Amazon Wants To Create Drone-Only Airspace Above Our Cities

(Zuma / Rex)

The sci-fi image of thousands of aircraft pootling around in the air above our cities could be closer to reality than you think. If Amazon gets its way, drones will be doing just that within ten years.

The retail giant set out its proposal for drone-only airspace above the world’s major cities at a Nasa UTM Convention at Nasa Ames in California. It wants to use unmanned drones to deliver packages ordered from Amazon to customers within 30 minutes. It currently offers a one-hour delivery service in London and several cities in the US.

The company thinks that the portion of air between 200ft and 400ft from the ground should be reserved for high-speed drones, with an extra 100ft as a no-fly zone to avoid any contact with traditional passenger and cargo planes.

The drone zone would only be used by technologically advanced automated drones, and would be available to companies other than Amazon too.

“The way we guarantee the greatest safety is by requiring that as the level of complexity of the airspace increases, so does the level of sophistication of the vehicle,” explained Gur Kimchi, vice-president and co-founder of Amazon’s delivery-by-drone project, Prime Air. “Under our proposal everybody has to be collaborative – vehicles must be able to talk to each other and avoid each other as the airspace gets denser at low altitudes.”

To be allowed to fly in the special airspace, Amazon suggests that zones need to meet the following technological capabilities: they must have sophisticated GPS tracking, reliable on-board internet connection, online flight planning, equipment that allows them to communicate with other drones and sensors that can be used to avoid other drones, birds, buildings and other obstacles.

With all this tech on board, humans need barely be involved, the company said.

Sure, on the one hand, giving robotic flying machines autonomy over the skies above us sounds a bit scary. On the other hand: half-hour delivery would be awfully convenient…