Bloomberg that the delivery service had been temporarily stopped. The test program, which involved about 400 employees worldwide, focused on developing autonomous delivery robots that looked like large coolers and delivered to customers in selected test areas. It was only in 2020 that the US states of Georgia and Tennessee were added to the testing area, which already included the states of California and Washington. Although the company said the basic idea of a delivery robot was still being evaluated, the decision to end the previous program was made because, according to a company spokesman to news outlet TechCrunch, “some aspects of the program did not meet customer needs.”
Starship Technologies is a pioneer
In addition to Amazon, various other companies are also busy developing similar delivery robots. Founded in Estonia in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, Starship Technologies is a global pioneer in autonomous deliveries. According to its own statement, the company, which was founded by the founders of Skype was launched, has already made tens of thousands of deliveries with its robots. With a total of over four million autonomously executed deliveries, the company is the industry leader. So far, the majority of deliveries have been concentrated on university campuses, but purchases are already being delivered by the robots for a small fee in several UK cities.
Amazon Air offers delivery by drone
Although Amazon has halted the development of autonomous land delivery concepts for the time being, the future looks brighter in the air. What sounds like science fiction is already reality today. According to a report by CBSNews, Amazon has been making its first drone deliveries in two pilot regions in the United States since last Christmas, after approval was granted by the American aviation authority. Customers in the regions of Lockeford in California and College Station in Texas can now have certain goods delivered via the new Amazon Prime Air service.
According to the Drone-Zone news portal, the MK 27-2 Hexacopter model is used for drone deliveries. However, a refrigerator delivery by drone is currently not possible, the portable weight of the current model is a maximum of 2.26 kg. According to Drone-Zone, the new MK30 drone will be used from 2024, which is significantly quieter and has a longer range than the current drone. Currently, delivery is made by the drone dropping the ordered goods at a low altitude in the recipient’s backyard, making for an exciting and futuristic delivery experience. However, it is unclear to what extent drone deliveries will also be practicable in densely populated metropolitan areas.
Editorial office finanzen.net
Leverage must be between 2 and 20
No data
More news about Amazon
Image sources: Goinyk Production / Shutterstock.com, Dmitry Kalinovsky / Shutterstock.com