Feasibility of Light Cargo Delivery Drones: Amazon Prime Air Analysis

This report examines the feasibility and effectiveness of light cargo delivery drones, particularly in the context of Amazon Prime Air. It begins with an introduction to light cargo drones, highlighting their benefits such as speed and environmental friendliness, and their potential to revolutionize the cargo industry. The report then explores the theoretical capabilities of these drones, including coding procedures, expected benefits, anticipated barriers (like physical safety, legal issues and lack of acceptance), potential problems, and proposed solutions. It analyzes the practical feasibility of Amazon Prime Air's drone delivery service, considering factors like safety, weather conditions, regulations, and financial viability. The report concludes with a summary of findings and recommendations, including the need for ground reality checks, operator line of sight, and regular drone testing. The report emphasizes that while the technology is promising, several challenges and limitations must be addressed for successful implementation. The report also cites several references to support the analysis.

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Introduction
Light cargo delivery drone is autonomous vehicle which is used for
transporting foods, packages or all other products. New generation for
autonomous delivery vehicles have capability to carry several pounds for several
miles. They are quick, much more environmentally friendly as well as could
change industry of cargo completely (Boyle 2020). Light cargo delivery drones
offer same benefits for speed as well as reduced carbon footprint, however on
much higher scale. Focusing in the rural areas as well as shutting goods among
distribution centers, the light cargo delivery drones are designed for landing in
water as well as takeoff vertically and making the drop-offs much more flexible.
Light cargo delivery drones come in every size and shape. Light cargo delivery
drones would be taxied in standard port, in where cargo could be unloaded with
the use of cranes.
Light cargo delivery drone could transport vaccines as well as medicines, along
with retrieve the medical samples, out of and into remote or inaccessible regions.
Light cargo delivery drone could be used also for delivering food products to the
customers (Chalupníčková et al., 2014). Service of light cargo delivery drone is
undertaken by several countries as they test profitability as well as feasibility of
unmanned services of light cargo delivery drones.
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Theoretical Capabilities Light Drone Cargo
Amazon Prime Air used three coders for coding the light cargo delivery drones.
Coding procedure was started with set of determined categories which includes
expected benefits, anticipated barriers, proposed solutions and potential problems.
Expected benefits are the benefits which technology of drone is hoped in bringing
to certain interest groups, society, procedures or users as whole. The anticipated
barriers are the concrete obstacles which prevent drone’s mass use within several
commercial use cases. The potential problems are the negative implications as
well as challenges which are inherent to technology to drone that would result
from development, use and introduction. The proposed solutions are the concrete
measures that allow in overcoming the anticipated barriers, solve the potential
problems as well as realize expected benefits of technology of drone (Hardeman
2020).
This is expected that logistics services of drone supported would lead in lower
costs for Amazon Prime Air in rapidly growing as well as logistic sector which is
price sensitive. Emphasis is upon contribution of light cargo delivery drone for
better delivery service to the customers. The light cargo delivery drones might
relieve pressure on congested streets as well as allow quicker commuting in air.
The reallocation must enable also faster commuting over ground. However, few
of the anticipated threats of light cargo delivery drone are physical safety, crashes,
collisions, injuries and accidents.
It is observed that lack of drone’s acceptance is an anticipated barriers of light
cargo delivery drone. Another anticipated barrier of light cargo delivery drone is
the legal issues. Proposed solutions for legal nature of light cargo delivery drone
discuss legislative processes’ future coordination, incorporating both soft and hard
law. The focus of the technical solutions focus upon concrete approaches for
issues like navigation, communication as well as drones’ automatization (Meier
and Bergelund 2017). It is clear that disclosure is characterized heavily by
regulatory as well as technical issues. Light cargo delivery drones are claimed as
advantage to the societies and would have considerable impact within fields of
technological, business, academic as well as social development.
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Practical Feasibility and Effectiveness of Light Drone
Cargo
Amazon Prime Air attempts to deliver packages weighing up to 5 pounds and the
delivery time as told by the company is 30 minutes or even less than that. To
check whether this is feasible as well as effective in the practical world some
considerations had to be made:
Firstly ensuring safety which is the foremost priority and the company assures that
the light cargo drones have been developed with not one but multiple
redundancies along with sense and avoid technology.
Secondly the effectiveness of the technology is also dependent on factors such as
weather conditions. The light cargo drones cannot be made use of in bad weather.
The four basic considerations related to weather conditions are wind,
precipitation, temperature and lastly visibility (Aurambout, Gkoumas and Ciuffo
2019). At present, wind can be considered as the most significant limitation. It is
unlikely that light cargo drones weighing less than 55 lb or 25 kg weight
constraint in US FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) flight regulations will
have the capability to perform in winds at 55 kph (Vergouw, Nagel, Bondt and
Custers 2016). Another major limitation is visibility that is as per the US
regulations the drones that are fully autonomous still have to be kept in sight and
semi-controlled by an operator.
Regulations are another crucial consideration in the drone delivery system like in
as per FAA’s regulation; drones need to be always in visual sight of a remote
certificate holder. This is one of the biggest hurdles and terms as line of sight or
LOS stipulation. Usage of drone in regions nearer to airports is yet another major
concern. It can be said that regulations are getting relaxed with time but still there
is still some time to get the technology fully implemented. The financial
feasibility is another concern as it can be said that drone cost is volatile in nature
and it cannot be estimated easily. Payload refers to the weight of the cargo that the
delivery drone carries (Butcher and Lim 2019). This is to be considered in case of
drone technology along with the speeds of this delivery drones. Endurance plays
another major role as this checks on the amount of operational time that a drone
could fly without being recharged. Thus, it can be said that all these above
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mentioned factors are hindrances on the path of light cargo drones to be fully
accepted as delivery vehicles.
Conclusion and Recommendations
From the discussion it can be concluded that, light cargo drones are an emerging
and revolutionary technology but the only issue is that this technology has to be
fully prepared to uproot the traditional system of delivery. The issues that have
been highlighted need to be worked and same goes for the regulation as well. The
light cargo delivery drones comes with both opportunity as well as risks. Drone
delivery system as mentioned above has various limitations that can be reason
behind its restriction in many areas as well as applications. Cost reduction has no
such significance but it can be said that these have potential to drive profits.
Amazon can make use of the drone technology only in certain places and
obviously in favorable conditions.
Recommendations
1. Proper ground reality check should be done before implementation of the
technology fully fledged manner.
2. The line of sight of operator is a necessity.
3. The drones being used for the purpose of delivery should be tested at regular
intervals may be every 24 months.
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References
Aurambout, J.P., Gkoumas, K. and Ciuffo, B., 2019. Last mile delivery by drones:
an estimation of viable market potential and access to citizens across European
cities. European Transport Research Review, 11(1), p.30.
Boyle, M.J., 2020. The Drone Age: How Drone Technology Will Change War and
Peace. Oxford University Press, USA.
Butcher, B. and Lim, K., 2019. Assessing Feasibility of the Delivery Drone.
Chalupníčková, H., Bahenský, P., Sýkora, V. and Heralová, D., 2014. The use of
drones in air cargo transportation. Econ. Soc. Environ., pp.1-6.
Hardeman, A.B., 2020. Sustainable Alternative Air Transport Technologies. In
Sustainable Aviation (pp. 277-306). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Meier, P. and Bergelund, J., 2017. Field-testing the First Cargo Drone Deliveries
in the Amazon Rainforest.
Vergouw, B., Nagel, H., Bondt, G. and Custers, B., 2016. Drone technology:
Types, payloads, applications, frequency spectrum issues and future
developments. In The Future of Drone Use (pp. 21-45). TMC Asser Press, The
Hague.
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