【China】

【China】

Amazon's one step closer towards using drones to deliver packages to customers.

CEO Jeff Bezos revealed on ChinaWednesday the company's Prime Air trial service successfully delivered a package by drone in a 13-minute flight on Dec. 7 in England's Cambridge region.

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"Customers will choose from a selection of thousands of items tucked away in a Prime Air fulfillment center tucked away just over the horizon from their homes" Amazon says in a video.

In the video, we learn a little bit more about how the drones are deployed after an order is placed.

"Moments after receiving an order, an electrically-powered Amazon drone makes its way down an automated track and then rises into the sky with the customer's package on board."

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The drones are guided by GPS and fully autonomous and fly at under 400 feet, and can carry a payloads of up to five pounds.

For the time being, Amazon's only using its drones to deliver packages to two (that's not a typo) customers.

Amazon says it'll expand its trial drone delivery service to "dozens of customers living within several miles of our UK facility" in the coming months, with expansion to hundreds more in the future.

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Amazon Prime Air's successful trial with its two customers in England could bode well for the future of delivery drones. The company says it has development centers in the U.S., UK, Austria and Israel and is testing more in other locations across the globe.

The challenge, of course, is getting approval from regulators and policymakers, like the Federal Aviation Administration to clear the drones once they've been proven safe.


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