Amazon launches delivery drones. How it will work

Yesterday, Amazon first introduced its own delivery drone - at its first Re: Mars conference in Las Vegas. This is actually a unique device, stuffed to the top with sensors and algorithms. In addition, it is a drone-transformer. He can fly vertically, like a helicopter, during lifting and landing, and switch to a more aerodynamic “airplane mode” when speed is needed. And it looks and works like a new device from a distant future.

Deliveries of these drones to real buyers, Amazon says, will begin in the next three to five months. Her new devices are full of sensors and computer modules, and are trained by a dozen different models of machine learning. They help make drones safer, and teach them to avoid obstacles. At today's presentation, the company talked about visual, thermal and ultrasonic sensors. All of them were created by Amazon itself, especially for its drones. In general, the entire production process of the drone, from the smallest details to AI and navigation systems, was inside Amazon, no other companies even helped it.

Amazon is particularly proud of its landing system - the safest, they say, currently available. Even if the drone loses its connection to the network, it will find a suitable place and land neatly. The company spent tens of millions of dollars on the creation of such a system, but it is simply necessary for it: if unforeseen “situations” arise with the drones, it may have to curtail the whole operation that it relies on to leave all recent competitors like eBay and Walmart far behind.

In its flight mode, the drone slightly resembles the wing of an imperial fighter from Star Wars. Maybe this is no accident: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is known for his passion for space, and even starred in a cameo in the Star Trek series.

The range of the Amazon drone is up to 25 kilometers, the weight of parcels is up to 2.25 kg. It has six rotors that can work independently of each other, and six degrees of freedom (instead of four for a quadcopter), which the drone uses to avoid obstacles, like birds or wires. It is applied including the analysis of pictures from the built-in standard and infrared cameras. There are several of these cameras here - allowing the device to notice both distant objects, like an approaching plane, and very close objects - like the place where it sits. He is helped by photogrammetric models, segmentation models and neural networks. “A complete set of all the algorithms you can imagine from all areas. And all for one task: to ensure that the robot can move well in space, without harming himself or others. ”

Gur Kimchi, vice president of Amazon Prime Air, explains:

The most important thing that a flying object can do is to make the right, safest decision when a situation happens that you did not anticipate or plan. This is not in the program, we cannot take into account all the extraordinary events, and therefore we make its “brain” as free and adaptable as possible.

The VSLAM (Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) method is also used. With him, the drone constantly builds a map of its surroundings in the brain, and can more or less navigate, even if it does not have any third-party information from GPS. On the way to the place of delivery, the device can also memorize the distinctive signs of the terrain, and then return to the warehouse, using them as landmarks, even if all other systems failed.

Amazon drone will be pretty noisy. At least its first iteration. It was created for permanent work with fairly solid loads, and most of the time is located tens of meters above the ground, so its sound should not interfere with anyone. And the company says that it is well within official safety standards. But to include such a drone in your room you would quickly become lax, and such a unit would not become a good toy for a child.

Gur Kimchi says that they worked mostly not even at reducing the sound level (with such power and size of the device it’s still difficult), but at changing its profile. They tried to make the sound more “elegant”, so that it did not interfere, and, moreover, did not frighten people walking or riding below. Gur says that the difference between the drone prototype and the final version is “between the dentist’s drill and classical music.”

If one of the rotors turns off - the device can easily fly, almost without losing speed. With two failed rotors - the speed decreases, and he may decide to cancel the mission and return to the base. With three or four failed rotors - safe flight is no longer possible, it gradually decreases, plans to the nearest safe point noticed by it, away from people and objects.

To train AI machines, the company used the capabilities of its AWS. It has been tested more than 50,000 configurations, spent about 30 million hours. Several million simulations were carried out, with different locations of sensors, their different configurations, different lenses for cameras.

And, of course, the drone had already physically flown several thousand hours inside a specially built hangar with obstacles, before the Amazon team was ready to give the go-ahead to start the project’s deployment. In the real world, it’s true, they say, the machine’s experience is not that big yet, and for the next few months, the company will carefully monitor its work in small populated cities and towns (most likely not in the US, where it’s pretty hard to get a license to deliver drones, and Amazon doesn't have one yet). They say that the main task is to make cars ready for Black Friday, that is, by November, when they can bring the company the greatest benefit.

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