Though not something that will be a major delivery system any time soon, many companies such as Amazon and DHL have been developing and testing drone parcel delivery systems. One of the issues that is constantly raised is how the parcel once in the immediate area it needs to deliver the parcel, can guarantee that the parcel is being delivered to the correct person, even when it might be hard to land nearby? Google has filed a patent for such an answer.

According to the tech magazine Wired, Google has just been granted a patent that states its drone delivery system will be able to deliver to a specific ‘delivery receptacle’ that presumably will only be able to be opened by the correct person: “The delivery device transports the package to the delivery address and locates one or more first beacons being transmitted by a delivery receptacle at the delivery address,” the patent says. “The delivery device navigates to the delivery receptacle based on the triangulated position and transmits a second beacon to the delivery receptacle”.

The ‘delivery receptacle’ may well be a robotic buggy that can then move on to the location of the customer. One of the major issues that drones have is in regulation – many cities around the world just won’t have drones buzzing around, and perhaps a landing site for drones as well as designated flightpaths between distribution centre and landing site may be an answer to get around this.

Regulation is one of the biggest bugbears of the drone dreamers, bringing their dreams to the ground with a thud. Though much hyped, there isn’t that great a chance of seeing Amazon dropping a parcel on your lawn any time soon, no matter what Jeremy Clarkson says in the viral video!