WHEN DRONES FIRST became widely available, around 15 years ago now, it wasn't uncommon to find tech people painting dramatic pictures of how they were soon going to change the world.
However, if you look up into the largely empty sky above us, you can quite clearly see that hasn't happened yet.
Sure, drones are useful for taking aerial photos, and are a fun hobby for nerds like me-but we're a long way away from aerial superhighways, packed with autonomous drones zipping parcels, medical supplies and perhaps even your Deliveroo order around the country at speeds that would be near-impossible on the ground.
And we're seemingly still a very long way away from it. In 2016, in a blaze of publicity, Amazon announced that it had completed its first ever aerial delivery. In a heavily stage-managed video, we saw an Amazon "Prime Air" drone pick up a parcel from the company's Cambridgeshire warehouse and fly it across the countryside, landing in the buyer's garden, dropping the parcel, and then returning back to its home base.
But as far as I can tell, Amazon still has not completed its second ever drone delivery. In fact, since the video was released the company has reportedly downscaled its drone programme, and laid off or redeployed many of the people working on it.
So, will drone delivery ever be a thing? There are some glimmers of a possible drone delivery future, not in Britain or even the United States, but in Africa.
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