Amazon’s Prime Air will start testing drone deliveries in Cambridge

If you can’t wait 24 hours to get your hands on a book, DVD, or video game without breaking out into a cold sweat, get excited (and maybe look into moving). Same day Amazon deliveries just moved a step closer with the news that the company will be testing drones in Cambridge ASAP.

Last year, Amazon announced that it was going to start experimenting with drones and we assumed that like everything else the company does, it would be US-led and come to the UK far later. But it looks like we’re going to be on the forefront of the new technology, whether it’s entirely necessary or not.

As Techcrunch reports, the project, called Prime Air, will be based in Cambridge because the university attracts top-flight (ha) talent to the area. That includes the team behind Evi Technologies, the start-up Amazon bought two years ago. Amazon is currently advertising for a project manager, software development engineer, and two flight operations engineers for the project.

At present, they expect the drones to be able to fly up to 50 miles an hour for 30 minutes max, which is still a limited run, but could possibly be expanded in future. And speaking of presents, sadly,a drone probably won’t be able to bring you everything on your Christmas list, as they can’t carry more than 2.3kg (5lbs). You can freak out your neighbours and bypass the need for a postal worker though, so yay?

In the meantime Amazon Prime members can collect orders the same day from stores around the UK. Or they can just order something and wait for it to come in the post like real luddites.

Image via Amazon’s YouTube channel.

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