Science & Technology

Amazon considers 'flying warehouse' airship

By T.K. Randall
January 2, 2017 ·  3 comments

Parcels could be carried from an airship to your front door. Image Credit: Amazon Imagine a world in which you can purchase something online and have a drone turn up within a couple of hours with the goods. It might sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but if Amazon's most recent patent is to be believed, it might become a reality sooner than you think.

The online shopping behemoth was recently awarded a patent for an 'airborne fulfillment center' - essentially a large airship stocked with thousands of products.

When a customer orders something, a drone will pick up the item and then travel down from the airship to deliver it. All of the drones would be able to communicate with one another to share weather information and to work out the quickest routes.While it is unlikely that such a system will be used to deliver parcels to Amazon's regular online store customers, the airship could, for example, be stocked with items relevant to a specific sporting event and be deployed above the stadium to deliver food and merchandise orders to the fans below.

The idea of using drones to deliver parcels was actually tested out quite recently in the UK and Amazon is currently looking to expand the availability of the service over a wider area.

Whether flying warehouses will ever actually happen however remains to be seen.

Source: CNBC | Comments (3)

Tags: Amazon, Drone, Airship