I’m watching 60 Minutes as I type this (I’m in the PST zone), and their first segment was about Amazon’s great idea to deliver packages by drones — little helicopter looking things that will carry packages of five pounds or less to your house, place it on the ground (neatly on the front walk, in the demo), and then take off again. Jeff Bezos said they expect to be able to do it within a ten mile radius of their urban HQ, and that they are just programmed by GPS, rather than remotely controlled.
He acknowledged that it’s years away, but I don’t see how it would ever work. Even if the GPS works perfectly, how does the drone know it’s not setting down while the sprinklers are on, or in a mud puddle, or even a kiddie pool? How do you keep a dog from attacking it? Heck, how do you keep the neighborhood kids from trying to knock it out of the air with a baseball bat (if they’re young), or trying to steal it so they can reprogram it for their own uses (if they’re older).
Bezos is notorious for not leaking future plans — he even refused to answer some questions in this free infomercial CBS gave him. I’m wondering if this is just a prank to get his competitors to work on something stupid, although I don’t see how anyone would fall for it.
I saw that, and also call bullshit. I can picture him with a little remote control, whizzing a drone around his backyard, living out a kid’s dream of a really cool toy.
Wouldn’t there be a 50% chance it would be delivered on the roof? Or to the neighbour’s house? And if you’re in an apartment or tower block of some kind it can’t really be delivered at all.
Weird idea that can only work in very specific, unrealistic circumstances.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently ridiculous about it. Drone technology is advancing fast and already drones in labs are doing amazing stuff
One of a couple of ways, a) computer vision and sensors can figure out what is a safe place to land. Self driving cars are facing many of the same problems so the solutions will quickly become commodotized or b) You tag the area you want the dropoff to occur with your smartphone and you’re responsible if the package is damaged or c) If the copter is unsure, it can send a live video feed to an Amazon Mechanical Turker who can use human intelligence to figure out where to land. This does not seem to be an intractable problem.
How do you keep your neighbors kids from smashing your car windows at night or stealing your mailbox? There’s a lot of ways out existing property can be damaged that we don’t worry about, unless there’s a specific threat, it doesn’t seem like this will be a major deal.
Yes. Bezos is taking a page out of the old Microsoft playbook. Back in the 90s, when Microsoft had smaller competitors that had exciting new feature X rolling out to customers, Microsoft would put out giant press announcements about how their next version with Officedows would have an amazing X+1! These vaporware announcements would inject enough fear, uncertainty and doubt into consumers to take the wind out of competitor’s sails.
Over the last 15 years, Amazon has basically plowed every penny of profit back into capital projects like distribution centers. This has allowed them compete so effectively on price and selection that it would be hard for any competitor to try to go toe to toe with them. The one area left to compete is speed and large companies like Google and eBay along with startups like Instacart and Postmates are starting to present a credible challenge along that front. Amazon’s “WE HAVE COPTERS” is the X+1 feature that allows them leapfrog over competitors 1 - 3 hour delivery guarantees down to a 30 minute delivery window.
Additionally, Amazon currently exists in an uneasy strategic tension with shipping companies like UPS and Fedex. Amazon is reliant on shippers as a core part of how it’s business operates but, as it achieves scale, it’s hollowing out the relationship and bringing more and more of it’s operations in house (for example, Amazon now uses Amazon trucks to drive goods from it’s Las Vegas DC to the UPS Oakland DC for UPS to send to Bay Area customers).
Currently, relationships between Amazon and shippers are outwardly cordial but this could change at any point so Amazon needs to think strategically about it’s partnerships. Having a drone program gives it better leverage when at the negotiation table. Even if drones were always a crappier way of delivering goods than trucks, the threat that Amazon could roll out a drone program limits the amount of damage shippers could do to them if they rolled out the nuclear option.
At first, I thought it was a silly gimick–but then I thought, “hey this could work”.
Just notify the recipient that his pizza is on the way, and he’ll be glad to step outside and wait for it.
Ooops—on second thought…no, this ain’t such a good idea. Because the inevitable accident will happen, when some customer gets beheaded by the rotors on the drone. Pizza will never be the same.
I wonder if it would work if they put each drone on auto-pilot while en route; when it nears the destination, it enters a holding pattern until a human remote operator can bring it in manually. Then it auto-pilots back to the warehouse. If it works, it should require less manpower than delivering by truck.
It’s probably pretty impractical to roll out on a mass scale in the near future, but in a few years? Sure, it’s plausible. The drones could be programmed to get close to their destination autonomously and then be taken over by a remote human operator to finish the final exchange. In a dense urban setting where drivers can plot out a pretty efficient route, it probably wouldn’t be better than current methods, but in more spread out areas it could potentially cut down on human labor costs dramatically. Instead of having a driver spend all day driving to make a dozen deliveries, the drone operator could send each drone directly toward its destination and only spend a few minutes dealing with each one. It sounds like a pipe dream now, and it probably would not be cost effective for years and years, but once you get the infrastructure in place it could work.
If it catches on, people might start building little package heliports of their roof, or on a little balcony next to an upstairs window. You could have some sort of marking on it that the drone would recognize. There’s no reason for the sprinklers to spray that high. No way for dogs or thieves to get to it. It could be safer than the way things are delivered now.
I don’t see this as any worse than having the UPS or FedEx guy go half way to your door and toss the box on your porch, or whatever.
Plus, if they say your package will be there in 30 minutes or less, my guess is you might have your eye looking out for it - otherwise, why would you pay (probably extra) for that immediate service?
And at some point, I don’t see why that package couldn’t be delivered to someone’s balcony in a high rise - which would be quite convenient for people in urban areas, better than even having to go down to the lobby to pick up the package.
Of course, I am sure there will be clone drones that could be used privately and maybe have a nice pound of weed sent up to your house from Mexico - but that is another story.
I think this could work well for UPS or FedEx ground deliveries.
Set up the delivery truck as a ‘aircraft carrier’ for a half-dozen or so drones. Drive to the general neighborhood. Releasse the drones, loaded with the packages, preprogramed to fly to the addresses. When they arrive, they bep at the driver; he views the image from their video camera to verify they have the right address & a safe delivery location, then presses a button to approve the delivery. Then the drones fly back to the mother truck to be loaded for another delivery. When that neighborhood is done, the driver drives the truck to the next neighborhood, loads up the drones, and sends them on their way.
Most of the time in ground delivery is used by the driver parking the truck, getting out, running up to the house with the package, then back to the truck and driving to the next location. The drone system would put most of that onto the drones, and also several of them working at once. With a human still there to verify proper placement of deliveries, & talk with customers.
A single driver could do many more deliveries this way. Much less risk of work-related injuries on sidewalks & steps when the driver stays inside the truck. And the company is no longer restricted to hiring young, athletic guys as drivers (who have, as a group, the worst driving record). I can see lots of ways the increased productivity could pay for the cost of such drones & equipment. Especially if there’s a human in the loop, so they don’t need to wait for absolutely foolproof artificial intelligence programming.
One potential problem (though one that’s definitely fixable) is that some areas, especially smaller towns, don’t have good GPS data. I know every map site and GPS I’ve tried had my ex’s house in a slightly different incorrect spot (she actually had to step outside the first time I went there because it was dark so I couldn’t see the addresses).
Edit: One way to fix it could be to have them place/confirm a “marker” on the GPS map near the address they listed. Just pop up an interactive map and have them pin where they want it delivered. Still not perfect, but better.
See, I was thinking something similar. It would make more sense to have drop off stations. Then man those stations with entry level employees to deliver the product the rest of the way. (In their vehicles)
Since they’re delivering in such small quantities, the drivers wouldn’t even need a truck. Anybody with a reliable car, a valid license, and proof of insurance would be qualified for the job. Much like pizza joints do with pizza delivery.
Considering we live in a world full of ideas like “kill all the jews because they are the source of our problems,” I’m thinking that Amazon Drones is way, way down the line as far as “stupidest idea ever” goes.
A few minutes watching Jackass will also reaffirm this point.
Dominos did that; the video is here. It’s presently illegal in the US & UK by the way, until if and when the laws are changed to allow commercial use of drones.
My reaction when hearing of this a few months ago was “And those pizza delivery guy porn scenes will never be the same.”
Ten mile radius is just the current limit of the battery tech. They could solve a bunch of problems buy just requiring you to first do a conventional delivery and include a free sticker with an RFID tag with your first order. Place the sticker where you want your landing zone to be and your good to go.
Really surprised at the negativity here. This is some cool shit.
Do you think when they were inventing the car, they said “Oh, it only goes short distances, not very fast and can’t carry many passengers? Not worth bothering then.”
