Amazon Prime Air delivery drone to start dropping packages 'within months,' officials say

In a series of "groundbreaking first" the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore successfully delivered and transplanted a donor kidney into a patient using an unmanned drone to transport the donated organ. Within a matter of months, your future Amazon orders could be delivered by a self-driving drone. Officials with the online shopping giant unveiled the latest Prime Air drone design Wednesday at Amazon's re:MARS Conference (Machine Learning, Automation, Robotics and Space) in Las Vegas. "We've been hard at work building fully electric drones that can fly up to 15 miles and deliver packages under five pounds to customers in less than 30 minutes," Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer, wrote in a blog post Wednesday. "And, with the help of our world-class fulfillment and delivery network, we expect to scale Prime Air both quickly and efficiently, delivering packages via drone to customers within months."