Amazon. com has entered into a partnership with the British government to speed up the process for allowing small drones to makes deliveries.

The world's biggest online retailer, which has laid out plans to start using drones for deliveries by 2017, said a cross-government team supported by the UK Civil Aviation Authority had provided it with the permissions necessary to explore the process.

Amazon unveiled a video last year showcasing how an unmanned drone could deliver packages, narrated by former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson.

The US Federal Aviation Administration said last month the use of drones for deliveries will require separate regulation from their general use.

Wal-Mart Stores said last month it was six to nine months from beginning to use drones to check warehouse inventories in the United States.

Embraced and feared

Colin Bull, a consultant at Software Quality Systems, said despite the obvious benefits of drones, they “ must be embraced and feared in equal measures”.

“ They might look pretty innocent, but on closer inspection, what you find can be terrifying. Combined with 3D printing these can be easily configured and adapted into support any kind of use case,” said Mr Bull.

“Putting it bluntly, these devices are in fact a flying payload system with the ability to deliver anything including incendiary devices or grenades in to uncontrolled airspace in the way that only Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) have been able to do in the past,” said Mr Bull.

Mr Bull said implementing regulation and the standardisation of radio frequencies on which drones can operate is vital.

“We have to take care. Falling in to the wrong hands, there’s currently nothing to stop someone flying a payload laden drone into a busy city or even airspace,” he said.

“Ensuring there are strict regulations in place means that the use of drones can be better controlled. Alongside putting regulations in place should be security measures. As with any connected technology, drones are at risk of being hacked by cybercriminals, meaning software programming needs to be considered more seriously in the development phase,” he said.

Mr Bull said strict and overarching regulations should be put in place to help control drone use, and that system developers consider security and privacy in the lifecycle “before a disaster happens”.

Reuters