Amazon’s new Austrian R&D centre working on drone systems
Amazon has revealed that it has gathered together “some of the best and brightest minds in the computer vision field” at its new research & development (R&D) centre in Graz, Austria to help create “sense and avoid” technology for small drones. In a notice posted on Amazon’s blog yesterday (10 May), Paul Misener, Amazon’s Vice President for Global Innovation Policy and Communications, said: “Since the start of April nearly a dozen PhDs in computer science are working at the Center.”
Misener added: “Prime Air is our future delivery system designed to safely get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using small drones. In multiple locations around Europe, including Cambridge in the UK, together with sites in North America and Israel, different components of the Prime Air program are under development.
“Our new team in Austria will support all aspects of our “sense and avoid” system, which we compare with getting our vehicles to behave less like cars and more like horses. Like smart animals, the drones must know when they are getting into trouble, and avoid colliding with things, without a human intervening. They must be independently safe.”
Many of staff now part of the new Austrian centre have worked with the nearby Technical University of Graz which, according to Amazon, “has one of the best computer vision engineering programs in the world”. Misener said that Amazon will be looking to build on those relationships to form a partnership with the University for research and internships.
