Amazon Prime Air launched its most advanced delivery drone in the West Valley Phoenix Metro Area of Arizona and College Station, Texas, in November.
The brand-new MK30 drone underwent an aerospace design and verification process, can travel two times farther than Amazon’s previous drones, and is significantly quieter. So if you live near Amazon's fulfillment center in Tolleson, Arizona, and purchase an eligible item weighing five pounds or less, the drone can drop off your purchase at designated areas near select addresses in 60 minutes or less.
"It is the first drone we have developed from the ground up using a requirements-based process including more stringent requirements that will allow us to eventually reach a half billion customers annually,” explained Stephen Wells, chief project engineer for the Prime Air team. "We designed it with aerospace levels of reliability and redundancy.”
Built from the ground up
Engineers and aerospace experts on the Prime Air team spent nearly two years building the MK30 from a blank slate.
The development phase started with safety and reliability criteria that culminated in a best-in-class perception system to detect and avoid obstacles, significant noise reduction, and redundant flight-critical systems that ensure no single point of failure can cause loss of control of the drone.
The development team tested the drone for basic flight functions to validate their aerodynamic and flight control models. That process took eight months before demonstrating the production version of the aircraft that incorporated the full production hardware and software for regulatory approval.
Ensuring the MK30 could operate safely in light rain was one of the key attributes the Prime Air team tested during the development process to reach more customers as well.
The team submerged spinning motors in water and sprayed the drone with water from different angles and at different pressures to prepare it for in-flight precipitation.
Reducing noise was another critical priority for the team. By experimenting with various propeller designs, the Prime Air engineers lessened the MK30's perceived volume by almost half compared to earlier Amazon drones.
"When you watch the drone take off and transition for forward flight at transit altitude, it does it seamlessly and disappears into the soundscape," Wells said. "That's going to be key for having this drone welcomed into backyards as people gain confidence in the technology."
Cutting-edge perception and safety
During the delivery descent, the MK30 can detect and navigate around obstacles like trampolines or clotheslines that may not have been captured in satellite imagery.
The cameras are also used in-flight to assess whether the drone should make evasive maneuvers to avoid other aircraft that may enter the drone's vicinity. Additionally, the perception system uses advanced machine learning algorithms trained to accurately identify objects like humans, animals, obstacles, and other aircraft.
The team also created a fully redundant system for all safety critical features, including a separate monitoring computer that tracks the primary flight control algorithm. This decision helped pave the way for larger-scale implementation.
If the monitoring system detects anomalies midflight, it can immediately transfer control to a backup controller and trigger a safe return-to-home sequence. This idea blended the Amazon philosophy of simplifying and inventing new methodologies with the customer need in mind.
"The machine learning and the trained algorithms that we produce for the perception system are cutting-edge," Wells said, “But, it takes the whole integrated system to achieve our safety objectives. The redundant navigation and control system, and the health monitoring system, are truly industry-leading.”
To reach the Prime Air team’s standards, the drone went through 1,070 flight hours on more than 6,300 flights on the MK30: first with a tethered flight, then flying in a caged area, and finally an untethered outdoor flight.
The final outdoor phase was monitored by the FAA at Amazon’s drone testing site in Pendleton, Oregon. Amazon's flight test campaign culminated in 360 hours of FAA certification flights to achieve the team's goals.
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The MK30 received FAA approval to begin operations to customers in October this year. The approval included the ability to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight, using Prime Air's sophisticated on-board detect and avoid system, from the first day of operation at a new location—an industry first.
The MK30’s operational certification is a huge milestone for Amazon’s goal of having drones deliver 500 million packages globally by the end of the decade. But for Wells and the Prime Air team, there is still work to do to continue innovating and enhancing their progress.
"We've now trained for the marathon," Wells said, "and we're going to start running it."
