There’s always a lot of talk in the tech world about Google, Apple, and Facebook when it comes to doing new things, but Amazon doesn’t always get a lot of attention. The company just launched its Amazon Prime Air service in England, beta testing with two users right now and eventually expanding as bugs are worked out. The company showcased its first Amazon Prime Air delivery in a video posted December 14th and it explains how the service will work.
As you can see, the first flight was a success but Amazon has put some thought into the “what ifs” of it all as well. The company filed a patent for “countermeasures” of threats to an uncrewed autonomous vehicle and they just won the filed patent. What kind of tech this is going to incorporate isn’t clear yet, but at least we know that Amazon is thinking of potential theft or malicious tampering.
Amazon said in the filing the UAVs, or drones, can be targets of a “malicious person” using a wireless signal jammer and it indicates there could be “a variety of adverse effects including the UAV crashing.”
The technology patent is based on both a so-called mesh network and the process of several drones communicating with one another through the sharing of data “to confirm or cross-check data such as location, heading, altitude, and so forth” — all designed to detect data differences and possible signs of a drone being compromised.“Disagreement between data generated by the first UAV with external data from the second UAV may result in the determination that the first UAV is compromised,” the filing explains.
Amazon Prime Air is still in the very early stages and we’re not even sure if this service will catch on or be feasible in all areas, but it’s an interesting concept. It will be interesting to see how Amazon develops this technology and other technologies surrounding it.
What do you think of Amazon Prime Air? Will it fly? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
[button link=”http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/21/amazon-gets-us-patent-for-countermeasures-to-protect-drone-delivery.html” icon=”fa-external-link” side=”left” target=”blank” color=”285b5e” textcolor=”ffffff”]Source: CNBC[/button]Last Updated on February 14, 2017.
