Feature
TECHNOLOGY
Drone wars As commercial drone use begins to take off, new devices are coming onto the market that could bring them back down BY SARA KAMIYA
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n 7th December 2016, Richard B took delivery of an Amazon Fire TV and a bag of popcorn. From placing the order on Amazon’s UK site to receiving the goods took 13 minutes. And they were delivered by a drone from Amazon’s Prime Air fulfilment centre. The business’ trial currently involves just two shoppers who live within a few miles of the company’s drone base near Cambridge. Over time, Amazon plans to expand this programme to include few dozen — and later hundreds — of customers who live in the area. The drones can carry packages weighing up to 2.6kg. Amazon says that the current batch of customers will be able to order seven days a week, but only during daylight hours and when the weather is okay to fly. Cambridgeshire is ideal for the trial because regulations usually require the drone operator to have a clear line of sight to the craft. Flying over unpopulated fields seems to have satisfied the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) when it visited the site in summer 2015. Lawyers say regulations in the UK are generally favourable to companies wanting to experiment with autonomous aircraft, but there are restrictions. Amazon can test drones that fly beyond line-of-sight in rural and suburban areas; flights where one person operates multiple, largely autonomous drones; and sensor performance associated with sense-and-avoid technology.
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There have been several cases of people shooting down drones that have flown over their homes because of privacy fears
Enterprise Risk
