{"id":340162,"date":"2017-05-05T17:27:47","date_gmt":"2017-05-05T09:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1485805"},"modified":"2017-05-05T17:27:47","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T09:27:47","slug":"amazon-beefs-up-drone-delivery-rd-in-cambridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/amazon-beefs-up-drone-delivery-rd-in-cambridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon beefs up drone delivery R&D in Cambridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Amazon is expanding its R&D facilities in Cambridge, UK, with\u00a0a plan to move into\u00a0a new 60,000sq ft site in the city with\u00a0capacity for more than 400 staff.<\/p>\n

Cambridge University, one of the UK\u2019s top tier academic institutions, has a strong focus on science \u2014 explaining why a raft of tech firms (not just Amazon<\/a>) have chosen to site\u00a0R&D efforts there.<\/p>\n

Announcing the expansion of\u00a0its Cambridge development operations\u00a0yesterday<\/a>, Amazon said staff at the site will include\u00a0machine learning scientists, knowledge engineers, data scientists, mathematical modellers, speech scientists and software engineers, with teams set to work on programs including its drone delivery effort, Prime Air; Amazon devices; and Alexa, its AI voice assistant tech.<\/p>\n

It said its existing development building in the city, at Castle Hill, will be used primarily for research and development related to its drone delivery efforts, once the\u00a0new One The Square R&D facility opens this fall. The new R&D building\u00a0is located in the\u00a0business district adjacent to Cambridge train station,\u00a0putting it\u00a0less than an hour by rail from London.<\/p>\n

Existing Amazon R&D\u00a0teams working on devices including the Kindle e-reader, Fire tablet, Fire TV Stick; its\u00a0suite of voice-driven AI assistant hardware: Echo, Echo Dot and the new Echo Look<\/a>;\u00a0and the voice tech itself, Alexa, will also move to the new larger Cambridge site starting this fall \u2014 so it sounds like Amazon is aiming to, at very least, double down on its\u00a0Cambridge R&D hub, if not concentrate most of its hardware-related research efforts in the city (although it\u00a0does also have R&D facilities in Edinburgh<\/a> and London, and is also currently\u00a0hiring at both sites).<\/p>\n

Job roles<\/a>\u00a0Amazon is recruiting for for the new Cambridge R&D center at the moment include text to speech scientists, a mathematical modeller for its machine learning team, and multiple software engineering and applied science roles.<\/p>\n

By the end of the\u00a0year, it says\u00a0it\u00a0will have more than 1,500 \u201cinnovation related roles\u201d in the UK \u2014 ranging from\u00a0machine learning and drones to streaming video and cloud computing, via its Amazon Web Services platform. While the total number of permanent new UK jobs it plans to have created by the end of this year is 5,000 \u2014 which will bring its total UK workforce to 24,000.<\/p>\n

Cambridge\u00a0has fed plenty of expertise into Amazon\u2019s R&D efforts over the years \u2014\u00a0including beefing up its natural language processing technology, after the ecommerce giant\u00a0acquired\u00a0local startup Evi<\/a>\u00a0in 2012, putting that tech to work\u00a0in its Alexa voice assistant.<\/p>\n

The company\u00a0also chose Cambridgeshire to kick off its\u00a0first customer trial of\u00a0Prime Air drone deliveries<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 with two beta users\u00a0able to test ordering a subset of products for\u00a0airfreighting into their backyards within minutes.<\/p>\n

In recent years the UK\u00a0has adopted a\u00a0favorable approach to robotics testing<\/a>\u00a0outdoors. And Amazon was given permission\u00a0to\u00a0operate\u00a0beyond line-of-sight flights last July<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 paving the way for the Prime Air customer trial that launched last December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Amazon is expanding its R&D facilities in Cambridge, UK, with a plan to move into a new 60,000sq ft site in the city with capacity for more than 400 staff. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

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