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Online retail giant Amazon has cut back its pioneering drone delivery team, but says it will still have a Prime Air presence in the UK.
Tech magazine Wired reported that more than 100 employees from Amazon's Prime Air division had lost their jobs or were reassigned at Amazon's research and development facility.
Prime Air was launched in 2016 as a way to provide customers with their orders via drone in as little as half an hour. However, Wired reports that the scheme appears to have ground to a halt after cutbacks in the UK. One ex-employee told the magazine: "When I was there Prime Air was already years from being a thing. But it’s never going to get off the ground.” A report in the Daily Mail also suggested that the testing area in Cambridge "appeared deserted".
Amazon Prime Air was billed as a way for customers to receive packages weighing less than 5lbs within 30 minutes of making an order. According to its plans, when the centre receives the order, it is attached to an electrically-powered drone, which will fly at heights of up to 400ft and will be guided by GPS through the air. They would then descend to a customer's address to drop off the order.
Researchers working on developing the technology have been looking at how the drones would detect humans and animals while travelling, as well as man-made objects in the sky.
An Amazon spokesperson told The Bookseller: “We recently made organisational changes in our Prime Air business and were able to find positions for affected employees in other areas where we were hiring.
“We remain committed to our development centre in Cambridge, UK, where Amazon has hundreds of talented engineers, research scientists, and technology experts working across a range of innovations. Prime Air continues to have employees in the UK and will keep growing its presence in the region.”