Amazon has been awarded a patent for a drone delivery system

Amazon may have brought the idea of drone-based package deliveries to our attention but America’s strict regulations regarding drones have prevented the company from developing this kind of technology as quickly as it would like. Even so, Amazon isn’t exactly giving up on the idea, as the company has just been awarded a patent for a retail delivery system that uses drones, which it submitted last September. The patent goes into detail about the kind of complex system Amazon would use to manage this army of drones. 

Amazon has been planning to use flying robots to deliver goods to customers for quite some time and now the online retail giant has a patent for its “PrimeAir” drone delivery system. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published the patent last week. Amazon submitted its proposal for a retail delivery system using unmanned aircraft last September. The patent awards Amazon exclusive IP related to a “system for aerial delivery” rather than relating to a specific type of drone aircraft. The first claim in the patent describes: “1. A system for aerial delivery of items to a destination location, comprising: a plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles, each of the plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles configured to aerially transport items; an unmanned aerial vehicle management system, including: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor and storing program instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processors to at least: receive a request to deliver an item to a destination location; and send to an unmanned aerial vehicle of the plurality of unmanned aerial vehicles, delivery parameters identifying a source location that includes the item and a destination location; wherein the unmanned aerial vehicle, in response to receiving the delivery parameters, is further configured to at least: navigate to the source location; engage the item located at the source location; navigate a navigation route to the destination location; and disengage the item.”