It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s an Amazon delivery drone. The online marketplace’s lackluster road to deliveries via the sky is still full-steam ahead—customers in Texas can now receive their medication from Amazon via drone.
Amazon announced the new prescription delivery service for Amazon Pharmacy customers on Wednesday. The Prime Air offering is currently only available to customers in College Station, Texas, with drones able to deliver the medication in less than an hour after users click to order. Amazon says that it is able to fulfill 500 different kinds of medication to treat illnesses like flu, pneumonia, and asthma. Those medications will be packaged by one of the company’s pharmacists and picked up by the drone.
“Our drones fly over traffic, eliminating the excess time a customer’s package might spend in transit on the road,” said Calsee Hendrickson, director of product and program management at Prime Air. “That’s the beauty of drone delivery, and medications were the first thing our customers said they also want delivered quickly via drone. Speed and convenience top the wish list for health purchases.”
Related: Amazon Launches $5-a-Month Drug Prescriptions With New Prime Add-On
Drones will operate within about 130 to 400 feet of the ground and avoid common obstacles like power lines and people using built-in software. The drone will also host an on-board neural network that will try to identify objects and features via a camera feed. Upon arrival, it will lower itself onto a delivery marker and release the payload before taking off back to the Amazon fulfillment center.
In 2020, the Federal Aviation Administration granted Amazon clearance to begin using drones as part of the company’s delivery fleet. Amazon had to fork over proof to the administration that its drones could safely deliver packages, which included a barrage of paperwork including manuals, maintenance documents, and flight plans.
The path to rollout, however, has been turbulent. A manager working on Prime Air accused the company of firing him after he raised concerns regarding the drone delivery program. An Amazon spokesperson refuted these claims in an email to Gizmodo stating: “These allegations are false and we look forward to proving that in court.”
