Amazon Removed Backup Landing Sensors Before Drone Crashes
Retaining the technology could have prevented the aircraft from accidentally shutting off their propellers midflight and plummeting to the ground.
A pair of Amazon.com Inc. package delivery drones were flying through a light rain in mid-December when, within minutes of one another, they both committed robot suicide.
Shortly before 10 a.m. on Dec. 16, the first Prime Air drone dropped its package at a dummy residence at the company’s rural Oregon testing range, then flew back to an asphalt pad to begin its landing sequence. Instead, some 217 feet (66 meters) in the air, the aircraft cut power to its six propellers, fell to the ground and was destroyed. Four minutes later and 183 feet over the taxiway, a second Prime Air drone did the same thing.