Drones

Amazon patent is all aboard for launching delivery drones from moving trains

Amazon patent is all aboard for launching delivery drones from moving trains
Amazon has been awarded a patent for drone maintenance facilities that could be carried around on trains
Amazon has been awarded a patent for drone maintenance facilities that could be carried around on trains
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A cross-section of the delivery car, complete with a robot arm that picks items from storage, loads them onto the drone and launches it
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A cross-section of the delivery car, complete with a robot arm that picks items from storage, loads them onto the drone and launches it
A cross-section of the repair car, which would carry a supply of fresh batteries, motors and propellers for drones, and swap out new ones as needed
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A cross-section of the repair car, which would carry a supply of fresh batteries,  motors and propellers for drones, and swap out new ones as needed
Amazon has been awarded a patent for drone maintenance facilities that could be carried around on trains
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Amazon has been awarded a patent for drone maintenance facilities that could be carried around on trains
View gallery - 3 images

If Amazon's drone delivery service is to ever get off the ground, it'll need some major infrastructure upgrades to support it. Previous patent documents have shown that these drones might be restocked and recharged in huge hives or launched from airborne blimps, and a new patent awarded to the retail giant could see drones being patched up and launched from mobile maintenance facilities carted around on the back of trains, trucks and ships.

Amazon calls the mobile facilities "intermodal vehicles", and they essentially look like shipping containers with mini fulfillment centers inside them. The patent papers mostly describe these intermodal vehicles as trains, but since they fit inside a standard shipping container, the system could also be carried by trucks, ships or, according to the ever-ambitious Amazon, even spacecraft.

One or more of these vehicles would be loaded with drones and items for delivery, and sent to serve a certain area based on past demand for those items, local demographic data or expected surges like events or the release of the new iPhone. Hot and cold items could be stored in temperature-controlled sections, and a robotic arm would help load and launch the drone, and retrieve it on return. While it's away, an onboard computer system would calculate the best place for the drone and the train to meet up, based on the speed and direction of the train and the battery life of the UAV.

A cross-section of the delivery car, complete with a robot arm that picks items from storage, loads them onto the drone and launches it
A cross-section of the delivery car, complete with a robot arm that picks items from storage, loads them onto the drone and launches it

A key function of fulfillment centers is UAV maintenance, and so a separate but connected container could be kitted out to repair drones as they come back. Robotic arms could repair the motors, swap out a drained battery for a fresh one from an onboard supply, or quickly replace motors or propellers.

As with any patent, there's no guarantee that any of this will ever come to fruition, but Amazon and other companies like UPS are putting a lot of thought into the practicalities of future drone delivery systems.

Source: US Patent and Trademark Office via Business Insider

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4 comments
4 comments
piperTom
I'm so old, I can remember when patented ideas were supposed to be non-obvious.
Anders Knoll
:D PiperTom, I do agree! Granting a patent or even a utility patent or registered design for things like that is hilarious. It is equal hilarious to granting the proprietary rights for the use of a color, an edge angle or stuff like that, just like some firms do today. To help preventing society from a situation where small businesses or private people can’t develop anything anymore (because every little unproven concept is already patented by the big firms), it would be great if there was a website where people can post this Kind of simple ideas, just to make sure they stay “public domain” and cannot be made proprietary anymore.
Bruce H. Anderson
It is hard to determine who will win this contest of patent silliness (double entendre?) between Airbus and Amazon. Bozos (not a typo) has certainly taken it up a notch.
valve0
Hi there Michael, just thought in pointing out that they haven't been awarded a patent- they only filed in March this year (it takes a long time to get one). This patent application appears to be an accelerated publication which means that it is just an idea which amazon wanted pushed out into the public early (don't know exactly why- presumably to generate hype). The application hasn't yet been examined for novelty/inventiveness - therefore may not contain anything patentable. Interesting idea though thanks for sharing it.