Amazon unveils futuristic mini-drone delivery plan

to make sure Amazon remains on the cutting edge of the retail industry.

with the rotors on that thing, it sure will be; kids playing in their yards, dogs too - how long before a delivery drone slices up someone? They would have to make them a heck of a later safer than the prototype. What about inclement weather, heavily foilage in your garden, no garden at all, apartment buildings, idiots with bbguns, goons who want to steal one for a joke, kids with kites in parks.... Cute idea, but seems like a logistical and legal nightmare in the current world.

This good TED-talk covers use of drones in places where there are no roads:

Andreas Raptopoulos: No roads? There's a drone for that

@Carcharodon, I think "cutting edge" is a figure of speech. Bezos doesn't mean to actually cut people (or dogs).

I'm Happy to say!- It'll Never Fly in the real world & totally against FAA Administration rules,Mr. Jetson!

Concept is cool but I wonder if they'd lose too many to Aholes messing with the drones.

Possible, but maybe too many liabilities for it to be profitable. A couple big challenges: weather and people.

Fine and dandy thought technology-wise, but it won't work. Jerks will shoot them down, keep them (and/or, keep the package), break them. The devices will crash, run into each other, fall and harm outsiders, be re-conditioned by crooked recipients to spy on others. This one's sad reality over technology.

They would lose these akll the time to people intercepting deliveries.

Some good points above about why this is probably not practical, I'm sure they've thought of them too, but as a futuristic-style idea to put out there it sure makes Amazon look cool, and oh look... its the run up to Christmas.

Just like humans, there are evil kinds and good kinds in electronics, as in virus and anti-virus. I am seeing an enormous issue involving future drones: electronic hijacking, sabotage, etc., both civil and military.

Sounds like a ingenious concept. Until someone with a .22 rifle decides to do some target practice...

Amazon unveils holiday puffery to hype its stock value.

Creepy. No thanks. I'll take my puchases elsewhere first.

@MissingCylonModel, Thank you! , I often look at "Ted" talks, but had not seen that one. Another amazing example is at, http://blog.ted.com/2013/06/11/athletic-machines-raffaello-dandrea-at-tedglobal-2013/

My son and I own a couple of toy type quadcopters ,we live a few miles apart and jokingly aspire , for now, only to share a slice of his Mom's lemon pie on occasion. We have gotten as far as fpv flight (able to control flights from our living rooms monitoring on television screens) should we so desire. I fly a good bit around my small farm just for the fun of it. I feel that under-estimating the abilities and uses for this technology is as easy as under estimating the internet was just a couple of decades ago, ie; Homer Simpson, "Internet!, is that thing still around?"

There are still a lot of hurdles to overcome. Yes, GPS will get you from point A to point B, but GPS knows nothing about the 20-story building sitting in the path of that point A to point B flight. 2015 may bring relaxed regulation of drones, but there are still issues that will keep Amazon from using them until later.

Well, it's a neat idea, but there's a lot they'll have to account for with the drones to make sure they don't fail. These coud be quite expensive as well, so I wonder if Amazon is making enough profit to compensate for that. Then again, they are massively underpaying tax in Britain so I guess they can afford it. I'm sure they wouldn't send out drones into a storm or whatever. Unless the drone has a really good gyro system, which isn't cheap. Shooting the drones won't be all that easy a problem to overcome. You can give it armour, but people will just shoot the parcel instead. Yeah, there's a whole mountain of problems to tackle before this idea will be feasible. I'll stick with Humans for the time being.

This concept has been already in use for delivering a set of sushi to customers in US sushi restaurant in California. Fun!