Amazon Flying Warehouse That Will Deliver Your Stuff By Drone

Amazon’s new flying warehouses will dispatch products using drones

The e-commerce market has been rapidly developing in the past few decades, and Amazon being one of the pioneers is devising new methods to expand their grounds. This mega internet retail store has recently broken the news of using giant airships to serve as flying warehouses. These mobile warehouses will make the process of delivering goods to consumers easier and faster. The concept is a ground breaking one, and till date no other online retail store has even thought of using a drone as a means of making faster deliveries.

Fastest method of making deliveries

This is not simply a concept, as Amazon had recently conducted a demo to prove the effectiveness of this drone delivery system in the United Kingdom. How is this method far more effective than the traditional delivery system? Imagine, you are at your football match practice and in need of a jersey or a ball. You could simply place your order and you will receive the item within a few minutes without even leaving your seat. Amazon will set up its ‘airborne fulfillment centers’, from which the ordered items will be dispatched soon after ordering, at will be delivered at the consumer’s doorsteps in a matter of minutes. After the product is dispatched the drone will glide or float most of the way and then use its propeller to navigate the route and fly itself to the consumer.

Spaceships to reduce costs

While these drones will make the delivery within 30 minutes, the use of airships will further cut down the time and make even faster product deliveries. One of the reasons as Amazon highlights for introducing spaceships is large gatherings like sports game or concerts which might require mass deliveries within short time. Moreover, this online retail store also believes that using airships instead of drones will actually increase profits by reducing the costs in general.

An incredible concept created by Amazon

While creating the concept of using airships, Amazon looked into the technological tradition used for creating the first self propelled dirigibles back in the 19th century. The filing stated that substantial energy was required for sending drones from ground based facilities. The reason being, the propellers of the drone have to spin constantly in order to stay aloft. Moreover, on the return trip the drone will not be loaded with any product and it would be a wasteful expense. Instead, using airships would be more efficient as it would remain still at a higher altitude. These airships would deploy drones which would glide or float towards the ground by way of gravity, and lesser use of power would result in reduced expenses.

These airships will float to an altitude of 45,000 and will be stocked with a variety of products. When an order will be placed, the unmanned aerial vehicles would fly down and make the delivery at the correct address using its in-built navigation system. Well, this step taken by Amazon definitely has proven the brand’s efficiency as a leading online retail store. Its constant endeavor to make faster deliveries has helped it become an international brand.

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Hey, Alexa! Who did this murder?

Arkansas police are seeking help from e-commerce giant Amazon for data that may have been recorded on its Echo device belonging to a suspect in a murder case, bringing the conflict into the realm of the Internet of Things.

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Sucking Robot Arm Wins Amazon Picking Challenge

Team Delft’s Machine – Won Latest Warehouse Bot Competition

Team Delft’s machine, has won the latest warehouse bot competition of Amazon, a robotic arm which tends to combine a suction cup, a `two fingered’ gripper together with a 3D depth sensing camera, with its rivals at both the tasks. One comprised of choosing products from a container, picking them up and placing them on a shelf while the other did the action in the reverse. Amazon tends to use robots in moving goods with its buildings though depends on humans to stock the same on shelves.

Chief technologist at Amazon robotics, Tye Brady had commented that `their vision is humans and robots working alongside each other. It was inspiring to see 16 top teams with so many different approaches to the same problem and that they saw the advancements robotic technology had made since last year’. The Dutch winners had been awarded $50,000. They rivalled against two teams from Japan and five from the US countries who were known better for their robotics research, at the contest in Leipzig, Germany. There were various items representing some of the blockbusting products of the retailers that were used in the Amazon Picking Challenge.

Stow Task/Pick Task

A combination of various shapes inclusive of soft clothing, a boxed DVD, a bottle of water and a toothbrush were represented. Twelve various items were put in a red plastic box, in the `stow’ task and the robots were made to pick them out in an orderly manner, placing each one at a predetermined place on a shelf. While in the `pick’ task, a dozen specific products to be lifted, off the shelves, comprised of a combination of goods and packed in boxes.

 In some cases, the other items seemed to have been intentionally placed in the way of the target which seems to be tougher of the two tasks. In both the instances, the teams were given only a computer file defining the range of objects involved and instructions for which it should be moved, five minutes before to the start and once the task had started, the robots had to act independently. There were points deducted for damaging any item, dropping the items from a height of over 30 cm and leaving an object extending more than 0.5 cm beyond where it belonged on the shelf.

Variation in Time – Unable to have Single Picking Strategy

Delfts’ team, Kanter van Deurzen had clarified to BBC that due to the variation in items, one could not have a single picking strategy. Usually in industry, you would have a suction cup or a mechanical gripper intended for one kind of item or part. Here they had to handle dozens ranging from simple boxes to a T-shirt and a dumbbell with each needing a different approach. It had really been a big challenge to do all this with a single arm, to have to recognize how the items were focused on and to avoid collision with the other objects on the shelves.

 The Dutch team had come closer to a flawless score in the stow task but its only error was that when its arm’s suction cup had picked a small pack of glue, it also seemed to pick up a bottle-cleaning brush which then had dropped down on the floor. More errors were done in the pick task and initially secured points with the Japan’s Team PFN. However, Delft had been given the benefit since it had taken 30 seconds less time in making its first pick.