Amazon.com Inc. may let you boss around its delivery drones once they finally hit the market, at least according to a patent recently issued to the company by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The patent, which Amazon first applied for in July 2016, describes a management system that can adjust a drone’s behavior in response to human gestures and voice commands.

The drones would recognize these gestures through a combination of sensors, computer vision and an onboard database of expected gesture commands. The primary goal behind the system in Amazon’s patent is to help the company’s drones during the actual delivery process, which is the most difficult leg of their journey.

“The human recipient and/or the other humans can communicate with the vehicle using human gestures to aid the vehicle along its path to the delivery location,” Amazon explained in its patent. “An onboard management system of the vehicle can process the human gestures and instruct the vehicle to perform certain actions.”

According to the company, an example of a gesture that people might give to a delivery drone includes “waving their arms in a shooing manner,” which would tell the drone to stop moving in that direction. Amazon said a recipient might also “wave his arms in an inviting manner as the vehicle approaches,” which could instruct the drone to approach and complete its delivery. Recipients might also be able to issue verbal commands to the drones, but this may be more difficult considering how loud drones can be.

Amazon suggested in its patent that the drone system could also “somehow” verify a person’s identity before making the delivery. If it recognizes the person as the intended recipient, the drone would continue the delivery as normal. If it does not recognize the person, however, the drone could either wait until the correct recipient arrives or cancel the delivery altogether. This system could certainly make Amazon’s drone deliveries more secure and possibly protect the company from liability issues.

It’s not clear whether Amazon has actually built the system described in its patent, and there is a possibility that it never will. Like many companies, Amazon files for a number of patents that never actually see the light of day, and it could always go with a different solution for the same problems.

Image: Amazon