Amazon’s plans to deliver packages by drones, which it predicts “will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today,” has been widely dismissed as little more than clever self-promotion. Yet, in some contexts, drone delivery has shown potential. Last year, a startup called Matternet in Palo Alto, California, tested drones as a way to deliver supplies to refugee camps in Haiti and found it cost only 20 to 70 cents to deliver a two-kilogram package 10 kilometers—at least a fivefold savings compared to standard truck delivery.“Technically it is totally feasible,” says R. John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics at MIT. “The key issues will be if the [Federal Aviation Administration] allows this kind of operation—they should—and if the business case makes sense.”But Hansman says the delivery cost could be steep: “They will have to charge a significant premium for this kind of delivery, so the products would need to be worth a $100 to $200 delivery fee for a five-pound or so package.”

For home delivery to work safely and ubiquitously, it would mean avoiding every power line on a suburban street, deciphering satellite maps to decide what precise spot on a property to land, and making sure a drone didn’t hit an errant child or dog. Hansman called those challenges “not insurmountable.”Even if those challenges were dealt with, in the United States, drone use by Amazon would likely be a niche, high-cost service for high-value items. The FAA is currently working on drone safety and usage rules that are supposed to take effect in 2015. The rules are expected to lead to new commercial uses, including building inspections, police work, and delivery services (see “Flying Robots”).Matternet launched from Singularity University with $500,000 in seed funding, along with a second drone-delivery startup, Aria Logistics, which aims to build an autonomous logistics infrastructure. Matternet envisions delivering packages to predetermined “pads”— rather than dropping them on the front walkway to a house, as was depicted in an Amazon demonstration video. 

Amazon revealed the plan in an interview with the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, that aired on 60 Minutes on Sunday night—during which Bezos acknowledged the challenge. “The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need to say, ‘Look, this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood,’ ” he said. But in an online Q&A, Amazon expressed confidence in the technology and said it would be ready as early as 2015—and even offered a 30-minute delivery promise for packages of up to five pounds, if the regulations allowed it.“There is a lot of hype around what Amazon has said yesterday, but we shouldn’t be fooling ourselves,” says Andreas Raptopoulos, CEO of Matternet. “The technology is not all there yet to allow us to do it, and the regulations are not there yet to allow us to do it. We are talking about all different weather conditions, over very difficult terrain and winds. It requires quite a bit of testing to execute on those things.”

Amazon did not respond to questions about how it would try to overcome those problems. Amazon proposes using a so-called octocopter, which has eight spinning rotor blades and can continue flying if one of them fails. macdev drone dx techpbMatternet also used an eight-rotor drone for its trial. where to buy drones in storesBoth are versions of commercially available drones.macdev drone dx shootingAlready, Canada and Australia have regulations that allow some commercial drone use, says Raptopoulous. cheap drone with camera for saleAnd testing has begun in some parts of the world. where to buy a drone in columbus ohio

In Sydney, Australia, a textbook seller called Zookal says it plans to use six drones to drop off books at outdoor locations. And a Chinese company, Shunfeng Express, is testing package delivery in Dongguan, China.The Matternet vision includes a network of hubs where drones could recharge for longer-range flights, and provide services like medicine or farm-supplies to be delivered to people in remote parts of developing countries. where can i buy a drone in perth“We call it a network for matter, which could have tremendous impacts for people here and in the developing world where there are no roads,” Raptopoulos said.Become an Insider to get the story behind the story — and before anyone else.Amazon already offers delivery in some markets in as little as one hour with Amazon Prime Now, but that still relies upon humans driving cars. Amazon’s next big idea is the deploy an army of drones to deliver packages over a wide area in as little as 30 minutes.

Prime Air was unveiled as a concept several years ago, but Amazon is still developing it. Amazon exec Paul Misener has revealed more details about how Prime Air will work in an interview with Yahoo Tech.Amazon thinks that in order to get delivery times to half an hour, the drones will need to have a range of about 10 miles. That probably means areas with Prime Now warehouses will serve as hubs for the drones. The drones themselves will weight about 55 pounds and have a maximum payload of five pounds. So, that giant TV you ordered will probably still make its way to you on a truck. Still, most things Amazon sells weight less than five pounds. Misener doesn’t know if it’s going to cost anything extra, though. Amazon has yet to come up with a good way to deliver to those in apartments, but if you live in a house, the drone will just drop the package on your doorstep. If your yard has lots of obstacles, that’s no problem, according to Misener. He compares Amazon’s drones to horses as opposed to cars, which makes more sense than you’d expect.

A car will go wherever you steer it, even if you steer it into the tree in your front yard. A horse, on the other hand, will go around the tree because it prefers not to run into things. The drones will be the same — they can avoid obstacles even if an operator steers it into one.There will be some variation among the drones, though. According to Misener, Amazon is testing different designs for drones to operate in different regions. For example, the drones that fly in arid regions in the southwest will probably be different than the ones that fly in the rainy pacific northwest. A lot of care is being put into making the drones quiet. Amazon knows people aren’t going to respond favorably to having drones buzzing all over if they make a racket. Amazon really thinks drones are going to become the preferred delivery method in the future (and people will stop shooting at them).There are still legal hurdles to clear, though. The drone regulations introduced by the FAA include the requirement that the operator maintains line-of-sight on the drone at all times.