The tech titan has hatched a plan for dropping packages on target from a moving drone. But there are legal issues.
You might have heard: Amazon just won a patent that could let it drop packages from flying drones.
That’s exciting, because so far drone deliveries have been pretty slow! This past December, Amazon’s first drone deliveries , in England, required the drone to land before it could release a package, and France’s postal service can’t deliver mail by drone without landing at a specific “delivery terminal. ”
Even 7-Eleven, which has successfully “dropped” Slurpees in Reno, Nevada, does it with a box dangling from a long cable. The drone has to hover and stay still.
But Amazon’s new patent, granted Tuesday by the US Patent and Trademark Office, describes a way to drop packages from a moving drone.
Normally, if you let go of a package from a moving vehicle, it won’t drop straight down — it’ll curve, and possibly miss your target.
