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Coffee delivery drone patented by IBM
- tcfunk 8y ago> IBM suggests the drone could be equipped with technology to detect blood pressure, pupil dilation and facial expressions and judge whether people are drowsy. Why waste the time on brewing coffee? Just have it fly around and administer routine caffeine injections.
- bsamuels 8y agoinjections would require too much articulation, finding veins, etc loading a tranq dart with caffeine and shooting them at drowsy people would be much more cost effective
- lev99 8y agoIf the dart is filled with caffeine I don't think it's called a 'tranq dart'.
- bsamuels 8y agothat kind of detail isn't terribly important when you're trying to move fast & break things
- bonestamp2 8y agoDartbucks
- saudioger 8y agoDart powered by Jolt
- saudioger 8y agoJust have the police drones point their guns at the drowsy and scold them for not being productive enough.
- reilly3000 8y agoIs IBM just a marketing company now?
- gruez 8y ago>marketing you mean patent troll
- harshulpandav 8y agoWhile the technology is great, I am not sure of its use case. People summoning for coffee is fine. But for people who look tired and distressed, I think coffee is just a 'quick fix' for that. How about drone reporting it back to the person's manager (as a feedback) to indicate if management rework needs to be done (sometimes one person in team ends up doing most of the work). Or drone sending an automated email giving suggestions to the employee to either take a break, go for a walk, drink water, or give recommendations of meeting other people who are in the same state. Maybe the drone can even take into account the project which the employee is working on and help him socialize with others who are working on other projects, which ultimately might give rise to a brand new project idea. Just my two cents!
- WilliamEdward 8y agoOk cool, but the patent is for the technology itself? They can use it for whatever they want, coffee is just a filler.
- lisper 8y agoActually it's not. The patent claims really are specifically about delivering coffee (well, about delivering a beverage containing a stimulant). And not just that, it's about delivering it to sleepy people, where sleepiness is determined by an algorithm. It's completely nuts.
- BurningFrog 8y agoAn automated system reporting to my manager when I'm not looking cheerful?
- chris_mc 8y agoIf I were the CEO of IBM, I'd wonder what jagoff spent 10 grand (average patent cost, with lawyers and other services) to make a coffee drone joke.
- dsr_ 8y agoSomeone who gets a bonus for each patent successfully filed.
- kodablah 8y agoYup, IBM begs employees to patent anything they can. They have entire patent groups to steward unfamiliar employees along the path, and they'll have presentations reminding employees about bonuses they get for successful filings and to try to get anything through because it's harmless to try. Most people might say this is the defensive patent mindset we live in these days (IBM is not extremely offensive), but one wonders whether this deluge upon the USPTO exacerbates the problem. Granted it could be argued that unreasonable patents would be approved regardless of volume.
- chaoticmass 8y agoIt got an article written about it, and we're here talking about it, so it may even have been a PR stunt (and of course, IBM does heavily encourage their employees to patent anything they can)
- gaius 8y agoIBM is a law firm these days
- rabi_penguin 8y agoThis was my exact thought -- I'm stunned by how earnest the comments are here when my troll-dar is going off heavily right now. I guess I should be glad they didn't find some harebrained way to include the blockchain. There's nothing wrong with drone delivery, but the "innovation" of trying to address a people ops problem with coffee is so woefully wrongheaded that it really begs the question of whether it was intended seriously.
- schiffern 8y agoFollowing Dan Shapiro's advice[1] for how to read patents, ”What is claimed is: A method for delivering a drink to an individual, comprising: connecting the drink to an unmanned arial vehicle (UAV); flying the UAV, the one or more sensors connected to the UAV, the one or more sensors connected to an electronic processing circuit which identifies an individual among the people that may have a predetermined sleepy cognitive state including determining a confidence level corresponding to a probable desire of the individual for the drink including a stimulant which reduces a sleepy cognitive state, based on the sensor data and using sleep data pertaining to sleep experienced by the people when selecting the individual that may have the sleepy cognitive state; accessing sleep data pertaining to the sleep cycle of the individual determined by motion detection of the individual during a sleep period, and adjusting the confidence level in accordance to the sleep data; and if the confidence level reaches a predetermined level, flying the UAV to the individual that may have the sleepy cognitive state to deliver the drink including the stimulant to the individual.“ Headline should read "Sleep tracking coffee delivery drone patented by IBM." [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11586448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11586448
- jfoutz 8y agoSorta wacky they want to deliver mostly hot water by air rather than caffeine. Far smaller, lighter package would do wonders for flight time and reloading.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- nathanaldensr 8y agoLimitless human ingenuity being used...to deliver coffee to tired people.
- asn0 8y agoClearly part of IBM's evil plan to take over the world with Watson. After replacing game players, retail associates, financial advisors, scientists, and doctors, the only challenge left is the office intern.
- lev99 8y agoI'd like to see the same technology be used to deliver alcohol to the least drunk person at a party.
- sungju1203 8y ago+1
- znpy 8y agoQuick, file a patent!
- sungju1203 8y agowhat's the point of patenting technology and not really producing it? I think they just want to sue potential innovative companies and not taking any risk.
- unit91 8y agoThat, and ride patents to a seat at the table as a "key stakeholder". Got a great idea? We love it! We'll take 40% of every unit sold. Good luck!
- gweinberg 8y ago1) prevent anybody else from patenting it. 2) collect royalties of somebody else decides to build such a thing. 3) bump up their patent count.
- bonestamp2 8y agoAt this point it's probably too early to say if they're going to produce it or not.
- trukterious 8y agoYes. I'm ignorant of intellectual property law, but wouldn't requiring an intent to actually produce the relevant technology prevent some of the abuses of the patent system?
- ruffrey 8y agoPerhaps I have become jaded or a conspiracy theorist, but I see this as the following: - the drone space is increasingly easy to enter into - IBM sees non-tech companies might get into drones - they identify potential markets where drones would be useful - they spend minimal resources developing a "prototype" and file for a patent - Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts come along with coffee delivery drones ~3 years later - IBM shakes down Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts for $x.00 per delivery, now has new stream of extortion recurring revenue
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ryanmarsh 8y agoNo, you're not a conspiracy theorist, that's exactly how the patent system works. Many companies who won't admit it in public are knowingly engaged in exactly this practice. It's anti-competitive, it stinks, everyone knows it, and nothing is being done about it.
- WilliamEdward 8y agoWould the patent system be better and less trolly if you were legally required to produce whatever you patent?
- brianwawok 8y agoHow many units? 1? 1000? Could IBM make 1000 drones with a coffee cup attached?
- mars4rp 8y agomaybe at least a prototype and expires after 2 years if you haven't commercialized it!
- joshuagross 8y ago
- rpoconn1 8y agoFlying hot coffee. What could go wrong?
- mosselman 8y agoThis shows how idiotic the patent system is: you just generate a random combination of words, select 10 combinations that make remote sense and create some half-baked implementation on paper for it and suddenly you have the right to money from people who happen to actually implement it properly later.
- akshayB 8y agoThis is so counter intuitive when patents like this are awarded. So if someone wants to make a drone that delivers tea/coffee they pay royalty to IBM but is it ok if they deliver paper supplies or food? In future this has total implications for drinks/soda companies and ironically IBM manufactures none. This is a perfect example of how patent system is totally broken and needs some kind of change.
- stephengillie 8y agoIt's as absurd as patenting one-click buying. Are drones the new website, in so far as the patenting of obvious use cases and meaningless marketing terms?
- trukterious 8y ago>is it ok if they deliver paper supplies or food On the subject of paper, aren't the papers on my desk going to be blown around as a result of drones delivering compulsory coffee?
- myth_drannon 8y agoIBM is always chasing the latest hype, but their ability to execute is lacking. Just looking at how they are all over blockchain tech with so many talking heads. The same with drones I imagine. They truly believe with enough screen time people will start taking a notice of this Potyomkin village type company.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- foreigner 8y agoIBM pays employees a $500 bonus if their patent proposal gets past an internal review board, and another $500 if the patent office actually awards the patent. The internal review board's only concern is if the patent application is likely to be successful. They don't care if the idea is silly or has no bearing on the company's business. A small subset of employees file the vast majority of IBM's patents. These are awarded the title "Master Inventor". Many Master Inventors earn more from the patent bonuses than they do in actual salary. In theory the title is an accolade but in practice Master Inventors are sometimes shunned because they spend all their time thinking up silly patent ideas instead of doing "real work". Source: I used to work for IBM and collected a handful of those bonuses before I realized how silly it was.
- Retra 8y ago>They don't care if the idea is silly or has no bearing on the company's business. That's not entirely true. They do, perhaps approximately, require that the idea be within a market that IBM could consider moving into if they wanted.
- lozaning 8y agoI seem to recall being told at one point while interning there that you couldn't get on the management track within Tivoli with less than 5 patents to your name. I was always super jealous of the patent plaques people would have made and hang in their office when one got approved.
- P_I_Staker 8y ago
- mentos 8y agoHa as the owner of a few drones who has dreamed up a few ideas like this I think the biggest issue is noise. Can’t realistically have one of these flying in an office or social setting without irritating a bunch of people. Would be curious to see what can be done to make drones quieter though.
- new_here 8y agoSAP must be kicking themselves for not thinking of this one.
- kevdragon6 8y agoLink to the patent https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170174343A1/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170174343A1/
- sandworm101 8y agoNobody else disturbed by the idea of a computer identifying under-performing employees and delivering them a shot of a stimulant? Coffee is rather tame, but this is a step towards many a scifi trope.
- ram_rar 8y agoHaving seen both sides of patents vs non-patents arguments. The only sane conclusion I have come to is, to have a validity for a much shorter duration for tech patents like 10 years or so. If the company cannot extract value from it in the next 10 years or less, then let someone else do it.
- reilly3000 8y agoHave the figured out how to stop downdraft from the props to not blow away paper off people's desk? Does the drone not embark with hot coffee payload if battery is not enough to complete the journey without spinning blades and scalding liquid crashing on people or computers? Can they make it operate at >60dB so people can work? If those questions don't have satisfactory answers, how could it possibly be that this invention "expresses a specific, credible, and substantial utility" such that it is deserving of patent protection?
- grillvogel 8y agodoes IBM even do anything anymore other than these stupid meme-technology ideas to generate headlines?
- kevin_b_er 8y agoI fail to see what is novel about "delivering X via drone". Is delivering a new thing via truck patentable? What, specifically, did they invent? Its the same patent landgrab as software patents where it is "do X, but on the internet". I'd call this as IBM trying to lay down a patent minefield against those that would actually engage in commerce. In this sense, the patent does not advance the arts or sciences and should fail the sniff test for granting an absolute monopoly to a corporation on some action.
- _0ffh 8y agoSo, we gonna have a distinct patent for every X-delivery-Y where X is a kind of item to be delivered and Y is a method of delivery?
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