Amazon patents design for underwater 'warehouses'
Online retail giant Amazon has come up with a new idea that could make its delivery storage more efficient – building warehouses underwater.
The company has written a patent for ‘aquatic storage facilities’ filed in April but made public last week.
According to the designs the underwater storage systems would be built using lakes, reservoirs and purpose-built pools and would operate without the need for human and robot labour.
Products would be encased in watertight boxes to prevent them from being water damaged and would be dropped into the pools by parachutes or trucks.
Amazon has filed a patent for storage warehouses … underwater. Image: US Patent and Trademark Office
Items would be fitted with a depth control cartridge, GPS monitor and balloon inflated by air canister that would expand with air (or deflate) to cause packages to sink or rise to the surface.
When a package is selected for delivery, a coded series of acoustic tones could be beamed through the water, symbolised by musical notes in the patent designs.
Amazon appears to be contemplating a move away from its current model of large single-storey warehouses that store packages before they are shipped to customers.
In a previous patent filed for drone skyscrapers, Amazon said that it would be ideal to locate warehouses, or “fulfilment centres” as they are referred to, on smaller blocks of land in the inner city.
Items would be stored in watertight boxes and be fitted with remote-controlled balloons that would inflate and bring them to the surface. Image: US Patent and Trademark Office
The most recent underwater warehouse patent states, “For all of their technological advancements today’s fulfilment centres are still plagued by the inefficient use of space…. significant portions of the fulfilment centres remain unused for storage.”
The patent is unclear on some design specifics, stating that “the frame may be constructed or formed in any manner and from any materials that are sufficiently suitable and durable to contain the water and one or more items and able to withstand …hydrostatic pressure.”
It then suggests that materials “such as concrete, cement, sand, steel aluminium or other metals and lined with plastics that are impermeable to water” could be used.
There is currently no indication about where or when the storage facilities would be built.
