アマゾン、英国で初のドローン配送開始　住宅への配達でトラブルも

"This is effectively an autonomous drone that can do what a pilot does in a flight deck. It can do what ground crews do, and it can deliver a package," Carbon says."We have a targeted level of safety that's measured in aerospace terms," he adds.Amazon already uses drones for deliveries in five US states. In early February, an MK30 drone making a delivery hit the side of an apartment building in a suburb of Dallas in Texas. The drone fell to the ground, breaking apart.Carbon says the drone had drifted slightly having lost the GPS signal and clipped the building's gutter on the way out. No one was injured. Since then, Amazon has stopped deliveries to these types of apartments.He says this was an example of "things that we learn as we go along" and 170,000 drone flights had gone safely.For commercial drones to become an everyday reality, operators need to be able to fly them beyond the visual line of sight, or BVLOS.That's what Amazon is doing in Darlington, but the drone will also be remotely tracked by an operator watching from computer screens back at base and liasing, when needed, with air traffic controllers at the nearby Teeside Airport.Darlington is the only place outside the US where Amazon is doing drone deliveries.It was chosen because it has a mix of residential areas, major roads and an airport all close to each other, which is useful for testing how its drones cope with a host of different conditions all within a small space - which is also close to an Amazon hub with a big choice of products.But the service is still at an early stage. It's got approval from the Civil Aviation Authority for a trial until the end of the year. Amazon has secured temporary protected airspace, which is necessary for autonomous drone flights under current rules. Permission for this has been granted until mid June but is expected to be extended.Darlington Borough Council told the BBC that due to the unprecedented nature of the scheme, only temporary planning permission was initially granted "to allow for testing of the drone delivery concept.""It's great to see Darlington at the forefront of such a pioneering scheme which highlights our borough as an area of innovation, development and investment, " a council spokesperson said.But residents may need convincing. Drone deliveries got a mixed response from some we spoke to.The launch also took longer than Amazon had originally pledged, after saying in 2023 the service would start the following year.The tech company has big ambitions, though."We wouldn't be doing it wasn't commercially viable. It's a business, right? Absolutely, it can be commercially viable, and that's the goal that we're going after, " insists Carbon.

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