When Amazon.com announced recently that it was planning to make deliveries by drones by 2015, it created quite a stir. How will it work? How will the drone find my apartment? Will my e-reader get left out in the rain? How much power would it take to carry large packages?
The details on how drone automated delivery would work are somewhat sketchy right now. The proposed vehicles have a range of 10 miles and can carry weights up to 5 pounds, which includes 86% of Amazon’s packages. But the 10-mile range would no doubt limit deliveries to big cities. And even then, an MIT professor pointed out that the drones don’t have enough battery life to go 10 miles with a 5-pound package. While the idea suggests energy efficiency, the current numbers suggests otherwise. [Read more…] about Amazon Drones: Automated Convenience That’s Energy Efficient?