The service could revolutionise the way products – including food and drink – are dispatched from warehouse to consumers.
In the two-minute video, which you can see below, Clarkson explains the process that could let consumers place orders and have a drone deliver it directly to their homes within 30 minutes.
“In time they’ll be a whole family of Amazon drones – different designs for different environments,” Clarkson claims.
Amazon drones can fly for up to 15 miles and avoid obstacles both on the ground and in the air using a sensor, Clarkson added.
‘Amazing innovation’
“This amazing innovation lowers itself slowly to the ground, drops the package and flies straight back to altitude,” Clarkson said in the advert.
The video showed the complete process of consumer ordering a product, its dispatch from the warehouse by a drone, transported through the skies and delivered to the customer’s home.
But, it did not specify when the service would be readily available.
Earlier this year, Amazon told FoodManufacture.co.uk it was in talks with regulators and policy makers in many countries to ensure the Amazon Prime Air service became a reality and not just science fiction.
Amazon grows food industry presence
It has been a big year for Amazon’s presence within the food and drink industry.
It launched its Amazon Fresh food delivery business to households in Birmingham and refitted a former Tesco warehouse in Weybridge, Surrey – rumoured to be to facilitate food deliveries throughout the UK.
Amazon is said to be planning to claim 2% of the UK’s £149bn grocery market.
It has opened fulfillment centres in Dunstable and Doncaster this year and now operates eight of these centres across the UK.
Amazon has created 700 jobs at its UK fulfillment centres this year and 3,000 roles since 2011.
What is a drone?
Drones are more formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Essentially, a drone is a flying robot. The aircraft may be remotely controlled or can fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans in their embedded systems working in conjunction with GPS. UAVs have most often been associated with the military but they are also used for search and rescue, surveillance, traffic monitoring, weather monitoring and firefighting, among other things.
Source: WhatIs.com