Delivery by drones still years away, say MIT scientists

Leading scientists at MIT think we are further away from having packages delivered by autonomous drones than Amazon is promoting. While the technical achievements have been impressive to date, the technology is still "pretty rudimentary," considering the complexity of the task. Despite advanced algorithms that enable drones to land on a moving vehicle or to find and fly through a window, drones are unable to reliably react to changing conditions or adjust their course around moving obstacles like humans, birds or other drones.

According to Amazon, a future where self-flying drones zip through the sky delivering products is just around the corner. It’s a future that seems to draw closer with each new technical achievement: Drones can now take off and land on their own and even dodge stationary objects.

But, as you’ll see in the video above, if you talk to the leading scientists trying to make these autonomous drones, actually enabling drones to fly on their own from take off until they arrive at their destination is a lot more complicated than it might seem.