Prime Air is Amazon’s groundbreaking last-mile drone delivery service, seeking to fulfill customer orders in 30 minutes or less.
Company Amazon Prime Air
Role Lead mechanical engineer
Product Forward/Upward Sensor LRU (MK30 drone), Upward Sensor LRU (MK27 drone)
Launched MK30 - launching 2024; MK27 drone - launched 2020
Manufacturing Location Various
autonomous drone delivery
The MK30 drone leverages almost a decade of technology development, flight testing and lessons learned, and has been designed from ground-up with safety, reliability and an ability to scale in mind. Whereas previous custom drone designs were unable to fly in rain and low-light conditions, the MK30 has been engineered to withstand the elements and safely navigate the skies around 400 ft above ground level.
sense and avoid technology
In order to allow the drone to detect obstacles, and safely avoid them through real-time maneuvers, robust sensor hardware and software systems must be in place to support the on-vehicle flight computer.
As a Sr. ME on the Perception team, I am responsible for developing the Upward/Forward-facing Sensor Assembly, which houses multiple sensing modalities, including custom optics, stacked PCBAs, and I/O interface with other on-drone subsystems. Data from these sensors, such as high-resolution imagery, are fed into the flight computer and real-time perception algorithms that detect and avoid obstacles in a backyard environment or during forward flight.
weight vs. stiffness
One of the key challenges in developing sensor hardware involves trade-offs between weight and stiffness of precision sensors. Battery run-time is directly proportional to payload weight, so it is crucial to lightweight subsystems as much as possible while meeting performance. However, some sensors require precise geometric alignment and stability over a range of environments, such as optical axis alignment, to support various algorithms.