Amazon raised a lot of eyebrows last year when it announced that it was planning to start delivering packages by automated drones. How would that work? Would the skies become black with automated flying delivery vehicles? Would they collide with planes? How would they deal with apartment buildings?

Last month, Amazon released a new video showing a prototype of one of its delivery drones, which shares features of both helicopters and airplanes. Clearly, the company is proceeding full speed ahead with this radical idea.



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Recently, while researching a story about the legal status of drones for CBS Sunday Morning, I interviewed Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president for global public policy. Given the speed with which Amazon is apparently advancing with its drone program, I thought it’d be a good time to publish a more complete version of that interview here.



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How it will work

David Pogue: First of all, tell the unenlightened about Amazon Prime Air.

Paul Misener: Well, soon after I joined Amazon in early 2000, my young son was sitting on my lap. We ordered something from Amazon, and he hopped off and ran up to the front door, waiting for the brown truck to show up on the spot. That was a high-delivery expectation. (Laughs.) I had to explain that just because we’d bought this thing doesn’t mean it’s at the front door yet.

So Prime Air is a future delivery service that will get packages to customers within 30 minutes of them ordering it online at Amazon.com. The goals we’ve set for ourselves are: The range has to be over 10 miles. These things will weigh about 55 pounds each, but they’ll be able to deliver parcels that weigh up to five pounds. It turns out that the vast majority of the things we sell at Amazon weigh less than five pounds.

And will it cost more or less than a regular package?

I don’t know that we’ve priced it out yet.

OK, a few questions pop up right away. What if I’m not home?

It gets delivered to your doorstep, or wherever you want in your yard, just as it would be if it were delivered by the UPS truck.

What if there’s some guy with a shotgun who sees that I’m getting a TV and wants to shoot it down?

I suppose they could shoot at trucks, too.

We want to make the deliveries. And we believe that these Prime Air drones will be as normal as seeing a delivery truck driving down the street someday. So the novelty will wear off.

Do you have the drones you’ll be using?

We have different prototypes we’re working on simultaneously — different kinds of drones for different kinds of delivery circumstances. Our customers in the United States live in hot, dry, dusty areas like Phoenix, but they also live in hot, wet, rainy environments like Orlando, or up in the Colorado Rockies.

Likewise, obviously, our customers live in a wide variety of buildings. Some live in rural farmhouses, some live in high-rise city skyscrapers, and then everything in between, in suburban and exurban environments. We want to be able to serve all of those customers. And it may take a different kind of a drone to best work in each one.

You’re designing and building your own drones? So these aren’t off the shelf?

No, actually these are quite different than the drones that you can buy in a store and fly around. These are highly automated drones. They have what is called sense-and-avoid technology. That means, basically, seeing and then avoiding obstacles.

These drones are more like horses than cars — and let me explain why. If you have a small tree in your front yard, and you want to bang your car into it for some reason, you can do that. Your spouse might not be happy with you, but you can do it. But try riding a horse into the tree. It won’t do it. The horse will see the tree and go around it. Same way our drones will not run into trees, because they will know not to run into it.

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