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I'm pretty sure Amazon's drone delivery announcement was a PR stunt and not real.

• oh_sigh 12y ago
  Bzzt. Wrong.
• bertil 12y ago
  The footage, jokes and date it was released (Apr. 1st) made the PR stunt fairly obvious, but automated deliveries (using flying drones or something closer to Google-self-driving cars) are something that Amazon is seriously considering. It’s just not cost effective and practical at the moment. However, rest assured that as soon as someone (presumably Google) manages to lobby a way to lower the legal burden of responsibilities on the human ‘driver’ because he or she was not supposed to pay attention, or react to the automated driving, there will be an way to argue that a car can drive empty. And, from then, they won’t be many truck drivers employed very soon. Drones for the last mile or last yard delivery might make sense, but I rather see Wall-E-like o Big-Dog-like bots swarming from the truck. In other words: Amazon wasn’t joking entirely, but the idea of a swarm of flying things isn’t any more energy efficient then than it is now.