Business Insider: - Amazon is a big step closer to bringing its high-speed drone
Amazon is a big step closer to bringing its high-speed drone delivery plans to life
A UK government aviation agency is helping to make Amazon's dreams of high-speed drone delivery come true.
On Tuesday, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced that its newly formed innovation team would be launching a virtual testing space, known as an "Innovation Sandbox," where a group of companies would have the chance to "discuss, explore, trial and test emerging concepts." Amazon was named as a participant.
A CAA spokesman told Business Insider that while the testing will begin virtually, it would eventually be done in a physical space. It wants to position the UK as a leader in aviation innovation and have a hand in the testing of new products to ensure they are safe, the spokesman added.
It would be helping Amazon specifically to test its much-anticipated drone delivery system, which it says could bring packages to customers in as little as 30 minutes. Amazon declined to comment beyond the CAA announcement.In 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos predicted in a "60 Minutes" interview that Amazon drones would be operational by 2018. "I'm an optimist," he said. "Could it be four, five years? I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and it's gonna be a lot of fun."
Fast forward six years and its drone delivery plans are yet to materialize. However, recent reports indicate that testing is well underway.
It has been discreetly testing in UK sites since 2016, and in July 2017, it filed a patent that showed it was working on a way for drones to capture data by scanning people's homes.
Meanwhile, one Amazon's main tech rivals, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), recently secured approval to roll out one of the world's first drone delivery services in Australia.