Drones are a short-range technology. Many of today's all-electric small quadcopters can only fly for 20-minute bursts before needing to swap batteries or plug in again. To make delivery drones work, the drones will either need to fly only short distances, or they'll need places to recharge along the way. For Amazon, which seems determined to lead the field in drone delivery, the answer might come from a recently approved patent: docking stations for drones, installed on existing streetlights.

Amazon envisions drones delivering packages, groceries, and mail, but they need more range to do so. To compensate for short drone ranges, Amazon wants a series of perches installed through cities. The perches will be built for a range of drones, and "could also be installed on other existing structures such as cell towers, church steeples, office buildings, parking decks, radio towers, telephone/electrical poles, and other vertical structures (collectively, "poles")" according to the patent.