5 crashes in 4 months, Amazon drone delivery is far away

After spending billions and nearly a decade, Amazon’s drone delivery service is still a long way off.

In late 2013, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos introduced viewers to Amazon’s drone delivery program on the TV show “60 Minutes.” He promised on the show that Amazon will use drones to deliver packages in half an hour in the future. Bezos said the service will be available in about five years.

In the blink of an eye, almost ten years have passed. During this period, Amazon has spent more than $2 billion on drone projects and built a global R&D team of more than 1,000 people. But so far, the launch of drone delivery services is still a long way off.

Recently, some media have investigated the progress of Amazon’s drone project, reviewed the company’s internal documents and government department reports, and conducted interviews with some current/former employees of the company.The results of the survey show that the project is currently receivingTechnical difficulties, loss of personnel, flight safetyand other problems. Last June, Amazon suffered a serious crash during testing, raising questions from federal regulators about the airworthiness of Amazon’s drones.

In the crash, multiple safety features of the drone failed, the plane tilted out of control and crashed, and a wildfire was also triggered. While the crash was expected before the test, employees said the pressure to get the program back on track prompted some managers to take unnecessary and risky moves that risked harming testers.

Amazon said in an emailed statement,Such events were anticipated in advance, will learn from experience and further improve safety performance. Amazon also said that no one has ever been harmed by these flight tests, and all tests were in compliance with relevant laws and regulations.

Amazon plans to further ramp up testing in the coming months.The company missed its goal of 2,500 flight tests last year, set a higher target of 12,000 times this year. But by the end of February, fewer than 200 flight tests had been completed.

Amazon also plans to add new flight test sites in Texas and California this year. In addition, the company intends to test the drone in areas beyond the testers’ field of view, a key step in proving the drone’s ability to fly autonomously.

Final approval by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for commercial drone delivery services is expected to be years away. However, the agency has allowed drone testing in more populated areas without posing a major safety risk.

Race with Google Walmart, charge towards “half-hour delivery” and ignore the “safety” fundamentals?

The prospect of replacing humans with drones for deliveries has attracted many online retailers. Experts predict that deliveries within half an hour will become the norm for certain products, such as medicines, snacks and baby products.

Amazon’s drones can fly as far as 11 kilometers from a delivery site. After placing an order on the customer’s network, the drone will fly over the rolling traffic on the street within half an hour and deliver the package weighing no more than 2.3 kilograms to its destination. This speed will allow Amazon to shop online as fast as in-store, and help cut one of the biggest costs of e-commerce:Manual delivery fee.

Amazon is facing increasing pressure from competitors. These competitors are deep-pocketed and move fast. Just last week, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, accelerated its Google Wing drone program, starting a test in suburban Dallas, Texas, to deliver medicines from a pharmacy chain to customers by drone. In addition, two companies, Walmart and United Parcel Service, each operate their own drone programs.

Even the harshest critics within Amazon wouldn’t question the potential of drone delivery. But some employees say Amazon is repeating a mistake it has made many times before: seeking speed in the name of competition while underestimating the most basic consideration of safety. “It’s only when there’s a fatal or disabling incident that Amazon takes safety seriously,” said Cheddy Skeeter, a former Amazon drone program manager. Skeeter said he raised safety concerns with his bosses. was fired last month. He also said, “How can you do a flight test in a populated area when there are (safety) issues?”

Regarding the claim that Skeeter was fired for remarks over security concerns,An Amazon spokesman denied.

(FAA) The FAA declined to comment on the Amazon drone test accident. But the FAA also said that its drone testing standards are designed to protect public safety, and that flight testing is a key part of any flight certification. The FAA’s flight test approval includes provisions to ensure flight safety. Airplanes are dangerous.

▲ Amazon Prime Air drone

In 2013, Amazon hired aviation enthusiast and software engineer Gur Kimchi to work on its fledgling drone project, now Prime Air. Designing a commercial delivery drone is no easy task. In addition, Amazon intends to be self-reliant,Build a brand new drone yourselfwithout outsourcing design and prototyping to a third-party company — making the challenge even more daunting.

Kinch himself is a big proponent of the DIY idea, because doing so allows you to have absolute control over the project. However, Amazon employees generally say that the DIY strategy has slowed development progress. For example, it takes less time for external suppliers to wind the copper wire of the drone’s electric motor, magnet, etc., but Amazon still chooses to assign these operations to its own employees, and even the prototype of the drone is hand-made in-house at Amazon .

The drone that Bezos showed on the “60 Minutes” program at the time was similar to the drones seen on a daily basis, and could not be used for delivery services because the flight range was short and it could not withstand wind and rain. Amazon needs drones that have the ability to fly long distances, with the maneuverability of a helicopter, the ability to quickly change course to avoid obstacles, and the ability to fly in harsh weather conditions. In addition, drones also need to have the ability to fly autonomously without human intervention and to find their destination smoothly.

Jin Qi’s team has done a lot of conceptual research. The work is tedious and slow. New software needs to be developed that allows the onboard cameras to smoothly identify and react to obstacles, as well as distinguish between things like swimming pools and driveways. The team ended up designing a massive 85-pound drone that they hoped would be able to deliver 5-pound packages, a payload that already covers 85 percent of Amazon’s packages. Maximizing delivery is another key, and every extra mile the drone travels means more customers can be served. A senior executive familiar with the project said Bezos was patient with the team, believing it would be worth it as long as he developed a great drone.

Amazon’s drones have six propellers and can easily transition from up-and-down flight to forward flight — an engineering feat that’s very difficult to achieve — an engineering challenge that once created the U.S. military’s V-22 Osprey helicopter caused great trouble. The wing of the drone wraps the propeller, which facilitates long-distance flight and provides additional protection for the propeller blades.

Jin Qi himself is said to attach great importance to security issues, and did not blindly seek quick fixes for security flaws, but gave the team sufficient time. Information within the team can be shared freely, and all employees can view video of the crash and conduct problem assessments. “The Prime Air team has a very strong safety culture,” said a former employee who asked not to be named. “Even if it’s just software meetings, employees who are concerned about safety are always invited to meet. No slack either.”

But according to another former employee, the team had trouble getting the drone’s components to work seamlessly together, causing the completion deadline to be pushed back and forth. Amazon told the outside world at a tech conference in 2019 that drone delivery would begin rolling out by the end of that year. However, the team members knew that this time point was unrealistic, but no one dared to inform the leadership at that time. According to the employee’s recollection, they expected that Jin Qi’s “dismissal” had entered the countdown.

Sure enough, in 2020, as Amazon executives wanted to accelerate the drone project, the project was transferred to Amazon’s operations team, and Kinch left project leadership and left Amazon shortly after. An anonymous former employee said of Kinch: “Too many promises, too little fulfillment.” Kinch himself declined to comment.

In March 2020, Amazon hired David Carbon, a former senior Boeing executive, to lead the drone program. Before joining Amazon, Calbon got into trouble with production safety at Boeing and drew media attention. Still, employees on Amazon’s drone team acknowledged that Calbon brought discipline and focus to the project, and his extensive industrial experience helped move the project forward. He has outsourced some drone production tasks, shutting down drone divisions in the UK and France, and outsourcing some image recognition work to lower-cost Costa Rica.

But some employees said Calbon began to prioritize speed over safety shortly after his arrival. Amazon did not arrange for Calben to be interviewed. An Amazon spokesperson said only: “With over 25 years of experience safely and securely promoting aerospace innovations, we are delighted that Calbon will lead the next phase of the drone program’s mission to ultimately bring drones to thirty. minute delivery target.”

Last year, a drone test team conducted a flight test somewhere in California. Before the test began, after a farmer was found to be driving a tractor below the flight path area, some team members became concerned that the test would violate FAA flight test guidelines in this situation. After debate, the group leader said the test would be safe as long as the drone did not fly directly over the farmers, according to those present. So, the team finally implemented the test, and there was indeed no accident. But some employees said the chief’s interpretation of the FAA rules was incorrect.

Regarding the matter, an Amazon spokesperson said: “Before each flight test, we clear the test area. In this test, an agricultural vehicle entered the test area after the drone was launched, so the crew Measures were taken to allow the drone to land quickly and safely.”

David Johnson spent about a year as a flight test assistant on Amazon’s drone program, mostly at remote test sites in rural Oregon. He said Amazon often conducts tests with teams that are not fully staffed, and that the total number of members is multi-tasking. For example, the member responsible for the pre-flight inspection also needs to act as a flight observer after the drone takes off, and pay close attention to potential obstacles on the flight route; the keyboard of the laptop is broken, but it cannot be replaced in time, and can only access the The external keyboard made it difficult to complete the pre-flight inspection in time; even once the drone had already taken off, Johnson was busy filling out the checklist and failed to follow up the flight of the drone in time, so he was reprimanded.

▲ A remote drone test site in rural Oregon

Being asked to do a lot in a short amount of time, employees have had to cut corners, Johnson said. The team just wanted to do as much flight testing as possible and didn’t want to slow down the testing. Two former employees also confirmed Johnson’s claims.

Amazon claims that these claims are false, “In each flight test, each member is only assigned a single task, and has been given a description of the task before the test. We will not give any flight test. There is a time limit for the session, and there is plenty of time.”

After 5 crashes in 4 months, and more than 200 people left in 1 year, can Amazon drones take off steadily?

Some employees said that in the Jinqi era, information within the team could flow freely, but in the Calburn era, the flow of information was hindered. Calbon is sensitive to the written word due to concerns about potential liability or regulatory scrutiny. He only allowed some employees to view the video of the crash, which some employees believe was a move for fear that the video would be leaked to the media. In one meeting, when an employee pointed out that a safety issue in the project was being “covered up,” Calben was irritated, reminding the employee to pay attention to the wording. Calbon’s overreaction had a chilling effect, and people were no longer outspoken.

“The people who are most concerned about safety are those who perform dangerous testing tasks, and the people who are least concerned about safety are those who sit comfortably behind their desks,” said a former employee who asked not to be named.

▲ An Amazon drone carrying a package

Last year, over the course of four months, what happened to Amazon at a proving ground in Pendleton, OregonFive crashes. It is a remote agricultural area and is famous for its annual rodeo and whisky festival. During these tests, various test parameters are adjusted to their maximum values ​​to determine limit thresholds that help improve the design of the drone. However, these crashed drones are the ones Amazon hopes to use for public testing.

Last May, a drone’s propeller fell off, rolled over and crashed while other engines were still running. The crash investigation was not possible because the drone was damaged so badly that Amazon personnel cleared the wreckage before notifying federal officials. Federal records show that the FAA finally advised Amazon not to damage the crash site in the event of another crash.

In June last year, a drone suddenly failed when one of its engines failed when it was going from a vertical climb to a forward flight, and the aircraft’s automatic safety features and stabilization safety features failed to work, resulting in a crash and a subsequent crash. A 25-acre bush fire spread.

“After years of R&D, a lot of money, it should be more than that,” said a senior engineer who has been away from Amazon for several years. Compared with Google’s drones, Amazon’s drones are too heavy, he said. , the former only weighs about 11 pounds. “Every time you increase the payload, you make the drone heavier, which requires more batteries — a vicious cycle.”

With the surge in crashes, the morale of the project team deteriorated sharply, and some employees chose to leave. Some people moved to Amazon’s cloud technology division (AWS) to continue their work, while others left Amazon completely, and employees also received severance pay. According to media survey data, 2021 is the first year that Calben has taken full charge of the drone department, but more than 200 employees left in that year, more than double the number of departures in 2020.

Chedi Skeeter’s experience serves as a good example of the chaos surrounding Amazon’s drone program. He was a flight attendant before becoming a flight test assistant for Amazon’s drone program, primarily responsible for boosting team morale. Skeeter often travels to the testing site to talk with frontline staff about potential problems with the tests. At a rented test site in Oregon, employee access to the toilet became a major problem because the renter did not want portable toilets on his land, and flight tests were affected. After Skeeter’s tireless efforts, Amazon eventually installed a portable toilet at the proving ground.

In addition, Skeeter talked about Amazon preparing to continue testing just five days after the crash. Those eager to continue testing assured the team that about 180 motors on another 30 drones had been checked, he said. But he is skeptical, because motor testing is time-consuming and difficult to complete in a short period of time. Amazon says there aren’t as many motors to check.

Shortly after, Skeeter expressed his willingness to resign to his boss, and was subsequently advised to seek positions elsewhere at Amazon. He said he applied for more than 30 positions, and after Amazon found someone to replace him, Skeeter spent weeks sitting idle on salary issues. He filed an internal complaint with Amazon outlining his security concerns, only to be told no such issues were found. Last month, Skeeter was eventually fired by Amazon, and although he received a severance package, he needed to sign a nondisclosure agreement to receive it. Skeeter was too little and did not sign.

“The reason I didn’t sign is because I’m a person who has the courage to speak up for myself and others, and too many people are afraid to do that,” Skeeter said.