Amazon may build giant beehives for drone deliveries

By on June 23, 2017

Detailed within a patent application, Amazon may build large structures resembling beehives in order to house a fleet of package-delivering drones. This type of building design would be ideal for large, congested cities. At the moment, Amazon positions order fulfillment centers just outside of large cities.

There are other design iterations of this concept. Besides the beehive design, one concept looks like a giant cylinder. By building vertically, drones will simply be able to fly into docking bays far above street level, thus keeping the drones away from pedestrians on the ground.drone_beehive_amazon

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At the bottom of the building, large delivery trucks would bring all the orders for the day to the beehive. Presumably, there would be some sort of elevator system to transfer packages between various floors. At that point, a human would take the package, attach it to the drone and watch the drone fly away to deliver the order.

Of course, Amazon will have to figure out how to deal with the massive amount of buzzing noise that drones make when in the air. This high level of noise pollution would likely be a detriment to property values in an area located close to a beehive.

One idea that Amazon is pursuing are “sound-dampening treatments” that attach to a drone’s rotors. The idea is that this attachment will alter airflow around the propellers and decrease the overall level of noise pollution.

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Of course, Amazon will have to balance the level of noise against the potential loss of battery life. That treatment may force the propellers to work harder, thus using up more battery power and reducing the distance a drone could travel.

At this time, Amazon hasn’t started building any type of building that will house drones. However, this isn’t the first patent that we have seen from Amazon related to drones. Another patent detailed giant warehouse blimps that hover over large cities, basically allowing drones to  descend to the ground to make deliveries. Those warehouses would be refueled in midair in order to continue making deliveries 24/7.

Related: The Do’s and Dont’s of Prime Air Deliveries

About Mike Flacy

Editor-in-Chief for The CheckOut. During my free time, I love to write about pop culture, home theater, digital photography, social media, mobile technology and cool gadgets!

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