Prøve GULL - Gratis
Are delivery drones finally ready for take-off?
PC Pro
|January 2025
More than a decade in the making, Amazon is again set to run a trial of its delivery drone in the UK. But there are better uses for delivery drones, explains Nicole Kobie
lick. A customer places their order and, at a warehouse miles away, a Fire stick and bag of popcorn is boxed up and placed inside a drone. Quietly lifting off into the sky, the drone zips its way over the Cambridgeshire landscape, delivering the parcel on the customer's lawn exactly 13 minutes later.
This was the future of Amazon deliveries - back in 2016. Little progress has been made on commercial drone deliveries in the UK in the intervening years, but Amazon is now set for another go on (above?) British soil? And it's at least partially thanks to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which is enabling delivery drones to fly beyond the line of sight, escaping the watchful eye of grounded pilots for the first time.
To be clear, delivery drones are in UK skies already. They've been trialled for NHS deliveries to remote locations including the Isle of Mull (see issue 315, p126), while BT uses the technology for maintenance and extending coveragein difficult areas, rolling out cables by flying them over obstacles with drones (see issue 354, p126).
However, those medical supply trips are line-of-sight flights that largely repeat the same trip over and over, making deliveries from the mainland to an island outpost, for example. That's far easier to regulate than automated drones taking different routes each time. And the use cases are serious, such as ensuring medical supplies or test results can reach hospitals.
Recently, such flights have gone beyond line of sight. In Northumbria, blood samples were delivered between hospitals using Apian drones, while a similar trial with Apian and Wing is running in London between Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals to avoid blood samples getting stuck in traffic.
Such serious trials may suggest the technology - the drones and the systems for flying them - is finally catching up with the hype, and regulators are readying themselves to certify the idea.
Denne historien er fra January 2025-utgaven av PC Pro.
Abonner på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av kuraterte premiumhistorier og over 9000 magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
FLERE HISTORIER FRA PC Pro
PC Pro
Investors may still believe in Elon Musk, but Jon Honeyball isn't buying any of it
My day started badly. Still bleary-eyed at 6am, with a bucket of coffee sitting untouched beside me, I dropped the SIM-removal tool into my keyboard.
3 mins
April 2026
PC Pro
Green cloud
Don't entrust your jobs to dirty, energy-hungry servers:
2 mins
April 2026
PC Pro
"I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the biggest obstacle to security is inconvenience"
Have you seen those password books on Amazon? They're not a cybersecurity abomination, despite what you may think
7 mins
April 2026
PC Pro
"Cyber resilience is now treated as a matter of governance rather than pure technical compliance"
Rule Britannia, Britannia waives the rules... or why the shoulder-shrugging Cyber Security and Resilience Bill causes such problems for UK businesses
6 mins
April 2026
PC Pro
"Not to point any fingers here; I seriously doubt the fault lies with our esteemed editor"
Whether it's PDFs from PC Pro's editor, Outlook messages or his partner's photos, space is at a premium for Steve this month
9 mins
April 2026
PC Pro
"It's a pity there's an Elon-shaped issue with Starlink because the solution is otherwise superb"
The best-connected man in Huntingdon ensures his lab will be always online, takes a nibble at Apple and wonders why Dell will take half a year to deliver a new laptop
10 mins
April 2026
PC Pro
Are we building too many data centres - and could we build them better?
The AI arms race has sparked a rush to build data centres, but we should use them to offer free heating and other benefits rather than big boxes that will go out of date too fast
8 mins
April 2026
PC Pro
IT'S EASY WITH AN eSIM
After more than three decades, the physical SIM card is on its way out. Darien Graham-Smith finds out why we should all welcome the change
8 mins
April 2026
PC Pro
Pippin awful: Apple's doomed console
David Crookes reflects on Apple's ill-judged attempt to corner the gaming market with the Apple Pippin
9 mins
April 2026
PC Pro
AI & DEV TEAMS The start of a beautiful friendship
Are real-life programmers living on borrowed time? Nik Rawlinson explores the growing popularity of AI-powered development
9 mins
April 2026
Listen
Translate
Change font size
