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Feb 17 2017

Amazon patents drone parachute

Amazon has patented the transport of goods from drones to homes via parachute. This comes soon after the e-commerce giant patented an airborne fulfilment centre designed for service deliveries made by drones.

Amazon outlines plans in the patent for a package delivery system that can “forcefully propel a package from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), while the UAV is in motion.”

 

The document states that as it stands, to deliver a package to a destination an UAV or ‘drone’, it needs to be physically dropped off; describing the sequence of landing and taking off for every delivery as generating “time and energy resource inefficiencies”.

 

The patent says a UAV could apply a force to a package which would alter its “descent trajectory from a parabolic path to a vertical descent path.” It outlines a number of ways in which a drone could generate and apply the force, including: pneumatic actuators, electromagnets, spring coils, and parachutes. Read more

 

 

Source: LOGISTICS MANAGER