Amazon wants to drop packages near your house using parachutes

Detailed in a new patent granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office yesterday, Amazon is considering airdropping packages from drones and guiding those packages to a destination near your home. Hypothetically, this will keep the drones from colliding with customers, animals, trees or other items that could be an obstruction in a yard.

Of course, this would also keep a drone on the move. If able to carry mulitple packages, the drone would be able to make mulitple deliveries without taking the time to land and take off. Amazon would also be able to preserve battery life from those actions.

According to the details in the patent, the drone would monitor the progress of your package at it plummets to the ground. If the package veers off course, the drone would send a signal to the box (holding your package) and deploy options like compressed air, a landing flap or multiple parachutes to redirect the box.

Of course, the patent doesn’t detail how the housing  (for the packages) will be collected by the online retailer. It’s possible that warehouse workers would have to constantly retrieve housing from customers after deliveries have been made. It’s also unclear what responsibility the customer will have to retain the housing in a safe, secure area of their home.

Amazon hasn’t released any information on the launch of Prime Air in any area of the Unites States as of yet. Interestingly, the company featured Prime Air in an ad for the Amazon Echo during the Super Bowl earlier this month.

Doritos. Drones. Drama. The perfect recipe for the big game. #JustAsk Alexa #SB51 pic.twitter.com/5sMvM5O6mU

— Amazon Echo (@amazonecho) February 6, 2017

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One Comment

1. 

   Grintch

   February 18, 2017 at 11:56 am

   Sounds like a CYA patent. There are an awful lot of details to work out.
   Delivering and retrieving the housing, rain filling the housing, preventing it from being stolen, recharging it as needed (solar charging, maybe),weather proofing the package, preventing target practice on drones, trees growing up.wild animals such as bears grabbing the package, etc,etc.
   But getting a basic concept patent does cover their a**es for 19(?) years

   Reply