5 ms·

Apart from the Scifi-ness of having drones work well in the best of conditions, the back-up infrastructure required to support bad conditions would seem to make

by crusso 13y ago

Apart from the Scifi-ness of having drones work well in the best of conditions, the back-up infrastructure required to support bad conditions would seem to make the whole venture unrealistic. Let's say that a little drone could reliably carry a package to doorsteps 10 miles away. Let's assume that it can navigate past trees and power lines and kite strings and so forth. So Amazon builds up these service centers with hundreds of drones delivering packages in a metro area to meet their delivery time commitments. Then you get a few weeks of bad weather: regular daily thunderstorms, snow storms, a great deal of gusty weather, etc. Do the delivery time commitments have caveats for consistently bad weather? Unless you live in California, you have to deal with days and days of rain or other foul weather that will eliminate a drone's ability to fly safely, much less be able to deliver a small package without damaging the contents. When that happens, Amazon will need to maintain a fleet of trucks with drivers to take over. Maintaining that capacity will deeply cut into the profit of their business model.

carbocation 13y ago
I don't think that rain, snow, or modest winds should be problematic for any properly equipped drone.
- crusso 13y ago
  I've flown gas and electric helicopters and airplanes as a hobby over the years. These small aircraft are very susceptible to bad weather. They're already going to be carrying a significant load with an attached package. They won't be able to handle a great deal of weather adversity.
  - carbocation 13y ago
    > They won't be able to handle a great deal of weather adversity. I have less experience than you in the field, but I suspect that Amazon would not be promulgating such a service if it had such obvious fatal flaws.
    - crusso 13y ago
      Apple was talking about its "Knowledge Navigator" back in the 80s -- not because it had the technology. It still doesn't have that level of technology 25 years later. They did it to generate some buzz and to foster the notion that they were a technological leader.
  - chongli 13y ago
    Have you flown computer-controlled multirotors? There's a big difference between fixed wing aircraft or helicopters and computer-controlled multirotors. These things are highly sophisticated and capable of making thousands of adjustments to the speeds of their rotors every second.
akandiah 13y ago
> Maintaining that capacity will deeply cut into the profit of their business model. What profit?
toyg 13y ago
It's just another option to add to the mix. Not everyone chooses next-day delivery, not everyone will choose 30-min delivery; the classic delivery infrastructure will likely remain in place. The service will just periodically be disabled: "due to severe weather in your area, PrimeAir is currently not available. Please check back later, or choose standard delivery."
- crusso 13y ago
  It's still a question of capacity. Any drone deliveries that need to be made will take away from other delivery capacity. Given that standard vehicle delivery will be much more time consuming and much less parallelized than the drone delivery, drone outages will place a thrashing level of load on standard delivery unless a great deal of unutilized standard delivery capacity is kept idle most of the time. That costs money. [edit: typo fixed]
  - toyg 13y ago
    That's more of a question for FedEx and UPS. Of course existing contracts with Amazon will require tweaking, but I don't see how drone-outage periods will be much different from other volume spikes.
  - dannypgh 13y ago
    That doesn't seem like a difficult problem to solve. Delivery isn't free, even if the customer isn't the one paying for it. If standard delivery becomes more expensive due to the weather-linked bursty nature of the load requiring additional provisioning, you just need to charge more for standard delivery. Which I'd expect a company like amazon to implement as a fair-weather discount, given the propensity of humans to be loss averse.
  - bagacrap 13y ago
    Isn't that already the case when bad weather strikes? Delivery trucks take longer to drive around in bad rain, or blizzards, or unpredictable traffic (resulting from accidents or road closures). The slower the truck, the more of them you need.
hyperbovine 13y ago
One in ten Americans, and likely a much larger portion of Amazon's customer base, and probably an even larger fraction of their revenues, is in California. So even if this only worked here, it could still be a wise investment.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
chobo 13y ago
Why can't Amazon just have the service be weather dependent like any air service? If some place has weather that makes drone delivery difficult, the option will be turned off. They'll look at the weather in the next 30 minutes and judge whether or not the drone can fly. Pretty simple, right?
drawkbox 13y ago
The real-time nature of knowing that would allow them to turn on/off air delivery based on conditions or backup. I think the perfect world would be a combination of air and land autonomous vehicles. Maybe even the vehicles take it the last mile and it is flown in more robust air delivery drones more weather proof. Over time I am sure this will happen in some way.
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Amazon already has a fleet of trucks, plus the ability to use UPS and USPS. In conditions where the drones can't operate they'll just fall back to conventional delivery options.

by crusso 13y ago

carbocation 13y ago

I don't think that rain, snow, or modest winds should be problematic for any properly equipped drone.

crusso 13y ago
I've flown gas and electric helicopters and airplanes as a hobby over the years. These small aircraft are very susceptible to bad weather. They're already going to be carrying a significant load with an attached package. They won't be able to handle a great deal of weather adversity.
- carbocation 13y ago
  > They won't be able to handle a great deal of weather adversity. I have less experience than you in the field, but I suspect that Amazon would not be promulgating such a service if it had such obvious fatal flaws.
  - crusso 13y ago
    Apple was talking about its "Knowledge Navigator" back in the 80s -- not because it had the technology. It still doesn't have that level of technology 25 years later. They did it to generate some buzz and to foster the notion that they were a technological leader.
- chongli 13y ago
  Have you flown computer-controlled multirotors? There's a big difference between fixed wing aircraft or helicopters and computer-controlled multirotors. These things are highly sophisticated and capable of making thousands of adjustments to the speeds of their rotors every second.

akandiah 13y ago

> Maintaining that capacity will deeply cut into the profit of their business model. What profit?

toyg 13y ago

It's just another option to add to the mix. Not everyone chooses next-day delivery, not everyone will choose 30-min delivery; the classic delivery infrastructure will likely remain in place. The service will just periodically be disabled: "due to severe weather in your area, PrimeAir is currently not available. Please check back later, or choose standard delivery."

crusso 13y ago
It's still a question of capacity. Any drone deliveries that need to be made will take away from other delivery capacity. Given that standard vehicle delivery will be much more time consuming and much less parallelized than the drone delivery, drone outages will place a thrashing level of load on standard delivery unless a great deal of unutilized standard delivery capacity is kept idle most of the time. That costs money. [edit: typo fixed]
- toyg 13y ago
  That's more of a question for FedEx and UPS. Of course existing contracts with Amazon will require tweaking, but I don't see how drone-outage periods will be much different from other volume spikes.
- dannypgh 13y ago
  That doesn't seem like a difficult problem to solve. Delivery isn't free, even if the customer isn't the one paying for it. If standard delivery becomes more expensive due to the weather-linked bursty nature of the load requiring additional provisioning, you just need to charge more for standard delivery. Which I'd expect a company like amazon to implement as a fair-weather discount, given the propensity of humans to be loss averse.
- bagacrap 13y ago
  Isn't that already the case when bad weather strikes? Delivery trucks take longer to drive around in bad rain, or blizzards, or unpredictable traffic (resulting from accidents or road closures). The slower the truck, the more of them you need.

hyperbovine 13y ago

One in ten Americans, and likely a much larger portion of Amazon's customer base, and probably an even larger fraction of their revenues, is in California. So even if this only worked here, it could still be a wise investment.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

chobo 13y ago

Why can't Amazon just have the service be weather dependent like any air service? If some place has weather that makes drone delivery difficult, the option will be turned off. They'll look at the weather in the next 30 minutes and judge whether or not the drone can fly. Pretty simple, right?

drawkbox 13y ago

The real-time nature of knowing that would allow them to turn on/off air delivery based on conditions or backup. I think the perfect world would be a combination of air and land autonomous vehicles. Maybe even the vehicles take it the last mile and it is flown in more robust air delivery drones more weather proof. Over time I am sure this will happen in some way.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Amazon already has a fleet of trucks, plus the ability to use UPS and USPS. In conditions where the drones can't operate they'll just fall back to conventional delivery options.