Amazon's Drones Could Wind Up Perching All Around Your Neighborhood
It looks like Amazon is answering a fundamental question about its long-promised delivery drones: Where will they land? A possible answer: on your neighborhood's streetlights, churches and synagogues, cell towers, and other tall structures.
The online giant has been awarded a patent for "docking stations" for delivery drones, which the patent notes, "may be described as a system to deliver packages, [but] it should be understood that the system may just as easily be used to delivery groceries, mail, movies, prescriptions, and other items."
The docking station and the drone would be able to communicate with each other to identify a landing space, and if the docking station already had its share of drones. The stations would also be able to track weather conditions, alerting to poor conditions and perhaps even protecting the drones. While Amazon's drawing all portray lamp posts, the patent notes that they would be just as comfortable at a "church steeple".
As Amazon expects to be delivering packages of differing weights, a scale would also be incorporated into the docking station. The drone could also download and upload data on new purchases or cancellations. A typical visit to this home away from home would include charging its battery, downloading any new information, and then going on its way.
Amazon also suggests that the docking stations could serve their communities by offering some sort of Wi-Fi connection "without bearing the burden of installing some, or all, of the necessary infrastructure".
Amazon the right to test its drones last year, and this patent drops hints about what they might be like. The patent notes that the docking stations were built to handle small, medium, and large drones. Presented as a hypothetical (which, to be fair, most everything is in this patent), it says a large drone could carry a payload as heavy as 500 pounds.
Source: CNBC
