Amazon drones, meet your mothership
Storing digital content in the cloud isn't enough for Amazon. Now they want to store physical goods in the cloud - literally. A floating warehouse full of Kindles if you will.
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It's a bird, it's a plane, it's -- Amazon. The online retailer has its head in the clouds with plans for an airship hosting a swarm of delivery drones.
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This isn't what I imagined from Amazon's cloud-based technology.
In recently discovered patent images, Amazon drafted a plan to have an airship 45,000 feet above the Earth, storing a fleet of drones and packages to deliver. Amazon said these unmanned aerial vehicles would take "little to no power" to transport goods to consumers' doorsteps if they are dropping down and gliding instead of lifting off and taking flight.
Amazon has been pushing to make drone deliveries mainstream since it announced Prime Air in 2013. It made its first drone drop-off on December 15, in a trial run in the UK. The company has filed multiple patents -- including the airship warehouse -- for drones since announcing its plans. But they might all just stay that way, considering Amazon's complaints about the Federal Aviation Administration's snail-like pace for UAV regulations.
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