Blimp ease: Amazon is floating airship idea for drone deployment
Amazon is exploring the use of giant airships to serve as mobile, flying warehouses that could help the online retail giant deliver more of its goods by drone.
You might already be familiar with Amazon’s drone delivery service, which recently received a demo in the United Kingdom for the first time. But the idea for a fleet of large airships, disclosed in filings to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, expands on those ambitions dramatically.
Imagine you’re at a baseball game and wanted to buy a meal or a jersey without ever leaving your seat. The system Amazon describes would allow you to place an or-
der and receive the item within minutes. From its so-called “airborne fulfillment centers” hovering near the stadium, Amazon would dispatch a drone with your purchase. The drone would float or glide most of the way, then turn on its propellers and navigate itself to you directly.
While Amazon’s existing goal with drone delivery is to get you your stuff within 30 minutes, airships could potentially reduce that time even further. Unlike Amazon’s land-based warehouses, which by defini- tion can’t move around, airborne fulfillment centers could respond to surges in demand even before they occur, according to the patent filing.
Amazon also appears to believe that using airships could reduce the costs of drone delivery in general.
Sending drones out from a ground-based facility requires substantial energy, the filing says, because the drone must have its propellers spinning constantly to stay aloft. What’s more, having to make a return trip to the warehouse with no payload onboard could be a wasteful expense. By contrast, Amazon believes it could be more efficient to deploy drones from airships; the drones could float or glide most of the way down to earth by way of gravity.
There’s no word on when such a system might debut; an Amazon spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.