Couple of months back I went to the cinema with my 4 years old daughter and my husband to watch an animated movie, Storks. It presented a concept of a warehouse located at a very high altitude, from where orders were taken, processed and items were delivered to the customers by … storks. The message of the movie was totally unrelated with what I am about to say, but I remember my husband and I laughing about it and wondering if that would be possible with drones.
And today, here we are, Amazon just announced the patent for airborne warehouses! As I was reading the article, it made me curious to read the patent paper available for public (or at least an extract of it). I have to say that the world has started moving fast if we are now considering and testing driverless cars, drone deliveries, and, floating warehouses.
Imagine that you have a number of zeppelin-like flying machines, with large storage capacity, that are constantly floating in specified locations. My assumption from reading the paper, is that these Airborne Fulfilment Centres (AFC) will be located in or near urban areas. It makes sense as people in cities (bigger ones especially) will place more orders. At the beginning I thought that the AFC’s will be mobile, and they will fly where required, but according to Amazon’s patent paper, the AFC’s will be static. So it’s a case of moving ground warehouses in the air.
And how will the orders be fulfilled you may ask. You guessed it, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), in simple words, drones or something similar. Amazon states that every AFC will have at least one UAV that will take my order (a dress maybe ) and deliver it to the address specified in my order. Although the unmanned aerial vehicle could go back to the airborne warehouse, there is an option for it to go to a ground warehouse or to a shuttle. Ah, yes, I forgot to mention the shuttle. Well, the floating warehouse needs fuel, replenished inventory, and even humans on board as this device is not completely robotised. So the shuttle comes into picture, docking in the AFC to bring fuel, our beloved shoes, dresses and smart phones, and to transport people back and forth for their shifts.
It’s not very clear if Amazon employees will just run the floating warehouse or if there will be sorting staff just as in a grounded fulfilment building. However, some reliance on humans is still there . This almost sounds like a scene from the well-known Star Trek TV series that I used to watch many years ago. Well, it is a reality now, or will be soon.
Progress should be embraced and Amazon’s initiative will benefit consumers and Jeff Bezos ultimately . Thinking of the future, I know that technological progress will see many people out of their jobs. It’s a transition period for humanity I guess, when society has to re-think how the structure works, what is everyone’s role in the society, and what can be done to make sure people still have a purpose and a role to fulfil in society. Ah, but this is a topic for another day. In the meantime, let’s see how soon will we enjoy the perks of Amazon’s airborne warehouses.