At Amazon, delivery by drones is starting this year… when in France?

The e-commerce giant will finally offer its first deliveries by drone, almost ten years after the announcement of the project by Jeff Bezos.

It took almost a decade, but Amazon will finally begin its first drone deliveries this year.

Amazon’s first delivery drones take off this year in California

The announcement was made by the company on its official blog. Amazon will begin a full-scale pilot program in the city of Lockford, California in 2022, without specifying the exact date when the service will be implemented.

The e-merchant promises that ” thousands of products will be affected by drone delivery, again without detailing the exact nature of these objects. We can legitimately think that Amazon will favor small packages directly delivered to the gardens of its customers by its devices. The company will give full details of the types of products affected in the coming weeks.

This first public trial is important for the company, which intends to collect the impressions of its customers to improve its service over the weeks. This before deploying it over the long term to other American cities and considering its expansion in other regions of the globe in the coming years, with of course the approval of the competent authorities for each territory. Suffice to say that we are not about to see the first Amazon drones fly over the sky of Paris.

A 10-year development to obtain an ultra-precise navigation system

Drone delivery has been talked about for a long time and Amazon has taken its time since the first announcements made by Jeff Bezos on this subject.

The founder of the online sales juggernaut had indeed mentioned the development of this project as early as 2013, but his teams wanted to take their time to ensure the maximum efficiency and viability of this new mode of delivery by setting up a navigation and detection system capable of avoiding both static and moving objects. The group has also suffered several setbacks until 2021, having seen five drones crash during tests over a period of four months.

Meanwhile, Amazon has faced competition from companies, such as retail giant WalMart, which have launched and expanded their drone delivery test programs.

This time seems the right one. Amazon still has to wait for its certification from the Federal Aviation Administration before flying its first drones in the skies of California.

Source : Engadget