Japanese artist renders Amazon delivery blimp based on patent

Social media has been reacting to a Japanese artist’s computer-generated rendering of an Amazon delivery blimp, which is loosely based on a patent the retailer was granted in 2018.

In the patent, which Amazon originally filed for in 2016, the company described an “airborne fulfillment center”, “an airship that remains at a high altitude (e.g., 45,000 feet) and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] with ordered items may be deployed from the AFC to deliver ordered items to user designated delivery locations.

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There was a talk about delivery by drone, but it had already started. I thought it was a story ahead.#???????? #zozi?? pic.twitter.com/hFrmGOKwof

— zozi(??????) (@zozi009) 31 March 2019

“As the UAVs descend, they can navigate horizontally toward a user specified delivery location using little to no power, other than to stabilize the UAV and/or guide the direction of descent.”

However, zozi009’s rendering of the airship—which shows drones dropping out of the blimp and zipping around it like midges as it cruises over Japanese suburbia—appeared to unnerve some Twitter users, who described it as “borderline dystopian”, among other things.

Amazon has not announced that it is building any such airship any time soon.

Source: Gizmodo

Header image: Josh Sorenson