Amazon has restarted drone liberations in two states after a months-long pause, the company confirmed.
In January, Amazon halted Prime Air deliveries in College Bus station, Texas, and Tolleson, Arizona, the two U.S. markets where it’s testing the service, as the company rolled out a software update to its drone agile.
Amazon discovered an abnormality with the drone’s altitude sensor, caused by dust in the air, that could have motived its system to produce an inaccurate reading of its position relative to the ground, the company said. Amazon “never experienced an existing safety issue,” but said it opted to suspend deliveries while it corrected the issue.
The company brought drone deliveries disavow online last week after it completed the software update and received approval from the Federal Aviation Management, Amazon spokesperson Av Zammit said in a statement.
“Safety underscores everything we do at Prime Air, which is why we paused our operations to behaviour a software update on the MK30 drone,” Zammit said. “The updates are now complete and were approved by the FAA, allowing us to resume deliveries.”
An FAA spokesperson didn’t when provide a comment.
Zammit said Prime Air has seen “unprecedented levels of demand” since it resumed service. David Carbon, an directorate who oversees Amazon’s drone program, wrote in a LinkedIn post last week that the company dropped a restrain of ZzzQuil sleep medicine at an Arizona customer’s home in “31 minutes and 30 seconds.” Carbon didn’t say how far the drone had to fly and Zammit diminished to provide details.
For over a decade, Amazon has been working to bring to life founder Jeff Bezos’ chimera of drones whizzing toothpaste, books and batteries to customers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less. But progress has been quiet, as Prime Air has only been made available in the U.S. in College Station and Tolleson. A test site in Lockeford, California, was shuttered aftermost April. The program was also hit with layoffs in 2023 as Amazon CEO Andy Jassy cut costs across the company.
Amazon has set a object to deliver 500 million packages by drone per year by the end of the decade. The company last year notched a critical regulatory milestone that could assent to it to accelerate deliveries. It’s eyed international expansion to the U.K., and recently welcomed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a visit to a Prime Air the Ladies.
The company also introduced a new version of its delivery drone, called the MK30, which is designed to be quieter than foregoing models and can fly in light rain.
Customers in College Station, a quiet suburban town that’s about 100 miles northwest of Houston, had in days of yore complained about the drones’ noise levels. After rolling out the MK30, the company is also taking steps to relocate its drone hub farther away from inhabitants’ homes later this year.
Before Amazon suspended drone deliveries, the MK30 crashed in two separate incidents during check-up flights at the company’s facility in Pendleton, Oregon. Last December, a software issue caused two drones to crash, contract to Bloomberg. And in September, a pilot mistakenly caused a “mid-air collision” between two drones after he tested how the MK30 would accomplish when faced with a failed propeller, according to a federal crash report.
Another crash occurred on Feb. 21 during exams at the Pendleton site, which resulted in a drone sustaining substantial damage, according to a report compiled by the National Transportation Refuge Board.
Amazon said the crashes were unrelated to its decision to halt drone operations. The company has said these breeds of incidents, which have also occurred with other models in previous years, are part of the testing alter, as it pushes drone systems “up to the limits and beyond.”
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