Amazon has revealed that it wants to deploy delivery drones so that products and packages reach customers as soon as possible.
CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, in an interview with CBS' Charlie Rose explained that the company is developing a drone-based delivery service called Prime Air, which will be able to deliver a product in 30 minutes after the customer clicks the 'buy' button.
The 'drones' will be capable of delivering items that weigh up to 5 pounds. The package/product will be picked up by the drones from the warehouses or as Amazon likes to call them, 'fulfillment centres', and delivered to the designated address using GPS. Once the drone reaches the delivery address, it will reportedly release the package at the customer's doorstep.
The drone will have 8 revolving blades and will function efficiently even if one of the blades is broken. Bezos believes that the technology will be available in another 4-5 years.
"The hardest challenge in making this happen is demonstrating to the standards of the FAA that this is a safe thing to do. This is years of additional work at this point," ABC News quoted Bezos.
He also explained that he realized on 'core customer expectations' while planning and building the retail giant's future.
Believing that this is how consumers are going to shop in the future, he is optimistic that with FAA's regulations in place on unmanned aerial vehicles, the drones can be in use as early as 2015. Till then Amazon's R&D ream will continue perfecting the prototype.
"I know this looks like science fiction -- it's not," Bezos added. "It will work and it will happen. It's going to be a lot of fun."
