Amazon recently stopped testing its Scout sidewalk delivery robot and made other decisions indicating that it's scaling back its experimental projects. Looks like its delivery drone development for Prime Air is still going strong, though, because the e-commerce giant has just released a sneak peek of its next-gen machine. The MK30 was designed to be lighter than the current model dubbed MK27-2. It will still have six rotors like its predecessor, based on the images the e-commerce giant has shared, except it no longer has a full hexagonal frame. The e-commerce giant is slated to start drone deliveries in College Station, Texas and Lockeford, California later this year to help it gauge people's interest in getting their orders flown over and dropped into their yards.

Amazon is continuing to'secretly' test the capability of its Air Prime delivery drones at their proving ground in the UK countryside. Engineers in high vis jackets were spotted yesterday flying drones on wires from a giant metal gantry in a field near Cambridge, England. It is unclear why the drones are being flown attached to cables -- but could perhaps help to determine the drone's positions relative to the crane as they land. Cameras and sensors have also been added to the metal frame to carry out tests on the drones and check they can navigate and land correctly. The company first began secretly flying its drones in a field near Cambridge three years ago, in July 2016, after the UK's Civil Aviation Authority lifted the previous strict drone flying restrictions.

With a warehouse equipped with over 45,000 robots, and a new drone delivery system, Amazon is pinning its future on artificial intelligence. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has spoken this week about AI describing it as the'golden age' of technology capable of solving problems in the realm of science fiction. And while Bezos did not go into detail about his future plans to use AI at Amazon, he hinted that it is being used in'literally hundreds of things' across the firm. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon has spoken this week about artificial intelligence development, describing it as the'golden age' of technology Amazon now has 45,000 robots shuffling products around 20 distributions centers. They navigate by scanning coded stickers on the floor, following digital commands that are beamed wirelessly from a central computer.