4 ms·

The major difference here is the economies of scale. When you have a centralized facility, you can afford to invest in expensive, high-throughput machinery beca

The major difference here is the economies of scale. When you have a centralized facility, you can afford to invest in expensive, high-throughput machinery because you make up for those investments with volume. However, centralizing necessitates some distribution costs, which in the case of many foods imposes some harsh constraints on ingredients and quality; there’s a reason those pizzas are all frozen, and don’t reaaaaaallly taste all that fresh. If the cost of these small-scale production robots drops low enough (achieved through smarter control rather than high-precision parts), you can remove the ingredient constraints and make a better product while capturing savings of automation.

haser_au 7y ago
Fun facts: Average radius (from city centre) of top 20 US cities by population [1]: 15km Top speed of the latest racing drone [2]: 265 km/h Top speed allowed under FAA rules [3]: 160 km/h Average Flight time for a delivery (7.5km @ 160 km/h): 2 min 48 seconds Assume additional time for loading, take-off, speed ramp, speed slow, landing and unloading: Door-to-door in less than 5 minutes (average). Sources: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [2] https://thedroneracingleague.com/racerx/ https://thedroneracingleague.com/racerx/ [3] https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=22615 https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=2...
- schoen 7y ago
  If you want to model a city as a circle, you should probably instead use a radius where half of the area of the circle lies within that radius. When you halve the radius, you divide the area by four! For example, the area of a circle with radius 15 km is about 707 km², while the area of a circle with radius 7.5 km is only about 177 km². If the population density by unit land area is evenly distributed, this circle will only enclose a quarter of the city's population, rather than half. I think an interesting future limiting factor is air traffic from delivery drones. Right now it seems absurd to worry about that because there are no delivery drones flying, but if this method becomes popular, the presence of other drones in the airspace could limit delivery drones' mobility.
  - Y_Y 7y ago
    You make a good point about circles. I'd like to add that the pi r^2 circle we know and love isn't the only one. It depends on the "metric" which in that case is Euclidean ("as the crow flies"). If you have have traffic rules, like only flying certain routes you get a different shape circle and a different area as a function of radius. A famous example is the "Manhattan" metric where you drive around on a square grid. In this case the "circle" looks just like a square and has area 4 r^2.

haser_au 7y ago

Fun facts: Average radius (from city centre) of top 20 US cities by population [1]: 15km Top speed of the latest racing drone [2]: 265 km/h Top speed allowed under FAA rules [3]: 160 km/h Average Flight time for a delivery (7.5km @ 160 km/h): 2 min 48 seconds Assume additional time for loading, take-off, speed ramp, speed slow, landing and unloading: Door-to-door in less than 5 minutes (average). Sources: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [2] https://thedroneracingleague.com/racerx/ https://thedroneracingleague.com/racerx/ [3] https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=22615 https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=2...

schoen 7y ago
If you want to model a city as a circle, you should probably instead use a radius where half of the area of the circle lies within that radius. When you halve the radius, you divide the area by four! For example, the area of a circle with radius 15 km is about 707 km², while the area of a circle with radius 7.5 km is only about 177 km². If the population density by unit land area is evenly distributed, this circle will only enclose a quarter of the city's population, rather than half. I think an interesting future limiting factor is air traffic from delivery drones. Right now it seems absurd to worry about that because there are no delivery drones flying, but if this method becomes popular, the presence of other drones in the airspace could limit delivery drones' mobility.
- Y_Y 7y ago
  You make a good point about circles. I'd like to add that the pi r^2 circle we know and love isn't the only one. It depends on the "metric" which in that case is Euclidean ("as the crow flies"). If you have have traffic rules, like only flying certain routes you get a different shape circle and a different area as a function of radius. A famous example is the "Manhattan" metric where you drive around on a square grid. In this case the "circle" looks just like a square and has area 4 r^2.