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giddy up
AMAZON’S FLYING DRONES, which will deliver parcels, are “more like horses than cars,” according to Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy.
In an interview with Yahoo Tech, Misener said that the drones use “sense-and-avoid technology,” which is useful when delivering parcels to houses.
“The [drones] have what is called sense-and-avoid technology,” he said. “That means, basically, seeing and then avoiding obstacles”. To explain this further, Misener compared the drones to a living animal.
“These drones are more like horses than cars – and let me explain why,” he said. “If you have a small tree in your front yard, and you want to bang your car into it for some reason, you can do that … But try riding a horse into the tree. It won’t do it. The horse will see the tree and go around it”.
The genesis for the drone idea, which was announced in an episode of the “60 Minutes” TV show, came from Misener’s son.
“After I joined Amazon in early 2000, my young son was sitting on my lap,” he said. “We ordered something from Amazon, and he hopped off and ran up to the front door, waiting for the brown truck to show up on the spot”.
Amazon has been working to deliver parcels faster and faster, starting out with Prime, which delivers packages within two days in the US, then next-day delivery, next-hour delivery, and finally Prime Air, which claims to deliver packages in 30 minutes.
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Thank god we have eircodes
Amazon won’t be delivering with these in Ireland. They won’t even open an Irish store.
They are hiring people right now for a delivery operation in Blanchardstown
Who are they hiring? Drone operators?
And you think they will last long in America from being blasted out of the sky by the gun touting public.Be a great way for the kids to test their new machine guns.
Use parcel motel to get anything from UK that doesn’t deliver to Ireland like amazon. Great service
Is there an American version? Cheers
Family Guy, have they sorted out the customs charges and vat issues on that yet. Was looking into using MyUSA or a similar service but am worried about Revenue charging a bomb to have the package released. I believe if you keep the order to under 150 it’s ok….
@Rasputin: Are you actually asking if a commercial delivery-service provider have negotiated downwards Revenue’s tax ‘bomb’ on imports? No, of course they haven’t. Duty, usually at a rate of <4%, +23% VAT are payable on the combined cost of imported goods & shipping. So, if you want to grey import you need to ensure the foreign cost of goods plus the above charges are substantially below local cost to warrant the obvious limitation in terms of warrantee and backup.
Link? Are you sure?
Amazon don’t have stores…
More like slaves xD
Haha try dat
Baseball bat?
‘it’s illegal to have sex with them!’ Got it!
Call me old fashioned (many people do :) ) but I don’t fancy looking up at a skyline littered with bloody drones.
The future has arrived. Brilliant idea, hopefully the concept will actually work in the real world
I have no doubt that these will hit birds while they fly around or land. Can see dogs and cats attacking them too. Nice idea but there are going to be issues it is just a matter of how severe. If severe enough they will get banned.
I have nine cats and nine of them can fly, even when there’s a bird to catch as an incentive. Can’t see why a flying drone would be any different.
*none of them
I have two dogs and they have killed 8 birds in 4 months and they can’t fly either. Don’t know why it is a hard concept to grasp that drones have to land as delivery is the point.
Neighbour cat attacked my remote control helicopter when I was a kid. So all very possible.
I have a horse and he lives crashing into trees, can’t for the life of me see what could go wrong here!
“Sense-and-avoid” is fine but when it looses power gravity will kick in and I would not want to be underneath one.
I am sure though that much smarter minds than mine are working on it though.
Sense and avoid technology, is basically the drone senses something and avoids it, thanks for explaining it, because I hadn’t a clue what it meant.
These will never take off.
So in the future we will all live within 7.5 miles of an Amazon depot. The drones only have a range of 15 miles after all. And if this is the case wouldn’t a moped do just as well.
Limits on where they can fly, how far they can be from the operator etc, sorry Amazon but you are backing a loser on this one.
Sounds great but in reality, won’t be cost effective, too many possible dangers, I’m sure there will be some who would love to swipe them and launching in the land of “we’ll sue our mother for a Big Mac” – can only imagine what happens when one of these come within 20 get of a real person…
I’d bet my left nut we’ll never see amazon using these for deliveries. There’s far too many things that can go wrong
They keep droning on about this new technology but will their products fly off the shelves as anticipated?
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