Today I came across this TechCrunch article in which the author reports that Amazon is testing so-called Octocopters which are autonomous flying drones. It seems that Amazon is testing if they could be used for delivery of small packets. Amazon calls the tested vehicle and service “Amazon Prime Air” and here is a short presentation how it looks like…

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos came up with this surprise in a tv show with Charlie Rose and nobody knew before that Jeff Bezos would unveil something like this. They walked in a room of the Amazon offices and Jeff Bezos said “Let me show you something.” while Charlie Rose answered surprised “Oh, man… Oh, my God!” when he saw the drone first. Charlie Rose asked “This is???” and Jeff answered “These are octocopters” and “These are effectively drones but there’s no reason that they can’t be used as delivery vehicles. Take a look up here so I can show you how it works.”. He explained further “We’re talking about delivery. There’s an item going into the vehicle. I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not.”.

It´s not? For me it really is science fiction but pretty cool anyhow! On the other side this could again kill some jobs or not? Also the big question is if we want to get our delivery by a drone or by a human. But anyway it is anyhow still cool as it reminds me to some science fiction movies.

Jeff Bezos also explained that you could buy a product and Amazon Prime Air could deliver it in 30 minutes. He explained further that the Prime Air Drone can carry packages of maximum five pounds and that the radius for trips of the electric drone is up to 10-miles.

It´s at least a pretty innovative idea anyhow. So, let´s see if this ever will come true. Jeff Bezos said in the interview “I don’t want anybody to think this is just around the corner. This is years of additional work from this point.” and Charlie Rose inquired “Will years mean five, ten?” and Jeff answered “I know it can’t be before 2015, because that’s the earliest we could get the rules from the FAA. My guess is that’s, that’s probably a little optimistic. But could it be, you know, four, five years? I think so. It will work, and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun.”

I guess he is right if he says that it will be a lot of fun. I laugh even now. What do you think about the Amazon experiments with these flying drones?