8 ms·

Here's what I think is more likely: A small regional airport is taken over by Amazon. They build hangars and warehouses onsite. It's ramped up to land and fl

by mapt 11y ago

Here's what I think is more likely: A small regional airport is taken over by Amazon. They build hangars and warehouses onsite. It's ramped up to land and fly a big turbine-powered mothership every five minutes. The warehouse dispatches packages to stacks of delivery drones like the one pictured in the video. The mothership loads the delivery drones in order. The motherships take off regularly, and then as the mothership flies near the target swath, the drones are released one by one and glide to the target zone efficiently before doing a vertical landing. Empty, they return autonomously to a small recovery facility in a vacant lot somewhere within ~5km. They're packed into a pickup or a semi and returned to the airfield in stacks. ------ Why? Because VTOL flight is not easy to do at long ranges; Batteries generally limit that to 10-30 minutes since vehicle mass fraction is large. Because very small planes are only a small multiple (2-5x) more efficient than VTOL flight. Because high speeds are something vehicles like this are not great at. A drone like this doesn't have a great straight-line range when you sling a heavy load under it; Amazon is not going to erect sizable warehouses within ~5km of every plausible delivery. Their stock is too large, and too sparsely ordered. -------- Or, even more likely? Replace the flying mothership with a box truck dispenser. The driver stops at his target neighborhood, sends the drones out, they deliver autonomously, takes the drones back in 10 minutes later, and returns to regional warehouse in the next 20-50 minutes of driving, for 30 to 60 minute delivery. Amazon gets to deliver to a neighborhood rather than to a house.

blazespin 11y ago
I agree with the last one, but ground delivery robots would make way more sense. I don't know about 30-60 minutes, however. The soccer shoe emergency can't really be that big of a market. Emergency medicine by drone delivery I get, but the reason people go shopping nowadays is either grocery or an excuse to get out of the house. Drones are never going to eliminate the excuse to get out of the house factor.
- avar 11y ago
  Today's soccer shoe emergency is tomorrow's normal turnaround. Imagine trying to explain to someone living in the 90s that they just have to watch this one TV show right now. Surely they could just walk down to their local video rental store, not that many people really need to watch something right now! But once something like BitTorrent & Netflix happens it becomes the new expectation. I think something like drone delivery or delivery via autonomous vehicles is going to similarly change the market for the delivery of physical goods.
  - newjersey 11y ago
    To further elaborate your point, I think it is also about reducing friction. People will probably still go grocery shopping but if you were fairly confident that something you are not sure if you need is available both at Wally's world and at Amazon.com for about the same price, would you rather buy it anyways during your grocery run or put it off until you know you will need it? I don't want to think whether I will need something near the end of the week. We throw big words like nothing but I concede this is one of the hard problems where the idea of express shipping (drones, land robots, or even delivery humans) in conjunction with large distribution networks could have profound impact on the way we shop. While the distribution warehouse infrastructure of Walmart is probably nothing to laugh at, I imagine a large portion of the infrastructure is not centrally owned and managed by Walmart. Just like the famous "the network is the computer" motto, I bet Amazon thinks the warehouse infrastructure is the retail store. (To go a little off-topic, the physical Amazon.com book shop sounds strange to me. I don't get it.)
    - mc32 11y ago
      This will sound a bit off kilter, but except for truly emergent situations (injury, medication, etc.) it's good to have some "friction" otherwise we could end up with a population demanding immediate satisfaction and perfection from everything, whereas many things will remain imperfect and unrealized. Why can't my government change right now the way I want it! Why are they serving someone else in need and not me! I have a fear we're on the way to creating a whole class of people who are totally dependent on the system for everything. There will always be people who are well rounded and know the relationships between things (i.e. know where the sausage comes from)
      - arjie 11y ago
        Why shouldn't we demand immediate perfection? Why should we have to choose between serving someone else and serving me? Why shouldn't governments immediately change? All the problems with having these things today are implementation problems not fundamental issues.
- toyg 11y ago
  One word (well, acronym): DIY. Middle-class suburban dad is trying to fix the newly-bought house, but he's constantly running out of the right size of screws and/or stuff he didn't even know he needed. At the moment that scenario results in a a lot of trips to the hardware store, but cheap 60-minute deliveries would change it for the better. Neonatal supplies, cleaning supplies, you name it -- the sort of thing you really don't want to shop for, it's bulky and you never know if you're getting the right brand: if you could order it from a bookmark, knowing you'll have it in 60 minutes, then the actual shopping experience would become much more fun, because you can actually pay attention only to the funky meals you'll cook and the new stuff you can try. And of course, geeks would jump on this like crazy -- 60-minute deliveries for new hard disks, mice, games and any other soho/gaming equipment? I would sign in blood ink right now. I have my doubts the drone model can scale (for example, in Manchester, UK today we had 80mph gale winds...), but it's an awesome idea that would definitely change retail.
  - zootam 11y ago
    lol delivering a physical game
    - toyg 11y ago
      Ever tried to download a boardgame / tabletop? It's hard :)
    - inopinatus 11y ago
      A 20GB game (which is far from unusual now) in 30 minutes = 89mbit/sec, which is eight times the US national average broadband speed.
  - lazerwalker 11y ago
    To be fair, in the long run the DIY use case is more likely to be served via personal fabrication. For small finicky bits like screws, being able to print-on-demand is going to be quicker and easier than waiting for a drone.
  - marssaxman 11y ago
brianwawok 11y ago
I assume this is for bigger cities though. In Chicago you can get to over 2 million people within 6 miles as the crow flies. If you can dodge powerless and buildings it seems reasonable...
- bigiain 11y ago
  I wonder how many of those 2 million people have an appropriate size space for this video's "landing zone in the back garden"? Where I live is probably high enough density to make this idea work, but there's not enough landing space I think: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-33.9038146,151.1761515,327m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-33.9038146,151.1761515,327m...
  - DasIch 11y ago
    The drone could hover over the sidewalk in front of a building, you could signal it with your smartphone similar to how the sign is used in the first video. The drone could then drop the package or it could have a mechanism that allows you to pull the package from the drone while it's in the air above you.
    - bigiain 11y ago
      Heh - have you ever been close to a quadcopter capable of carrying a 2lb payload for 20+ minutes? It's pretty much 4 carbon fibre lawnmower blades thrashing around in the air. I'm not getting anywhere near close enough to remove a payload from one while it's attempting to keep a stationary hover in an area of poor gps reception. I'm reasonably careless with my little quads (~350g with 5 inch plastic props spun by 220W motors), but my medium sized one (~800g) gets treated with much more respect. I've got a friend with a 5+kg Octocopter - it's got 2+kW motors spinning 18 inch carbon fibre blades, I don't get within 4 or 5 meters of that when it's powered up and armed (and I'm extremely wary of it when it's got power connected but isn't "armed", because that's really just trusting Chinese electronics and open source software to not chop my fingers off...)
      - 11y ago
schiffern 11y ago
>Because very small planes are only a small multiple (2-5x) more efficient than VTOL flight. Seems like a longer wingspan is the simple answer, no?
- zootam 11y ago
  its a delicate and complex balancing act of weight, lift, drag, and thrust of both the airframe and any rotors, and the power output and energy stored aboard the craft. longer wingspan means greater lift, allowing more payload, but also means more drag, and the additional payload and longer wings also increase the mass of the craft- leading to greater power requirements, which means more powerful motors, larger rotors, and larger batteries, which are also heavier. The point is, drone/aircraft design and logistics like this cannot be solved with a simple answer like "longer wingspan". How much longer? What about all the cascading effects on all the other aspects of the craft? This all needs to be addressed and optimized to be implemented properly.
cbhl 11y ago
It's worth noting that Amazon already has warehouses in major urban centers for Prime Now: Nashville, Richmond, San Diego, Portland, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco. It seems plausible that by the time (i.e. in a few years) Amazon gets regulatory support for its delivery drones in a suburban community that it'll have saturated urban delivery markets in the US and will be ready to build warehouses in the suburbs.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Internationally too. Three major ones in London so far, used to support Prime Now as well as same day delivery for a large proportion of "normal" Prime.
hooloovoo_zoo 11y ago
I suspect this will be limited to urban areas, like all of Amazon's premium delivery options. 30 minutes of flight time at 30 mph means you could cover the entire city of Houston (the largest city by area in the U.S.) with about 4 warehouses. I think you're much better off trying to increase the range of your drones than using carriers because your coverage area is quadratic with your drones' range but linear with your number of carriers.
- mapt 11y ago
  Drones have got to get back in addition to getting to the target, and you only get 30 minutes if most/all of your payload is dedicated to battery. The drone has a fairly short range while fully loaded, and a lot longer range while empty.
  - shiftpgdn 11y ago
    86% of Amazon's deliveries are under 5lbs AND a glider style drone has way longer flight times than a traditional quad/octocopter.
    - mapt 11y ago
      5lbs is a large number in this context.
  - drbillnye 11y ago
    What we need is a sort of tcp/ip network for drones where they understand where charging stations are along the way, and other brands delivery drones would eventually be able to participate in the network as well which would spur growth. I'm good for a few charging / delivery stations in my neighborhood
- leni536 11y ago
  > coverage area is quadratic with your drones' range but linear with your number of carriers. How running cost scales with drones' range? If it's also quadratic or worse then there is no reason to increase it.
8ig8 11y ago
As a one time hooliganish teenager, I wonder if these will become targets for slingshots (or more sophisticated surface-to-air weapons).
- Retric 11y ago
  Hitting something small going 30MPH at 400 feet seems hard even with most guns. Adding some cameras you could probably track down who is attacking easily enough to discourage most people.
  - shpx 11y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGLxKXtkHpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGLxKXtkHpY Drone is a smaller than amazon's but it's a good demonstration
- nine_k 11y ago
  Not just hooliganism: there is real booty to collect. I suppose the flying altitude should be outside te air gun range, with descent right naivete landing spot.
  - criddell 11y ago
    You can also collect booty from parked UPS and FedEx trucks.
    - keville 11y ago
      In San Francisco, at least, the trucks' cargo areas are locked and reasonably well-secured when the vehicle is not attended, to reduce the opportunity for exactly this crime. I'm sure there are areas where sniping a few boxes from a truck as the driver is otherwise occupied is not so difficult, but that's not something one could expect to get away with repeatedly.
  - dba7dba 11y ago
    There's a reason the drone is made to land going directly down, vertically, once it reaches the destination. If drones do get shot down, I'm sure Amazon will eventually deploy escort drones that sense where the shots come from. lol...
Perixoog 11y ago
Except there will be no driver.
mnglkhn2 11y ago
I believe your scenarios (especially the "truck dispenser") address the market Amazon has in mind: the suburbia. If you notice, both video examples show the drone delivering at a house. It seems obvious that an urban setting is difficult to address. And actually delivery costs are higher in the suburbs, due to population spread, than in the cities. The interesting thing is how do UPS/FedEx/USPS feel about this, considering that Amazon is aiming to "evolve" their business model? We should soon hear about FedEx/UPS trying to do drone delivery. But this is not only logistics but also a lot of other software and I think Amazon might be better suited for it.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  USPS won't care, their (legally protected) business is shipping letters.
  - foobarian 11y ago
    I always thought USPS would be a perfect partner for Amazon since their post offices would be ideal takeoff points for the drones. They are everywhere and they already deal with receiving packages.
  - thinkling 11y ago
    USPS was worried enough to agree to start delivering packages for Amazon on Sundays, which must've required some interesting negotiations with their unions.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Sunday delivery workers are paid just above minimum wage and are non-union.
  - giaour 11y ago
    Delivering letters costs the USPS more than they charge customers; they make money on package postage and use that to offset the losses they incur delivering mail.
- 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ChocoCrepe 11y ago
Or even better, Amazon could build housing around their warehouses and move their shoppers into them. No flying motherships. No drones. No UPS necessary. We could call them Amazon Prime Cities. 100 bucks a year, housing included.
Poiesis 11y ago
Why would the driver need to stop?
dba7dba 11y ago
I believe the truck dispenser is the most likely scenario. I bet $1 on it.

by mapt 11y ago

blazespin 11y ago

I agree with the last one, but ground delivery robots would make way more sense. I don't know about 30-60 minutes, however. The soccer shoe emergency can't really be that big of a market. Emergency medicine by drone delivery I get, but the reason people go shopping nowadays is either grocery or an excuse to get out of the house. Drones are never going to eliminate the excuse to get out of the house factor.

avar 11y ago
Today's soccer shoe emergency is tomorrow's normal turnaround. Imagine trying to explain to someone living in the 90s that they just have to watch this one TV show right now. Surely they could just walk down to their local video rental store, not that many people really need to watch something right now! But once something like BitTorrent & Netflix happens it becomes the new expectation. I think something like drone delivery or delivery via autonomous vehicles is going to similarly change the market for the delivery of physical goods.
- newjersey 11y ago
  To further elaborate your point, I think it is also about reducing friction. People will probably still go grocery shopping but if you were fairly confident that something you are not sure if you need is available both at Wally's world and at Amazon.com for about the same price, would you rather buy it anyways during your grocery run or put it off until you know you will need it? I don't want to think whether I will need something near the end of the week. We throw big words like nothing but I concede this is one of the hard problems where the idea of express shipping (drones, land robots, or even delivery humans) in conjunction with large distribution networks could have profound impact on the way we shop. While the distribution warehouse infrastructure of Walmart is probably nothing to laugh at, I imagine a large portion of the infrastructure is not centrally owned and managed by Walmart. Just like the famous "the network is the computer" motto, I bet Amazon thinks the warehouse infrastructure is the retail store. (To go a little off-topic, the physical Amazon.com book shop sounds strange to me. I don't get it.)
  - mc32 11y ago
    This will sound a bit off kilter, but except for truly emergent situations (injury, medication, etc.) it's good to have some "friction" otherwise we could end up with a population demanding immediate satisfaction and perfection from everything, whereas many things will remain imperfect and unrealized. Why can't my government change right now the way I want it! Why are they serving someone else in need and not me! I have a fear we're on the way to creating a whole class of people who are totally dependent on the system for everything. There will always be people who are well rounded and know the relationships between things (i.e. know where the sausage comes from)
    - arjie 11y ago
      Why shouldn't we demand immediate perfection? Why should we have to choose between serving someone else and serving me? Why shouldn't governments immediately change? All the problems with having these things today are implementation problems not fundamental issues.
toyg 11y ago
One word (well, acronym): DIY. Middle-class suburban dad is trying to fix the newly-bought house, but he's constantly running out of the right size of screws and/or stuff he didn't even know he needed. At the moment that scenario results in a a lot of trips to the hardware store, but cheap 60-minute deliveries would change it for the better. Neonatal supplies, cleaning supplies, you name it -- the sort of thing you really don't want to shop for, it's bulky and you never know if you're getting the right brand: if you could order it from a bookmark, knowing you'll have it in 60 minutes, then the actual shopping experience would become much more fun, because you can actually pay attention only to the funky meals you'll cook and the new stuff you can try. And of course, geeks would jump on this like crazy -- 60-minute deliveries for new hard disks, mice, games and any other soho/gaming equipment? I would sign in blood ink right now. I have my doubts the drone model can scale (for example, in Manchester, UK today we had 80mph gale winds...), but it's an awesome idea that would definitely change retail.
- zootam 11y ago
  lol delivering a physical game
  - toyg 11y ago
    Ever tried to download a boardgame / tabletop? It's hard :)
  - inopinatus 11y ago
    A 20GB game (which is far from unusual now) in 30 minutes = 89mbit/sec, which is eight times the US national average broadband speed.
- lazerwalker 11y ago
  To be fair, in the long run the DIY use case is more likely to be served via personal fabrication. For small finicky bits like screws, being able to print-on-demand is going to be quicker and easier than waiting for a drone.
- marssaxman 11y ago

brianwawok 11y ago

I assume this is for bigger cities though. In Chicago you can get to over 2 million people within 6 miles as the crow flies. If you can dodge powerless and buildings it seems reasonable...

bigiain 11y ago
I wonder how many of those 2 million people have an appropriate size space for this video's "landing zone in the back garden"? Where I live is probably high enough density to make this idea work, but there's not enough landing space I think: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-33.9038146,151.1761515,327m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-33.9038146,151.1761515,327m...
- DasIch 11y ago
  The drone could hover over the sidewalk in front of a building, you could signal it with your smartphone similar to how the sign is used in the first video. The drone could then drop the package or it could have a mechanism that allows you to pull the package from the drone while it's in the air above you.
  - bigiain 11y ago
    Heh - have you ever been close to a quadcopter capable of carrying a 2lb payload for 20+ minutes? It's pretty much 4 carbon fibre lawnmower blades thrashing around in the air. I'm not getting anywhere near close enough to remove a payload from one while it's attempting to keep a stationary hover in an area of poor gps reception. I'm reasonably careless with my little quads (~350g with 5 inch plastic props spun by 220W motors), but my medium sized one (~800g) gets treated with much more respect. I've got a friend with a 5+kg Octocopter - it's got 2+kW motors spinning 18 inch carbon fibre blades, I don't get within 4 or 5 meters of that when it's powered up and armed (and I'm extremely wary of it when it's got power connected but isn't "armed", because that's really just trusting Chinese electronics and open source software to not chop my fingers off...)
    - 11y ago

schiffern 11y ago

>Because very small planes are only a small multiple (2-5x) more efficient than VTOL flight. Seems like a longer wingspan is the simple answer, no?

zootam 11y ago
its a delicate and complex balancing act of weight, lift, drag, and thrust of both the airframe and any rotors, and the power output and energy stored aboard the craft. longer wingspan means greater lift, allowing more payload, but also means more drag, and the additional payload and longer wings also increase the mass of the craft- leading to greater power requirements, which means more powerful motors, larger rotors, and larger batteries, which are also heavier. The point is, drone/aircraft design and logistics like this cannot be solved with a simple answer like "longer wingspan". How much longer? What about all the cascading effects on all the other aspects of the craft? This all needs to be addressed and optimized to be implemented properly.

cbhl 11y ago

It's worth noting that Amazon already has warehouses in major urban centers for Prime Now: Nashville, Richmond, San Diego, Portland, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco. It seems plausible that by the time (i.e. in a few years) Amazon gets regulatory support for its delivery drones in a suburban community that it'll have saturated urban delivery markets in the US and will be ready to build warehouses in the suburbs.

vidarh 11y ago
Internationally too. Three major ones in London so far, used to support Prime Now as well as same day delivery for a large proportion of "normal" Prime.

hooloovoo_zoo 11y ago

I suspect this will be limited to urban areas, like all of Amazon's premium delivery options. 30 minutes of flight time at 30 mph means you could cover the entire city of Houston (the largest city by area in the U.S.) with about 4 warehouses. I think you're much better off trying to increase the range of your drones than using carriers because your coverage area is quadratic with your drones' range but linear with your number of carriers.

mapt 11y ago
Drones have got to get back in addition to getting to the target, and you only get 30 minutes if most/all of your payload is dedicated to battery. The drone has a fairly short range while fully loaded, and a lot longer range while empty.
- shiftpgdn 11y ago
  86% of Amazon's deliveries are under 5lbs AND a glider style drone has way longer flight times than a traditional quad/octocopter.
  - mapt 11y ago
    5lbs is a large number in this context.
- drbillnye 11y ago
  What we need is a sort of tcp/ip network for drones where they understand where charging stations are along the way, and other brands delivery drones would eventually be able to participate in the network as well which would spur growth. I'm good for a few charging / delivery stations in my neighborhood
leni536 11y ago
> coverage area is quadratic with your drones' range but linear with your number of carriers. How running cost scales with drones' range? If it's also quadratic or worse then there is no reason to increase it.

8ig8 11y ago

As a one time hooliganish teenager, I wonder if these will become targets for slingshots (or more sophisticated surface-to-air weapons).

Retric 11y ago
Hitting something small going 30MPH at 400 feet seems hard even with most guns. Adding some cameras you could probably track down who is attacking easily enough to discourage most people.
- shpx 11y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGLxKXtkHpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGLxKXtkHpY Drone is a smaller than amazon's but it's a good demonstration
nine_k 11y ago
Not just hooliganism: there is real booty to collect. I suppose the flying altitude should be outside te air gun range, with descent right naivete landing spot.
- criddell 11y ago
  You can also collect booty from parked UPS and FedEx trucks.
  - keville 11y ago
    In San Francisco, at least, the trucks' cargo areas are locked and reasonably well-secured when the vehicle is not attended, to reduce the opportunity for exactly this crime. I'm sure there are areas where sniping a few boxes from a truck as the driver is otherwise occupied is not so difficult, but that's not something one could expect to get away with repeatedly.
- dba7dba 11y ago
  There's a reason the drone is made to land going directly down, vertically, once it reaches the destination. If drones do get shot down, I'm sure Amazon will eventually deploy escort drones that sense where the shots come from. lol...

Perixoog 11y ago

Except there will be no driver.

mnglkhn2 11y ago

I believe your scenarios (especially the "truck dispenser") address the market Amazon has in mind: the suburbia. If you notice, both video examples show the drone delivering at a house. It seems obvious that an urban setting is difficult to address. And actually delivery costs are higher in the suburbs, due to population spread, than in the cities. The interesting thing is how do UPS/FedEx/USPS feel about this, considering that Amazon is aiming to "evolve" their business model? We should soon hear about FedEx/UPS trying to do drone delivery. But this is not only logistics but also a lot of other software and I think Amazon might be better suited for it.

mschuster91 11y ago
USPS won't care, their (legally protected) business is shipping letters.
- foobarian 11y ago
  I always thought USPS would be a perfect partner for Amazon since their post offices would be ideal takeoff points for the drones. They are everywhere and they already deal with receiving packages.
- thinkling 11y ago
  USPS was worried enough to agree to start delivering packages for Amazon on Sundays, which must've required some interesting negotiations with their unions.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Sunday delivery workers are paid just above minimum wage and are non-union.
- giaour 11y ago
  Delivering letters costs the USPS more than they charge customers; they make money on package postage and use that to offset the losses they incur delivering mail.
11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ChocoCrepe 11y ago

Or even better, Amazon could build housing around their warehouses and move their shoppers into them. No flying motherships. No drones. No UPS necessary. We could call them Amazon Prime Cities. 100 bucks a year, housing included.

Poiesis 11y ago

Why would the driver need to stop?

dba7dba 11y ago

I believe the truck dispenser is the most likely scenario. I bet $1 on it.