Amazon.com Inc. unveiled a new delivery drone design on Thursday that’s smaller, makes less noise and can fly through light rain, the latest effort to get the troubled and long-developing project off the ground.
The company has spent nearly a decade pursuing founder Jeff Bezos’ vision of autonomous drones that can deliver a package weighing less than 5 pounds as little as 30 minutes after a customer places an order. Beyond speeding delivery times, drones could significantly cut the cost of delivery which still mostly requires a person driving a vehicle to someone’s home.