Amazon May Build Floating Warehouses Serviced By Drones

SUMNER, WA - Amazon has a lofty idea about what to do with its fulfillment warehouses: put them up in the sky.

The Seattle-based tech giant, which operates non-floating warehouses in the Sumner area, has obtained a patent for a fantastical new delivery system where drones deliver items from warehouses suspended in the air from blimps.

The blimp-warehouses - or as Amazon calls them, "airborne fulfillment centers" - would float 45,000 feet in the air and drones would shoot out of them to make deliveries. The drones would float down to customers, drop off packages, and then get picked up by larger airships - because the drones aren't powerful enough to fly to 45,000 feet, of course.

One use for the airborne fulfillment centers, according to the patent, would be to make deliveries near large events, like football or baseball games. The warehouse could float over CenturyLink and deliver, say, a Seahawks jersey to someone at the game.

It's unclear whether Amazon will actually build these floating fulfillment centers, but they are working on drone deliveries. The company completed its first real-world drone delivery in England earlier in December.

The patent is credited to Paul William Berg of Seattle, Scott Isaacs of Bellevue, and Kelsey Lynn Blodgett of Seattle.

Image via U.S. Patent and Trademark Office