Amazon drone deliveries keep landing in pools and ponds
▼ Summary
– Amazon’s drone delivery service will expand to 500 US cities, but a Texas video shows a drone dropping a package directly into a customer’s pool.
– A previous incident in Arizona showed a drone’s propellers blowing a package into a pool after it was dropped nearby, resulting in soggy deliveries.
Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service is expanding to 500 US cities, but the growing fleet appears to have a persistent problem with water landings. A recent incident in Texas, captured on video by ABC7 News Bay Area, shows a delivery drone hovering above a customer’s pool before releasing its payload directly into the water, much to the recipient’s dismay.
This soggy situation is not an isolated event. Similar footage from last July in Arizona depicts a Prime Air drone attempting a delivery near a pool, only for the package to be pushed into the water by the downdraft from the aircraft’s propellers. The customer involved later discussed the mishap in an interview with local news outlet AZFamily.
As Amazon scales up its aerial delivery network across the country, the frequency of these aquatic mishaps raises questions about the precision of the system’s drop mechanisms and its ability to navigate residential environments with obstacles like swimming pools and ponds. The company has not yet commented on these specific incidents or outlined any planned adjustments to prevent future deliveries from ending up in the drink.
(Source: The Verge)
