Page 25 - Article-1

Read

Will Amazon Change the World…Again?

PART 1

SEATTLE, Washington. Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com Inc. in
1995. It began as an online bookstore. It was run out of a garage in
Seattle, Washington. It grew to become the world's largest online
retailer. It sells everything from shoes and groceries to diapers and
tools.
Now, Bezos is seeking to change the world again. Amazon is
working on a new way to get packages to customers. It would take
30 minutes or less. It would be done with self-guided drones.
Amazon calls its effort the Prime Air unmanned aircraft project.
How would the service work? Flying drones would carry packages Photo credit and all related images:
weighing up to 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms) to customers' doorsteps. AP/Amazon
This could cover about 86 percent of the items Amazon delivers. The
drones would have a flight range of about 10 miles (16.1 This is a drone, a plane that flies
itself. Amazon.com hopes to use
kilometers). That means they could deliver most orders in cities. drones to deliver packages to
And that's not all! The drones would fly without pilots. The flying people's homes.
machines would use GPS technology. They would automatically fly
where they needed to go. Of course, they would have to avoid buildings, power lines, and other things.

It will take years to advance the technology to make Bezos' dream a reality. In addition, the government's
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will need to create the necessary rules and regulations. Still, Bezos is
hopeful that the project could become a working service within four or five years.
What are the current rules concerning drone use? Drones used for recreation are legal in the U.S. But since
2007, commercial drones haven't been allowed. Independent flights like the ones Amazon is proposing, without
a person at the controls, are not currently allowed.

The FAA is slowly moving forward with guidelines on commercial drone use. In 2012, Congress directed the
agency to grant drones access to U.S. skies. The FAA plans to come up with rules that could allow limited use of
drones. Those rules will include where drones can fly and what they can do. They are not expected to allow
self-guided drones.

Matt Waite is a professor at the University of Nebraska. He said that these rules will pose a problem for
Amazon. He believes that because of this, Amazon's four- to five-year timeframe for launching the use of
delivery drones isn't possible. He believes it will take longer for the FAA to approve Amazon's drones.

There are safety obstacles for Amazon, too. Amazon's biggest challenge will be to make sure the drones won't
crash. This is particularly a concern in cities. Operating drones there could be very tricky.

"You're putting a device with eight rapidly spinning blades into areas [with] people…," Waite said. "The threat to
people on the ground is [real]."

In addition, there are a number of legal questions related to the drones' safety that need to be answered. Who
is to blame, for example, if a drone hits a bird or crashes into a building? Who is legally responsible for an
accident? And who is going to insure the deliveries?
There are questions about how the drones will work, too. Who will recharge the drones' batteries? How many
deliveries can the machines make before needing service?

Despite these concerns, Jenkins and others remain hopeful about Bezos' drone delivery idea. "Jeff Bezos might
be the single person in the universe who could make something like this happen," Jenkins said. "For what it's
worth, this is [the] guy who's totally changed retailing."
It's possible that delivery drones will be the way of the future. United Parcel Service (UPS) Company leaders
heard a presentation from a drone maker in 2013, reported Alan Gershenhorn. He is head of UPS' sales and
advertising.