Death of excessive road edges nearer as Amazon prepares to launch Prime drones

The high street could soon be dealt the fatal blow as Amazon prepares to test drone delivery in the UK for the first time.

The nation’s high streets have been suffering in recent years, in no small part due to changes in shopping habits during Covid. Perhaps chief among them has been the drift towards buying things online and now, as the process of doing so looks set to become even more automated and efficient following the latest tech development, it seems this trend is only set to deepen.

Amazon is hoping to launch its Prime Air service in the UK by the end of this year, and has already identified what it has described as a lightly-populated suburban area for its trial run. That area has not yet been made public. Amazon is one of six organisations being given a trial by airspace regulator the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) for a trial of beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone flights.

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Alongside the retail titan, trials are also being conducted on projects working on offshore windfarms, the National Police Air Service, the air traffic control provider Nats, flights from the Orkney islands and delivering emergency medical supplies, The Times reports.

Amazon is already rolling out projects of this nature in the US, in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas.

In a mission statement on its website, the CAA said: “We are committed to making the safe flying of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of the operator, an everyday occurrence. As part of the journey to achieving this aim we are working to address the regulatory challenges of scaled and sustainable BVLOS operations and produce a regulatory framework to enable Specific Category BVLOS operations in non-segregated airspace.”

The regulator has promised that advanced technology would be used for navigation and the detection of other aircraft, while Amazon itself has said it intends to use its newest drone, the MK30, in the UK.

Sophie O’Sullivan, the CAA’s director of innovation, said: “Our goal is to make drone operations beyond visual line of sight a safe and everyday reality, contributing to the modernisation of UK airspace and the incorporation of new technology into our skies.”

David Carbon, Amazon Prime Air’s vice-president and general manager, said: “It’s crucial for operators like us to have clear regulatory requirements in order to bring and scale new technologies, such as drone delivery, to customers in the UK.

“We appreciate the CAA’s effort to partner with us to help bring clarity to the regulations that support commercial drone delivery.”

The Daily Star has contacted Amazon for comment.

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