It’s a bird. It’s an airplane. It’s an Amazon delivery drone. The online marketplace’s lackluster path to via-the-sky deliveries is still full steam ahead: customers in Texas can now receive their medications from Amazon via drone.
Amazon announced the new prescription drug delivery service for Amazon Pharmacy customers on Wednesday. The Prime Air offering is currently only available to customers in College Station, Texas, with drones capable of delivering the medication in less than an hour after users click to order. Amazon says it is able to fulfill 500 different types of medications to treat illnesses such as the flu, pneumonia and asthma. Those medicines will be packaged by one of the company’s pharmacists and picked up by the drone.
“Our drones fly over traffic, eliminating the excess time a customer’s package might spend in transit on the road,” said Calsee Hendrickson, director. product and program management at Prime Air. “That’s the beauty of drone delivery, and medications were the first thing our customers said they want delivered quickly by drone as well. Speed and convenience top the wish list for healthcare purchases.”
The drones will operate between 130 and 400 feet off the ground and will avoid common obstacles such as power lines and people using embedded software. The drone will also host an onboard neural network that will attempt to identify objects and features through a camera. it will descend on a delivery marker and release the payload before taking off back to Amazon’s fulfillment center.
In 2020, the Federal Aviation Administration granted authorization for Amazon to begin using drones as part of the company’s delivery fleet. Amazon had to provide proof to the administration that its drones could safely deliver packages, which included a large amount of paperwork, including manuals, maintenance documents and flight plans.
However, the road to launch has been turbulent. A manager working at Prime Air accused the company of firing him after he raised concerns regarding the drone delivery program. An Amazon spokesperson refuted these claims in an email to Gizmodo stating, “These allegations are false and we look forward to proving it in court.”