A recent article by Ben Sullivan at Motherboard highlights the challenges faced by those companies attempting to develop drone delivery services. Due to regulatory hurdles in the United States, even for research and development activities, Amazon has been performing tests in the United Kingdom. However, Sullivan’s article notes that although Amazon has been testing in the UK for over 2 years, no significant public demonstration has been given.

One of the primary roadblocks to drone delivery service is the lack of adequate sense-and-avoid capability. Simply put, the technology to enable drones to detect and avoid objects in their vicinity is not sufficiently mature. Small form-factor radars and lidars are being developed and will eventually solve the problem, but it will take some years for the entire process of technology maturation followed by design, development, testing, regulatory approval and deployment in civil airspace.

In the mean time, the drone applications that reign supreme will be those that rely on pointing cameras and staying within the line-of-sight of the ground operator.