Amazon's Hopes For Drone Deliveries

Online retailer Amazon hopes to have mini drones delivering packages to customers in just 30 minutes, its chief executive has claimed.

During a TV appearance in the United States, Jeff Bezos played a video showing the tiny robotic devices, known as octocopters, which pick up items in small yellow buckets and whiz them through the air.

"I know this looks like science fiction. It's not," Mr Bezos told CBS television's 60 Minutes show.

"We can do half-hour delivery ... and we can carry objects, we think, up to 5lbs, which covers 86% of the items that we deliver."

The mini drones are powered by electric motors and are claimed to cover areas within a 10-mile radius of distribution centres, allowing Amazon to cover a significant portion of the population in urban areas in the US.

The concept requires additional safety testing and federal approval, but Mr Bezos estimates the service could be up and running within five years.

The mini drones are said to operate autonomously and drop items at target locations thanks to GPS coordinates transmitted to them.

Amazon said the octocopters would be "ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place", noting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was actively working on rules for unmanned aerial vehicles.

Small radio-controlled drones still have height and distance restrictions

But the ambitious project may never get off the ground.

Strict air regulations mean small drones can currently only be operated by line-of-sight control, defeating the remote delivery concept.

The FAA's NextGen air traffic system for planes and large drones has also been delayed due to complex technical problems.
However, blustery weather, power lines and trees could all hamper deliveries by machines that currently lack spatial awareness.

Police trials of drones have shown limits to their remote capabilties

In high-density cities such as New York, where many people live in high-rise apartments, tall buildings provide physical barriers that cannot be overcome.

The US military-operated precision GPS location system also has in-built inaccuracies for civilian use, increasing the risk of delivery problems.

Meanwhile, the chair of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has urged UK consumers to join a boycott campaign against Amazon this Christmas over its UK tax minimisation arrangements.

"It's hugely important that we all take a stand and damage the reputation and business of companies that deliberately avoid paying their fare share of tax to the common purse for the common good," Margaret Hodge told Ethical Consumer, which launched the campaign.

"I also think that it's hugely important that this is seen as not being anti-business, it's pro-fairness.

"When times are hard and people are struggling, for big corporations to feel that they can choose whether or not to pay their fair share of tax is just wrong. Companies should act more responsibly."