The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has given the green light to Amazon to broaden its drone delivery operations, with plans for an “immediate” scale-up.
Amazon revealed that its newly developed “detect-and-avoid system” received approval from federal regulators on Thursday.
“To secure this permission, we designed a BVLOS [beyond visual line of sight] approach, which includes an onboard detect-and-avoid system. We have spent years crafting, testing, and fine-tuning our onboard detect-and-avoid technology to ensure that our drones can navigate around obstacles in the air,” Amazon stated.
One of Amazon’s primary drone hubs is located in College Station, Texas, where they can deliver orders to customers in less than an hour with “minimal complexity,” according to David Carbon, vice president of Prime Air.
In its recent announcement, Amazon officials declared, “We will immediately scale our operations in College Station with our current MK-27 drone to serve customers in more densely populated areas.”
Amazon Drone Delivery
Have you had a package delivered by drone yet from Amazon? pic.twitter.com/Oe9d0vg9pb
— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) April 26, 2024
Amazon has set its sights on delivering 500 million packages per year via drones by the end of the decade.
“We recognized the need to design a system capable of serving highly populated areas and that was safer than driving to the store,” the company mentioned. “It has taken years of innovation, testing, and refinement to create these breakthrough technologies, and now, following regulatory approval and the introduction of cutting-edge technology, we are thrilled to start this next chapter for Prime Air.”
