Amazon develops next-gen delivery drone from ground up
Amazon's new MK-30 drone offers a new proprietary design and a number of improvements from the e-tail giant’s previous delivery drone models.
The brand-new Amazon MK30 drone underwent an aerospace design and verification process, can travel two times farther than Amazon’s previous drones, and is designed to be significantly quieter.
Consumers living near Amazon's fulfillment center in Tolleson, Ariz. who purchase an eligible item weighing five pounds or less can have an MK-30 drone drop off their purchase at designated areas near select addresses in 60 minutes or less.
[READ MORE: Amazon launches drone delivery in Phoenix]
"It is the first drone we have developed from the ground up using a requirements-based process including more stringent requirements that will allow us to eventually reach a half billion customers annually,” said Stephen Wells, chief project engineer for the Prime Air team, in a corporate blog post. "We designed it with aerospace levels of reliability and redundancy.”
Engineers and aerospace experts on Amazon’s Prime Air team spent nearly two years building the MK30 from a blank slate. The development phase started with safety and reliability criteria that culminated in a perception system developed to detect and avoid obstacles, reduce noise, and provide redundant flight-critical systems that ensure no single point of failure can cause loss of control of the drone.
The development team tested the drone for basic flight functions to validate their aerodynamic and flight control models in an eight-month process that incorporated the full production hardware and software for regulatory approval.
Specific features of the MK30 drone include:
- Safe operation in light rain.
- Perceived noise volume reduced by almost half compared to earlier Amazon drones.
- Detection and navigation around obstacles like trampolines or clotheslines that may not have been captured in satellite imagery.
- In-flight cameras that assess whether the drone should make evasive maneuvers to avoid other aircraft that may enter the drone's vicinity.
- Advanced machine learning algorithms trained to accurately identify objects like humans, animals, obstacles, and other aircraft.
The team also created a fully redundant system for all safety-critical features, including a separate monitoring computer that tracks the primary flight control algorithm. If the monitoring system detects anomalies midflight, it can immediately transfer control to a backup controller and trigger a safe return-to-home sequence.
To reach the Prime Air team’s standards, the drone went through 1,070 flight hours on more than 6,300 flights on the MK30: first with a tethered flight, then flying in a caged area, and finally an untethered outdoor flight.
The final outdoor phase was monitored by the FAA at Amazon’s drone testing site in Pendleton, Ore. Amazon's flight test campaign culminated in 360 hours of FAA certification flights to achieve the team's goals.
The MK30 received FAA approval to begin operations to customers in October 2024. The approval included the ability to fly beyond visual line of sight, using Prime Air's on-board detect and avoid system, from the first day of operation at a new location.
Amazon has set a goal of having drones deliver 500 million packages globally by the end of the decade.
