Amazon reveals new design for Prime Air’s delivery drone

Ama­zon’s new deliv­ery drone will have increased range, expand­ed tem­per­a­ture tol­er­ance, and the capa­bil­i­ty to fly in light rain, enabling cus­tomers to choose drone deliv­ery more often.

Ama­zon has been work­ing to get items to cus­tomers quick­ly, cost-effec­tive­ly and safe­ly in less than an hour. The com­pa­ny has built ful­ly elec­tric drones that can deliv­er pack­ages under five pounds to cus­tomers in less than an hour from click to deliv­ery.

In August, it announced that cus­tomers who live in Lock­e­ford, Cal­i­for­nia, and Col­lege Sta­tion, Texas, will be among the first to receive Prime Air deliv­er­ies lat­er this year.

Ama­zon Drone Deliv­ery Back on Track or More “Cry Wolf?”

Ama­zon is now intro­duc­ing its MK30 next-gen­er­a­tion deliv­ery drone due to come into ser­vice in 2024, which will be lighter and small­er than the MK27‑2, the drone that will be mak­ing deliv­er­ies in Lock­e­ford and Col­lege Sta­tion.

Reduc­ing the noise of drones is an impor­tant engi­neer­ing chal­lenge for drones that fly hun­dreds of feet in the air, well above peo­ple and struc­tures. Even when they descend to deliv­er pack­ages, Ama­zon claims its drones are gen­er­al­ly qui­eter than a range of sounds that would com­mon­ly be heard in a typ­i­cal neigh­bor­hood.

Prime Air’s Flight Sci­ence team has cre­at­ed new cus­tom-designed pro­pellers that will reduce the MK30’s per­ceived noise by anoth­er 25%. Ama­zon drones can encounter new, unex­pect­ed sit­u­a­tions and still make safe deci­sions autonomous­ly and safe­ly.

The com­pa­ny has cre­at­ed a sophis­ti­cat­ed sense-and-avoid sys­tem that will allow drones to oper­ate at greater dis­tances while safe­ly and reli­ably avoid­ing oth­er air­craft, peo­ple, pets, and obsta­cles.

The newest drone will go through rig­or­ous eval­u­a­tion by nation­al aero­space author­i­ties like the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion to prove its safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty. The com­pa­ny has devel­oped new tech­nolo­gies and made invest­ments in its logis­tics net­work that have helped get pack­ages to cus­tomers in two days, one day, and even on the same day.

In June, BETA Tech­nolo­gies and its sup­port from Ama­zon con­tin­ued with fur­ther invest­ment, along­side a suc­cess­ful tri­al of the ALIA between two Ama­zon Air Hubs in north Ken­tucky and Ohio.

BETA Tech­nolo­gies: Fur­ther Ama­zon invest­ment, Suc­cess­ful ALIA Tri­al Flight