11 ms·
Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pinkrooftop 10y agoI can't see this becoming a regular activity. They'll be people waiting near the distribution center treating it like skeet shooting range
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y agoRight, the same number of people who are hijacking ups trucks.
- snrplfth 10y agoOh, I think a few people will try - until they get chased down by "Order Fulfillment Assurance Drones" and carried away to a nearby unregistered warehouse for interrogation.
- wehadfun 10y agoUPS truck hijacked in Chicago: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/12/01/thieves-steal-packages-from-ups-and-fedex-trucks-on-south-side/ http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/12/01/thieves-steal-package... UPS truck hijacked in Boston: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2016/11/10/dorchester-ups-truck-carjacking-boston/ http://boston.cbslocal.com/2016/11/10/dorchester-ups-truck-c... UPS truck hijacked in Milwaukee: http://fox6now.com/2015/12/11/it-seems-to-be-getting-worse-milwaukee-police-investigate-second-stolen-delivery-truck-in-one-week/ http://fox6now.com/2015/12/11/it-seems-to-be-getting-worse-m... UPS truck hijacked in Florida: http://www.wptv.com/news/region-st-lucie-county/fort-pierce/ups-truck-driver-carjacked-in-fort-pierce-packages-stolen http://www.wptv.com/news/region-st-lucie-county/fort-pierce/... Georgia: http://www.cbs46.com/story/15389422/stolen-ups-trailers-found-in-fairburn http://www.cbs46.com/story/15389422/stolen-ups-trailers-foun...
- kaishiro 10y agoAre you trying to make a point? If so, could you be more clear?
- wehadfun 10y agoSure! The comment I replied to, seems to imply that hijacking UPS trucks is a non-existent, or rare event. A simple Google Search seems to indicate that it happens all the time. There for making the original OPs concern somewhat valid.
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y agoYour definition of "all the time" includes two news stories in the last year?
- wehadfun 10y agoIf you honestly think that only 2 UPS trucks were hijacked last year based on my post then there is no reason for me to reply to you.
- vkou 10y agoEvery year, without fail, there are people in the world who are killed by goats. This doesn't mean that I need to worry about goat attacks.
- wehadfun 10y agoYour logic is off. If you spend a lot of time around goats then worrying about a goat attack is valid. Similar to how people in North Dakota do not worry about hurricane but people in the Florida Keys do.
- jeffmcjunkin 10y agoI can't help but reference https://xkcd.com/795/ https://xkcd.com/795/
- truth_sentinell 10y agoI think the comparison between robbing a truck and a drone is naive at best. Would you consider the same robbing a truck, probably threatening the driver at gun point, being seen by him, to grabbing a package from the claps of a drone?
- crooked-v 10y ago...and police waiting to arrest those people for vandalism, theft, and public endangerment.
- vkou 10y agoYou should try shooting some clays in your neighbourhood. I'd be surprised if it would take more then ten minutes for you to be acquainted with your Miranda rights. Actually, I suppose it's just as likely that you'd be acquainted with a coroner.
- birdman3131 10y agoEhh. Id be more worried about the hackers redirecting the flights
- wehadfun 10y agoAccording to Vice News this is already is happening in China
- txru 10y agoThat may be more of a study in law than any meaningful difference in technology.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- zapt02 10y agoI see the test flight conveniently took place over farmland. What happens when one of these has a mid-flight failure and hits someone over the head?
- vorpalhex 10y agoThey probably get a bonk on the head and checked for a concussion. Better then being hit by a delivery truck I suppose.
- zapt02 10y agoSounds like a best-case scenario, those drones fly pretty high and are very heavy. Sounds more likely that it would be a fatality.
- FroshKiller 10y agoA fatality involving one person rather than two drivers, more than two drivers, one driver and a pedestrian, one driver and multiple pedestrians....
- will_brown 10y agoAn insurance claim and/or lawsuit, no different than a delivery driver or truck "failure" and resulting traffic accident.
- pmoriarty 10y agoWhat happens when a drone fleet like this gets hacked?
- pchristensen 10y ago13 minute delivery. Pretty nice! Also, "Amazon’s proposed use of drones may drive down the cost to deliver small packages crosstown to as little as $1, a fraction of existing same-day delivery options, according to a 2015 study by New York-based ARK Invest that tried to quantify the savings from the use of drones compared with delivery trucks and couriers."
- melling 10y agoAnd the drones run on electricity. Use solar and wind farms to charge them and you'll be saving the planet with your express deliveries. :-)
- dangerboysteve 10y agoThe customer will still pay the same. They get convenience of fast delivery. There is a cost to run and maintain a drone fleet of this size.
- thesumofall 10y agoMost data I've seen does actually suggest that drones won't be cost competitive with delivery trucks anytime soon - esp. across cities. However, speed can indeed be a USP that would be difficult to match with delivery trucks. Edit: Also interesting: https://www.flexport.com/blog/drone-delivery-economics/ https://www.flexport.com/blog/drone-delivery-economics/
- k26dr 10y agoAnybody know how much it costs them to make one of these deliveries? Is it cost-competitive with a delivery truck?
- smlacy 10y ago<sarcasm> Cost of specialized drone wherehouse in remote England: $1.2mm Cost of 3+yrs of R&D of drone fleet: $436mm Cost of delivering first package: priceless </sarcasm> I'm not sure how this is ever going to compare with a truck and driver, especially when the truck will be self-driving in less than a decade.
- jonknee 10y agoHow's that self driving truck going to get the package to the door?
- smlacy 10y agoI didn't see any packages dropped off right at the door, did you?
- mxuribe 10y agoOr...better yet, there would be a self-driving truck/flat-bed which drives close to a certain city-center area, and has on its bed a mini-fleet of drones, these drones will lift-off from the truck instead of the fulfillment hub...these smaller drones would deliver it to the front door. Alternatively, the self-driving truck could have a cartoon-like robotic arm that extends to the customer's front door; ringing the doorbell automatically and dropping the package on the doormat. ;-)
- madamelic 10y agoSlingshot. :)
- Neliquat 10y agoNot exactly making history here. Wake me up when anyone can order from a drone, not just another PR stunt. And I see legitimate questions downvoted already. The amazon shill is real.
- peteretep 10y agoYou expect it will one day just pop in to existence from nothing, and there are no milestones along the way to celebrate? I rate your comment 1/5 stars.
- repo001 10y agoThis is what bothered me too. "Hey everyone, we delivered to our first real customer!" Then shows the "customer" with a full camera crew, obvious UI mocks, and great looking warehouse workers I have a hard time believing aren't paid actors. Like most things these days, it's probably a paid for PR article lightly disguised as authentic.
- dang 10y ago> And I see legitimate questions downvoted already. The amazon shill is real. Please don't complain about downvotes or accuse other users of astroturfing or shilling — the first is explicitly against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and the second is a notorious poison (late edit: and in the guidelines now too).
- stevecalifornia 10y agoVacations are already being soiled by people flying loud drones in areas of natural beauty, now we get to have our day-to-day skies soiled by fleets of drones delivering popcorn. Am I the only one who doesn't want this specifically because of the noise nuisance?
- FroshKiller 10y agoI don't know about you being the only one, but personally, I certainly prefer the buzz if it means fewer vehicles on the roads every day.
- wackro 10y agoI'm not sure decreased traffic will be an effect. Only increased air traffic. And more amazon sales.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y agoDelivery trucks are way more quiet for each ton of goods they deliver. I’d rather have two trucks filled to the top on the road once a day instead of dozens of delivery drones delivering goods around the clock. It means the customer won’t get his toothbrush 30 minutes after ordering but at least the rest can live in peace.
- FroshKiller 10y agoTo be clear, I don't really give a damn about the noise either way. I care about reducing the risk of loss of life in automobile accidents.
- ProAm 10y agoSo more lives saved and less jobs to go around sounds like a wonderful future existence.
- FroshKiller 10y ago
- chinathrow 10y agoDirect link to PR video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNySOrI2Ny8&app=desktop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNySOrI2Ny8&app=desktop
- sarreph 10y agoI'm trying not to be cynical, but to me this still feels like there is a huge gap between now and scaling this into urban areas. As other commenters have pointed out, how is Amazon going to operate drone fleets in cities? Of course we must take small steps to get to the Amazon utopia, but we must question how much hype there is on these kinds of 'demos'. After all, it's drone technology demonstrating pickup/dropoff over rural land.
- peteretep 10y agoDo they need to operate in the cities right now, or is a hybrid fleet an option and different solutions for different population densities? I note as well that in a city like Oxford (UK) many/most houses do in fact have gardens. Different cities, different solutions. Not everywhere is NYC
- brenschluss 10y agoI feel like this is a stunt. Drone delivery only works with customers that have private backyards - so won't work in a city, since the payload is unsecured after the drones drop it off. In a suburban/rural context, density is lower, meaning that with the limited range of drones, distribution centers won't be able to take advantage of density. Thus the range of products available at each distribution center will be much lower (it's much more efficient from an inventory/logistics standpoint to have one distribution center in midtown Manhattan with many products, rather than many distribution centers spread across the suburbs of NYC, say), forcing customers to choose from a given list of a few hundred products. Drone delivery is thus high convenience, ultra-high speed, low volume, high cost -- but more importantly, a low-choice process. What kind of things will you buy from a list that you need delivered within 30 minutes?
- davidverhasselt 10y agoI can see drones being used in cities to dump packages into the top of packet vending machines that already exist, that open up with a PIN code. It'd be much easier too because the route can be hardcoded towards the machine.
- kuschku 10y agoThat's a good idea. Combine it with a DHL Packstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packstation in every building, or, in more suburbian areas, every street, and you solved deliveries.
- petra 10y agoIn cities, delivery drivers ship 600 packages/day into packet vending machines, vs only 60 regular delivery, and regular deliveries via usps cost less than $2 for amazon., So i don't think a drone , in this high density case could offer much savings.
- elahd 10y ago>so won't work in a city, since the payload is unsecured after the drones drop it off My building's roof is at least as secure as its lobby.
- randomdrake 10y agoWhile the technology to move a package from point A to point B safely and autonomously is pretty cool, I think the more interesting story is what will happen to enable this feat. One thing Amazon has done right over the years has been figuring out how to blow away existing practices and technologies in the shipping and fulfillment space to replace or upgrade them with processes or tech allowing for ridiculous savings in cost and time. The "13 min -- click to delivery." is really neat but there are so many services necessary to bring it to reality that are really fascinating as well: 1) The website itself probably speaking to dozens of micro services to take the order and complete the order. 2) The fulfillment of the order in an automated warehouse. For the most part, a huge robotic fleet is employed to find, process, package, and ready a package for delivery. 3) The movement of the package to the drone delivery platform or fleet. 3a) The attachment or delivery of the payload to the drone itself. 4) The delivery, tracking, and confirmation of delivery, for the package itself. 5) The return, maintenance, and readiness completion of the drone for the next flight. All of these processes are going to involve dozens of technologies, robots, humans, global services, local services, legal regulations, and more. The video shows a small garage and a single unit on tracks with a human finishing the packaging. All of this will have to replaced, scaled, and automated in a variety of capacities before this becomes cost effective. Really interesting time to be alive to watch these processes evolve as they will be almost invisible and taken for granted in the next 20 years or so.
- hiddencost 10y agodozens of microservices? --> thousands
- kuschku 10y agoInterestingly, many competitors of Amazon already have that technology - take for example http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2016/09/08/a-new-mercedes-benz-van-designed-to-facilitate-drone-deliveries/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2016/09/08/a-new-mer... this concept.
- wehadfun 10y agoThese things should fly over roads five to six feet above ground. That fixes most of the safety concerns
- anton_tarasenko 10y agoThat's a last mile solution. Comparing to human costs of Amazon's preferred shipping method: USPS's subsidized parcel injection. The last mile belongs to USPS. In the urban environment, that's about 15 minute per parcel at $20 per hour (labor plus trucks). I.e., $5 per parcel. For FedEx, the cost of the entire expedition process is roughly $6.6 per parcel ($43bn cost of revenue for 6.5bn deliveries), so the last mile costs less than that. Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeny suggests $10 per drone delivery. He doesn't specify from where. I assume he also means the last mile. Are drones more expensive than humans? Air is expensive. Think of helicopters vs cars. With all congestion, helicopters have not become the vehicle of choice. They're noisy and can land only in certain locations. Most urban areas are too dangerous for them. Air drones inherit these disadvantages. As for Amazon, it'd have to stop outsourcing delivery to postal services and build a lot of physical infrastructure. Few tech companies are comfortable with this because they become capital intensive businesses, which they don't like. So, not Amazon and not air drones. Perhaps ground vehicles within city borders and only after cars learn driving without humans. That's 5-10 more years.
- Ph0X 10y agois 10$ the cost the customer pays, or the cost of the delivery? I highly doubt the little electricity (or maintenance cost over time) is 10$ per delivery. Also, as a straight comparison, drones are faster, scale better and are able to work at hours humans wouldn't. So even if it was 5$ vs 10$, some could argue that it's worth it. Obviously not in all situations, but sometimes there's an item you need right now and not tomorrow.
- anton_tarasenko 10y ago$10 is the "willingness to pay" (the number is in the article). There's no good estimate of drone delivery costs since the interested parties cherrypick locations and distance.
- snuxoll 10y agoI'm certain drone delivery will be a premium service for some time to come, even with Amazon working tirelessly to do their own logistics the cost of purchasing drones, maintaining them, keeping enough spare batteries charged, etc. is not $0. I already pay $4 at minimum for next-day delivery with Amazon Prime, if they want to charge me $6 to get a kit of memory or a cable in 30 minutes instead of having to drive to Best Buy (and pay a lot more than $6 extra for) I would happily do so.
- whoiskevin 10y agoI noticed it didn't deliver a holiday fruit cake. Probably due to the weight limit. Logistics will get better but without some weight increase this is going to be a long way off from useful.
- sqeaky 10y agoThis is a first generation attempt at a solution and you are already wanting it to deliver terrible things like fruitcake, you terrorist! Seriously, this is a not the final form these will take. If there is any economic niche that this can fill it will fill it. Then as prices come down, technology improves, autonomy increases or niches open this will grow and improve.
- losteverything 10y agoAs a person who gets outstanding benefits (& some $) making deliveries I think this is great. Getting mail 6 days a week is not necessary. And if this allows a knife to cut out all highway routes and some rural ones and replace with only drones that would be advancement. Mail is not a right but glued now to legislation. No need if nothing-above-me areas get only drone service. I ponder this. As the ups and FedEx and Usps guys converge in the same address, we often talk shop. I wonder what an Amazon drone would say to a competitor drone when they are at/near the same address? "Man, my supervisor is always watching me?" or "they loaded up this flier unbalanced"
- pseudometa 10y agoAutonomous trucks and cars will be here long before drone delivery is actually a thing. For now Amazon can get easy free press for delivering popcorn... they might as well start a group focused on carrier pigeon delivery.
- plandis 10y agoI think both have their benefits. Drones probably work better as a last mile kind of solution where time is a factor (roads can be much more congested than the air)
- akeck 10y agoAre there things these drones can't deliver, because only USPS can legally deliver that class of item?
- losteverything 10y agoFirst class letters are exclusive to Usps Safety angle. Every item going on domestic aircraft is scanned for bombs etc.. Safety is a Usps priority. After Unabomber where all mail from west coast went via truck till he was caught and 911 Usps is insane about nothing blowing up an aircraft with postal stuff in its manifest.
- gergles 10y agoNon-urgent letters, I guess? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes
- tedks 10y agoOld man yells at cloud, curses future, more at 11.
- dang 10y agoWe've banned this account for continuing to post personal attacks and uncivil comments despite multiple requests not to. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13177746 and marked it off-topic.
- frahs 10y agoWhy does the drone have to be wheeled out on tracks so far away from the shop for takeoff? It looks like this center may have been used for early testing where they were less confident in the drone's ability to takeoff Also, it's interesting that they rely on fiducials placed on the ground to track the drop off point. I'd expect them to be using GPS + vision to figure out a dropoff point. Humans are really good at that, you'd think some algorithm would be good enough for 99% of the cases and save the customer time (with fiducials as a decent fallback for tricky buildings/houses)
- JoshuaRedmond 10y agoA lot of the valid issues people have with this concept is about the cost of flying a drone half-way across a city to deliver a single item, but I think that's just the way Amazon are pitching it at the moment. I think it's much more likely that they'll have a fleet of self driving vans with a few of these in the back - it pulls up to the end of your road/block/village and lets them loose for a few deliveries before moving onto the next place. Not quite as fast as the 13 minutes they're quoting, but much more feasible and potentially much faster than a bloke in a van.
- dman 10y agoWhat happens in bad weather with a drone delivery?
- baoha 10y agoI've been very impressed with Amazon recently. Given how many bad things people saying about the culture, especially the turnover rate of engineers there, how can they manage to keep things run smoothly and keep introducing new things with the cutting edge technologies.
- bit_logic 10y agoIt seems regulation in this area is inevitable. Similar to how AT&T was regulated because of the natural monopoly of phone cables to all homes (it doesn't make sense for each phone company to have it's own cable going to every home). The air doesn't have infinite capacity. What happens when Google, Microsoft, Walmart, Target, etc. all try to operate their own drone fleets? At a minimum, there must be a common protocol to coordinate all this drone air traffic. Or maybe it's better to recognize it as a natural monopoly and only allow one regulated drone fleet.
- btbuildem 10y agoThat'll work until these get popular: https://www.droneshield.com/dronegun https://www.droneshield.com/dronegun
- madamelic 10y agoOh man, let's just hope pistols and ski masks don't get popular or delivery drivers are going to need to watch out.
- noxToken 10y agoThose things aren't even legal in the US, and I'm sure that if you were caught using one by a company like Amazon, they'd quickly put you on the hook for the bill.
- timthorn 10y agoMatching the video to the local geography, looks like it starts at Heath Farm: https://binged.it/2hPbvaN https://binged.it/2hPbvaN There's an implication in the story and some comments that this is a rural location, but it's quite close to Cambridge - ARM's HQ is only about 2 miles away. It's open country between ARM and Heath Farm, but as Cambridge airport isn't much further, deliveries there might be a bit tricky.
- GBond 10y agoJD.com (one of the large Amazons of china) has been doing this at a larger scale. http://fortune.com/2016/11/14/jd-china-drone-delivery-singles-day/ http://fortune.com/2016/11/14/jd-china-drone-delivery-single...
- frogpelt 10y agoAs a society, we really need to look at why we have no patience. Can we not wait 2 or 3 days to receive an order? Do we have to have everything right now?