Even in urban areas, GPS isn’t perfect. Driving around Houston, Austin, and Dallas, my GPS device in my car often tells me the address is two or three buildings down from where it actually is. I’ve noticed the same thing in friends’ cars when they are using GPS. Google Maps is better, but there have been times when I look up the address and it says that the location is at one place when it’s actually further down the street.
But other people in this thread have had good ideas to fix this issue. Using RFID tags, or some other sort of marker, or some human intervention at the end could work.
It would be very weird at first, but I could see getting used to drone deliveries.
That is some remarkably scary shit. Avoiding sprinklers and kids will just be another line of code to write.
Flying a drone is fun, like any R/C plane or copter. Now, with tiny computers and GPS input we can program one to go from A to B to C in very complex and precision ways. That’s awesome, but not crazy unbelievable. We all know how these technologies work.
The really scary/wonderful stuff is yet to come. All someone has to do is think up the task, and it will get done.
I watched this documentary on NOVA last week, and it shows some more interesting capabilities of drones in swarms. Like jumping through hoops! Jump to 39:00 to see the autonomous capabilities and be ready to run. Watch the whole show. It’s amazing.
Skynet is coming, people!
I saw this on the news today as well. While I can’t see there really being any insoluble technical problems I think it would be a rather niche exercise, being only usuable on still dry days, to addresses close to the depot etc.
But mostly its the human factor, whats to stop some jerk with a shotgun blasting it out of the sky for example?
Unless they can arm them with cannons and they can fire back. I’d be all for that.
Well, humans could shoot a UPS driver, as well, but if you have some maniac with a gun shooting things in an urban area, not getting your Spanx in 30 minutes is the least of your worries.
I’m more concerned with the weather and theft logistics. UPS and FedEx will not leave anything outside my front door. In this neighborhood, I can’t even sign a request that they do so, although they will leave some things inside the front (locked) door if someone else who lives in the building opens it for them. For the drone, I could see some sort of secured receptacle, with a lid, that opens when it senses the drone within a few feet and shuts and locks once the package is dropped. Something like the trash bins in that Firefly episode. Maybe then Amazon emails me with a keycode, or maybe I have a physical key sent with the box so I can open it. Of course, I’ve got to get my landlord to agree to putting it on his lawn.
I wonder if they leak these things on purpose to that they can then scan message boards and twitter for these very sorts of ideas. Seems crowd sourcing at the brainstorming level could cut a whole lot of hours and pay, and then you get your guys to work on the likeliest notions.
I don’t think this makes much sense. Microsoft wants to prevent you from buying some other Office product because then you won’t buy theirs, and you might standardize on the other software. The switching costs in software are very high, so Microsoft has a huge incentive to scare you away from competitors.
But it’s not like customers are going to put off a purchase today based on a delivery mechanism that may or may not exist in a few years. And the switching costs for where you buy something online that gets delivered to your door are very low. Sure, if I’m familiar with Amazon I’m more likely to make future purchases there. But the drone announcement doesn’t advance that goal either. I’d be surprised if you could find many people who hadn’t already bought something from Amazon but were convinced to try it today because they announced they’d eventually have drone delivery.
My theory on this is that it’s just general publicity.
Amazon marketing meeting:
“Let’s figure out a way to get the name Amazon into the news right at the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.”
“Hey, if we announce something with flying robots, television will eat it up!”
I know that it wouldn’t really work like this, but could you imagine drones hitting dark spots, losing signal/directions/battery strength, and just buzz-bombing small towns in mountain regions cursed with bad satellite reception?
movie pitch *
“Its a Mad-Mad-MadHat Christmas”
“Governor, this is Dunmore calling! We need help…thats right, we’re being shelled! By Amazon, I think…”
“Oh, dear lordy, Mrs. Carmichael’s car just got taken out by a Dell PC…”
**** meanwhile, back at Amazon ****
“Where the Hell is Lake Ariel anyway…!?”
“Its near Scranton…use standard delivery programming.”
“…firing for effect…”
:eek:
I don’t think 10 miles is that big of a deal. Just think about how cell towers are done. The cell companies pay the owners of properties to be able to put the tower on their land. Drones are a little more of a nuisance and would require more maintenance than a cell tower, so maybe you’d need to think of it more like a franchise opportunity for independent owners who hire their own employees and maintain their own fleet of drones. Either way, you’d only need a couple dozen sites to have good coverage over major cities, and covering all the cities with more than 1 million people would give you a pretty sizable chunk of the population.
I doubt something like this would ever make sense in a rural context, and maybe it will take time to penetrate mid-size towns and suburbs.
(Of course, it has to be made legal first, and I wouldn’t count on that being done. Common sense has been taking a back seat to fear-mongering for a long time now.)
Thanx to you, I can’t help but be certain that the future of illicit drug transportation across borders will involve small private drones to a large degree. Could be happening right now.
Yeah, I think a lot of people probably said that in 1769, and they were right for about 150 years. That doesn’t mean the idea was worthless, but it does mean it would have been way premature to hype it the way Bezos did. More importantly, though, Bezos was already talking about his years-away goal, not what he can do today.
I don’t think robbery is going to be a serious issue. These things are probably going to be packed with cameras and other sensors so robbing them will be a lot of risk for not that much gain.
Safety and regulation will be bigger issues. I am not sure whether they will be practical in high-density urban settings. They should be reasonably practical in suburbs so I expect they will first be tried out in affluent suburbs where there is both enough space and enough potential customers.
The other issue is cost. I am not sure the premium for drone delivery will be worth it for most customers. Ultimately people can wait a day or two for most of what they order online.
Still drones are a cool technology and if nothing else this announcement will inform people about their potential uses which will pave the way for sensible regulations which allow for civilians drones while minimizing the risk.
Hmm if this is only for people who live within 10 miles of a distribution center, then people can get their stuff even FASTER if they order and then come TO the distribution center and meet the drone right outside the door. Heck they could even have some sort of desk with a cash register where the person can do a transaction with the Amazon employee before they even get a drone involved. And maybe they can upsell other stuff from the distribution center by letting people browse around inside. Pretty simple for everyone involved and stuff gets out the door quickly.
We’ve got a thing like this near us, all the way out in the suburbs. It’s called The Store. Brillz!
Cost will be an interesting issue to watch. If you think about it, a 10-mile delivery can easily cost $5+ dollars (fuel, maintenance, depreciation) for the delivery vehicle and then some additional amount for labor. Even 5 minutes of labor is likely to cost $3-4 when you look at the fully loaded costs (wages, benefits, taxes, training, etc.)
If a drone is a cheaper vehicle that can eliminate the labor component, then it could be possible for drone delivery to be cheaper than next-day deliveries are right now. Some of the savings may depend on efficiencies of scale that would only be realized when you have hundreds of drones operating at once, though.
In the long run (and not even that long a run, I bet) delivery by small battery-powered flying robot over short distances will likely be cheaper than paying a human to drive a big heavy truck around.
The cost will be high at the beginning because it’s experimental and to keep the demand down, but I wouldn’t expect that to hold very long.