Last week, Amazon.com used a drone for the first time to make a commercial delivery / Amazon

On Wednesday, the company released a video showing the drone loading an ordered item, launching the device from a mobile platform, flying, and unloading the purchase on a lawn near a house. The first customer of this service was a resident of a rural area near the British Cambridge, the order consisted of a bag of popcorn and a miniature TV set-top box, the order took 13 minutes to be served, writes The Wall Street Journal.

Amazon has been building its Prime Air project for three years to create an aerial network for delivering goods to consumers, and drones are a big part of it. The initiative initially met with skepticism, and Amazon also had to deal with regulatory issues. The drone delivery in December marked the start of commercial use of drones as couriers. “First #AmazonPrimeAir customer delivery on the books,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tweeted.

Prime Air currently uses drones that are about 1 m long, the cargo being delivered must fit into a container about the size of a shoe box, and its weight can reach up to 2.4 kg. The flight is completely autonomous – the drone is controlled by built-in electronics. In July, Amazon received permission from the UK Civil Aviation Authority to use drones to deliver cargo to arbitrary points. Britain is one of the countries with the most liberal approach to regulation in the field of unmanned vehicles, although here, too, the authorities require that dispatchers from ground observation stations monitor the operation of drones and intervene in the event of a threat of an accident.

Drones are in great demand

Facebook is in talks with a number of countries about testing drones, with the help of which the company wants to provide Internet connection to remote corners of the globe, Martin Gomez, director of the Facebook air navigation platform, reported earlier. The company is developing this initiative as part of the Internet.org project to provide access to the network to 5 billion people. According to him, the tests could take place in 2018.

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Amazon drone delivers order for the first time