Jeremy Clarkson unveils Amazon drone delivery

IS this real or science fiction? Amazon plans to deliver goods to your door via flying drones and Jeremy Clarkson is on board with the futuristic scheme.

AMAZON has taken a step closer toward its plan to deliver goods with self-guided drones with a new video revealing how the bizarre-sounding scheme will work.

Jeremy Clarkson, who is now part of the Amazon family since his falling out with the Top Gear team, explains how Amazon plans to have a fleet of small drones taking orders from the factory to your door within 30 minutes.

Not surprisingly, the first question Amazon addresses on its Amazon Prime Air website is the obvious: is this science fiction or is this real?

It might not be real yet but the online retail giant is on the way to making it a reality, with the plan to introduce drone delivery in the next four years.

“Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road,” Amazon claims.

Way of the future ... Amazon Prime Air delivery drone. Picture: Amazon

Amazon first announced its drone delivery plan two years ago, with Amazon head Jeff Bezos then claiming that the drones would be able to make nearly 90 per cent of all deliveries.

The drones will fill at a maximum altitude of 120m using “sense and avoid” technology to deliver goods up to 16km from the warehouse base.

In the example given in the Clarkson video, a customer orders a pair of football boots after an unfortunate incident involving a bulldog with a shoe fetish.

After placing the order on a tablet, the customer places a small rectangle with an Amazon symbol in their backyard, which indicates a safe landing zone for the drone.

Amazon says it has more than a dozen prototypes of different shapes and sizes and Prime Air development centres in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel.

There will be some challenges in turning the bold scheme into a reality, one of which will be how we might all feel if the skies are filled with a fleet of delivery drones dodging each other in the updated version of reliable airmail regardless of rain, hail or shine.

Originally published as Jeremy Clarkson unveils Amazon drone delivery