Sneak Peek: What Would Delivery Drones Be Like?

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shocked many CNN viewers earlier this week when he announced during an interview that his company intended to utilize small, unmanned, flying robots to deliver lightweight packages before 2020. Unlike military drones, the program, called Amazon Prime Air, would not be controlled by remote human pilots. Instead, packages under would be navigated to recipients using pre-programmed GPS coordinates, theoretically in 30 minutes or less.

Reaction to Bezos’ announcement was mixed, which is not that surprising considering that until recently, most news reports only mentioned of the destructive power of military drones.

But a few months ago at Brains and Beakers, Youth Radio’s science-speaker series, fellow drone-aficianado and former WIRED magazine editor-in-cheif Chris Anderson demonstrated how these unmanned flying vehicles can be constructive too. Last year, Anderson left WIRED to start 3D Robotics, a robotic manufacturing company, where he is working on the next generation of user-friendly drones.

Check out the video above for more info and a live drone demo.