Amazon Prime Air

​When it comes to delivery-by-drone, one of the main limiting factors is battery life. Well, a recently-unearthed patent filed by Amazon addresses that issue. It proposes using airships as "airborne fulfillment centers" that would drop cargo-carrying drones toward the buildings below.

Amazon has made its first-ever delivery to a customer using a drone. Amazon Prime Air, which was first announced in 2013 and for which drones ​have been tested in Canada and the US, is now being trialled in Cambridge, UK, where the first delivery was made on December 7th and took just 13 minutes.

Amazon released a video that unveils its latest autonomous drone designed to deliver small packages in under 30 minutes.

By setting aside a low-altitude chunk of sky and splitting it into high-speed and low-speed droneways, Amazon believes that the needs of the fast-growing drone industry can be accommodated without bringing all manner of things crashing to the ground.

Drone deliveries hey? What could be more convenient than having the milk for your cereal arrive fresh each morning? Well, details now revealed in an Amazon patent suggest that if its Prime Air drones do materialize they mightn't just be limited to making house calls.