Where are the drones? Amazon’s customers are still waiting
Where are the drones? Amazon’s customers are still
waiting
By DAVID KOENIG and JOSEPH PISANI December 3, 2018
Jeff Bezos boldly predicted five years ago that drones
would be carrying Amazon packages to people’s doorsteps by now.
Amazon customers are still waiting. And it’s unclear
when, if ever, this particular order by the company’s founder and CEO will
arrive.
Bezos made billions of dollars by transforming the retail
sector. But overcoming the regulatory hurdles and safety issues posed by drones
appears to be a challenge even for the world’s wealthiest man. The result is a
blown deadline on his claim to CBS’ “60 Minutes” in December 2013 that drones
would be making deliveries within five years.
The day may not be far off when drones will carry
medicine to people in rural or remote areas, but the marketing hype around
instant delivery of consumer goods looks more and more like just that — hype.
Drones have a short battery life, and privacy concerns can be a hindrance, too.
“I don’t think you will see delivery of burritos or
diapers in the suburbs,” says drone analyst Colin Snow.
Drone usage has grown rapidly in some industries, but
mostly outside the retail sector and direct interaction with consumers.
The government estimates that about 110,000 commercial
drones are operating in U.S. airspace, and the number is expected to soar to
about 450,000 in 2022. They are being used in rural areas for mining and
agriculture, for inspecting power lines and pipelines, and for surveying.
Amazon says it is still pushing ahead with plans to use
drones for quick deliveries, though the company is staying away from fixed
timelines.
“We are committed to making our goal of delivering
packages by drones in 30 minutes or less a reality,” says Amazon spokeswoman
Kristen Kish. The Seattle-based online retail giant says it has drone
development centers in the United States, Austria, France, Israel and the
United Kingdom.
Delivery companies have been testing the use of drones to
deliver emergency supplies and to cover ground quickly in less populated areas.
By contrast, package deliveries would be concentrated in office parks and
neighborhoods where there are bigger issues around safety and privacy.
In May, the Trump administration approved a three-year
program for private companies and local government agencies to test drones for
deliveries, inspections and other tasks.
But pilot programs by major delivery companies suggest
few Americans will be greeted by package-bearing drones any time soon. United
Parcel Service tested launching a drone from a delivery truck that was covering
a rural route in Florida. DHL Express, the German delivery company, tested the
use of drones to deliver medicine from Tanzania to an island in Lake Victoria.
Frank Appel, the CEO of DHL’s parent company, Deutsche
Post AG, said “over the next couple of years” drones will remain a niche
vehicle and not widely used. He said a big obstacle is battery life.
“If you have to recharge them every other hour, then you
need so many drones and you have to orchestrate that. So good luck with that,”
he told The Associated Press.
Appel said human couriers have another big advantage over
drones: They know where customers live and which doorbell to ring. “To program
that in IT is not that easy and not cheap,” he said.
Analysts say it will take years for the Federal Aviation
Administration to write all the rules to allow widespread drone deliveries.
Snow, the CEO of Skylogic Research, says a rule
permitting operators to fly drones beyond their line of sight — so critical to
deliveries — is at least 10 years away. A method will be needed to let law
enforcement identify drones flying over people — federal officials are worried
about their use by terrorists.
While the rules are being written, companies will rely on
waivers from the FAA to keep experimenting and running small-scale pilot
programs.
“People like DHL and the rest of them (will say), ‘Hey,
we can deliver via drone this parcel package to this island,’ but that’s not
the original vision that Amazon presented,” Snow says.
There is a long list of FAA rules governing drone
flights. They generally can’t fly higher than 400 feet, over many federal
facilities, or within five miles of an airport. Night flights are forbidden.
For the delivery business, the biggest holdup is that the machines must remain
within sight of the operator at all times.
In June, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering,
and Medicine said the FAA was being overly conservative in its safety standards
for drones. The group said FAA’s risk-averse attitude was holding back
beneficial uses, such as drones helping firefighters who are battling a fierce
blaze.
Even before the criticism by the scientific panel, the
FAA had begun to respond more quickly to operators’ requests for waivers from
some rules, says Alan Perlman, founder of the Drone Pilot Ground School in
Nashville, Tennessee. He said it is also getting easier and cheaper to buy
liability insurance.
Bezos was mindful of the safety issues, telling “60
Minutes” back in 2013, “This thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re
walking around their neighborhood.”
That didn’t stop him from predicting that drones fed with
GPS coordinates would be taking off and making deliveries in “four, five years.
I think so. It will work, and it will happen.”
To Perlman, the billionaire’s optimism made perfect
sense.
“When you’re in his world you think more about technology
than regulations, and the (drone) technology is there,” Perlman said.
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