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Inside Google’s Drone-Delivery Program
- spiritplumber 12y agoGood for them? I did this in 2010 using a G1 phone as a controller. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi4jZKqZ8v8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi4jZKqZ8v8 Delivery was of a salami sandwich (we later cleared it out with the police). I even gave Ryan Hickman at Google the software and hardware specs, when he was trying to fix up the Cellbots project in 2011. We were at maker faire 2011, which was funny because their android 'bot didn't work and ours did... Never heard much since, though. Sorry for bragging, but it's a pet peeve I got. Anyway, the source and schematics are at http://obex.parallax.com/object/116 http://obex.parallax.com/object/116 the Android side software can be had if you email me at mkb@robots-everywhere.com We still use this to do autonomous deliveries! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urs68vf7ZFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urs68vf7ZFY
- enneff 12y ago> Good for them? I did this in 2010 using a G1 phone as a controller. By an extremely liberal interpretation of "this", perhaps. What's your pet peeve? That you did something vaguely similar a few years ago? Someone did it before you, too.
- Chronic29 12y agoThe pet peeve is that Google does not deserve this attention.
- enneff 12y agoChronic29, who is hellbanned, replied "The pet peeve is that Google does not deserve this attention." I'd like to know who else has built and successfully trialled tail-sitting autonomous flying vehicles. This stuff is awesome!
- spiritplumber 12y agoI was in Italy at the time - no flying stuff allowed in town. So I built a small autonomous truck instead. Also, thanks for downvoting a post with link to source and schematics, whoever you are.
- enneff 12y agoJust speculating here—I didn't downvote—but I suspect it's because you're being an egomaniacal ass.
- spiritplumber 12y agoSounds fair to me :) In that case if you must downvote, downvote a post of mine that doesn't have useful/relevant content. I know I'm burning a lot of points on this one, but the fact is, I wasn't any more of an egomaniacal ass than the guy I talked to who tried to frankly pretend my work didn't exist. And, this site working how it does, most of the value is in the comments -- why downvote something with (maybe tangentially) related links to open source software/diagrams that other people can use? This is HACKER news, correct? (Now watch me get downvoted to oblivion just because I am standing up for what I think and backing it up as rationally as I can manage)
- enneff 12y agoNext time you could try dropping the disparaging tone ("Good for them?") and just stick to the facts "I did something like this a few years ago..."
- spiritplumber 12y agoI see how that could be seen as disparaging, in English.
- robotresearcher 12y agoFirst demo of autonomous hover of a fixed wing UAV was by Paul Oh et al of Drexel in 2006. http://dasl.mem.drexel.edu/alumni/bGreen/www.pages.drexel.edu/_weg22/fwHovering/fixedWingHovering.html http://dasl.mem.drexel.edu/alumni/bGreen/www.pages.drexel.ed... https://www.microstrain.com/sites/default/files/Autonomous%20Hovering%20of%20a%20Fixed-Wing%20Micro%20Air%20Vehicle.pdf https://www.microstrain.com/sites/default/files/Autonomous%2...
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago> By an extremely liberal interpretation of "this", perhaps. Well, the "this" operator is overloaded, just like in C++.
- jacquesm 12y agoWas that 100% autonomous or was there some extra input besides endpoints? Does it use maps&gps/vision (yes)/lidar? (I assume the green images are taken from the imaging sensor on the controller).
- dannyr 12y agoWhat's your pet peeve? Do you want Google acknowledge that you did it first? That this drone project may not have been possible without your earlier efforts?
- Chronic29 12y agoGoogle did nothing wrong. What is wrong is people promoting it here on HN.
- reubenbond 12y agoThis McDonald's ad from the 90's was pretty cool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68jiSejx3wA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68jiSejx3wA
- dynode 12y agoHey that's neat. I worked on something similar back in 2009/2010. <http://bardagjy.com/?p=614> http://bardagjy.com/?p=614> We used a G1 dev phone to fly a 1.5 meter wingspan airplane. We used only sensors in the phone, camera, gps, etc. Honestly it didn't work too well - we needed either a much better model of our airframe, an airspeed (not groundspeed) sensor or an airframe that could power through 10-15 mph winds. In the end however, we demoed waypoint navigation and imaging the waypoint. You text it lat/long and it texts back a picture. We did it as a proof of concept (for an interested govt agency), modern smartphones are neat, but bespoke, real-time hw, with navigation grade sensors are probably an order of magnitude more effective (though an order of magnitude more expensive). Working with android to do robotics was.. interesting. We had to do all sorts of hacking to make the phone behave a little as possible like a phone and more like a real-time controller. What do you do when someone calls the phone while you're flying an airplane? How do you keep the phone application from taking over and exiting out of your navigation app? While the airplane is 1000 ft in the air?
- spiritplumber 12y agoYeah, I did a bit of air stuff with the same setup but nothing terribly interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7HooQZPSZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7HooQZPSZo What I ended up using for the ground/water stuff was sending serial commands out of the headphone jack... surprisingly low latency, especially compared to bluetooth, and it was only a few bytes at a time so low baudrate was fine. http://robots-everywhere.com/re_wiki/index.php?n=Main.AudioSerial http://robots-everywhere.com/re_wiki/index.php?n=Main.AudioS... Here's the source and schems if anyone wants them -- the idea here was to make the hardware as light as possible!
- selectout 12y agoGreat to see efforts like this not primarily focused on just delivering books or groceries but being put to the use for AID and resources that otherwise wouldn't be able to get there in a practical manner. I'm curious what kind of running time these have though and distance they can travel. Would be great if they could just have 2-3 go for a dozen roundtrips each in circumstances like Katrina.
- kenrikm 12y agoLarger sized RC planes like a Skywalker can usually run for around 40 Minutes to an hour and cover around 50 Miles in that time. There are examples of much longer flight times and longer distances but 50 miles seems about right in real world usage with a payload. As soon as it comes back you can swap out the battery and launch again, a 2 - 3 minute turnaround is easy.
- eck 12y ago> not primarily focused on just delivering books or groceries but being put to the use for AID That is just their plan for getting regulatory approval: if you are against UAVs, you are against delivering life-saving medicine to disaster victims.
- stevenbedrick 12y agoCouldn't it be both?
- TulliusCicero 12y agoYes, there's clearly nothing stopping them from carrying a wide variety of cargo. I'm sure the drones will end up delivering both life-critical and completely frivolous packages.
- oska 12y agoMy feeling is that this is a 'social hack'. Talk about using the drones in special, humanitarian situations first. People will then be less likely to come out against their development and testing. Then, once you have proved the technology and it has developed some level of public trust, you can expand into other areas with broader application and greater commercial returns.
- waterlesscloud 12y agoPrevious discussion of Amazon's drone plans. Initial announcement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6830547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6830547 Don't believe the hype https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6833223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6833223 Delivery drones are nonesense https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7005702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7005702 Is Amazon drone delivery real? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834561
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jpatokal 12y agoThe key differentiator to Amazon (and most any other delivery drone system I've seen) is that this is a tailsitter: it takes off vertically, and can hover in place for deliveries, but it flies horizontally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter This means it's much faster and more efficient in flight than your standard quadcopter design. Also, Google's full official promotional video, the BBC clip seems to be taken from this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRTNvWcx9Oo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRTNvWcx9Oo
- clebio 12y agoRC planes get a lot more flight time than RC helis of equivalent gas/battery power. And the horizontal distance they can cover is better as well. You're right this is different, though it shouldn't be too hard for Amazon to transition to wings instead of rotors (though the control mechanics are somewhat different as well).
- qq66 12y agoThe military unmanned delivery aircraft are all tail sitters (500 pound payloads). I hope Google's drafting behind all the existing R&D there. The military stuff out there is crazy - hummingbird-size ornithopters, 2 ounce helicopters that can fly for 30 minutes with an encrypted HD video uplink, etc.,
- foobarqux 12y agoWhy are tail sitters better than a tilt rotor?
- jpatokal 12y agoLess moving parts. Tilt rotors exist mostly because humans find it difficult to cope with a tailsitter's changes in attitude.
- Fragment 12y agoThe only reason for tilt-rotors is when you need to keep the main body of the aircraft level. The only problem with tail-sitters is the pilot (and possibly the payload).
- femto 12y agoI'm not sure that Australia has "progressive" rules about the use of drones by design. More likely it's just that the government hasn't yet got around to putting rules in place. Mind you, the more high-level drone research we have going on here, the more examples there will be to counter attempts to impose crazy rules. Also worth noting is that Australia has a "UAV Outback Challenge" [1], where UAVs compete to carry out a simulated rescue of a tourist lost in the outback. This September the challenge is in Kingaroy, Queensland. (Maybe that's why Google is testing up that way??) Of further interest, there's at least one open source team competing in the UAV challenge [2]. [1] http://www.uavoutbackchallenge.com.au/ http://www.uavoutbackchallenge.com.au/ [2] http://www.canberrauav.com/ http://www.canberrauav.com/ ------ Edit: A bit more detail in the local news: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/google-drones-tested-in-queensland-20140829-109jvb.html http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/google-...
- zik 12y agoAustralia does have better rules than the US - it is possible (although not easy) to operate a drone company in Australia. In the US it's still legally problematic.
- asynchronous13 12y agoIn the US its still legally impossible. Only public entities like police or universities can get legal permission to fly an unmanned aircraft. (BP/Aeovironment got the only approval that's been issued to private companies)
- foobarqux 12y agoAnyone have a bio of Dave Voss, the new project leader? I couldn't find one.
- magicalist 12y agoThe video linked above had him as David Vos. Here's one starting spot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena_Technologies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena_Technologies
- dang 12y agoWe changed the url from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28964260 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28964260 because the Atlantic article seems to be the most substantive of the ones submitted on this topic.
- ngoldbaum 12y agoThis reminds me even more than Amazon's program of vernor vinge's prediction of rock deliveries from fedex in his short story "Fast Times at Fairmont High." There's something about a package being lowered onto my doorstep by a VTOL drone...
- crucifiction 12y agoWhen is Google going to start innovating again instead of just copying other big tech companies? They are the new Microsoft it seems like, cash cow being spent on also-rans.
- enneff 12y agoThis was in development long before Amazon announced their drones 9 months ago.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- suprgeek 12y agoThe logical next step would be to predictively send these drones up with the most likely packages that the customers could possibly order. The mobile app would then tell you here are 50 drones with a 10 mile radius - & here is the list of items that are on them - so forget same-day delivery how about same-hour delivery?
- dannyr 12y agoThis is basically what meal-delivery services are doing in San Francisco. They stock up on meals in delivery cars and anticipate where the demand would be and drive there.
- prawn 12y agoI don't know why someone isn't driving a route in a van rigged to have curry and rice permanently cooking/warm. Different dish each night. Cheaper for advanced orders. App that tracks location of the van and handles transactions. If Tuesday was chicken curry night and the cost reflected avoiding the variance and random delivery costs that drive up prices for other food services, I'd buy every week. Driver plus someone to hand over the food or leave it at the door.
- jonjenk 12y agoFormer Amazonian here. If anyone wants to understand the key difference between Amazon and Google culture there's a great quote in the article. "In all the testing, Roy had never seen one of his drones deliver a package. He was always at the takeoff point, watching debugging information scroll up the screen, and anxiously waiting to see what would happen. “Sergey [Brin] has been bugging me, asking, ‘What is it like? Is it actually a nice experience to get this?’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, I don’t know. I’m looking at the screen,’” Roy told me." Google and Amazon are both great companies. But at Amazon the drone program would start with a description of what the customer experience is when they receive a drone delivery and you'd work backwards to the technology solution. At Google the technology precedes the customer experience.
- sopooneo 12y agoDoesn't it have to be a bit of both? Because if you start strictly with the experience you might back into impossible technology.
- jonjenk 12y agoI don't think so. I can almost hear Jeff's voice... "Don't make your problem the customer's problem!" There are often many technical solutions to create a particular customer experience. Jeff never accepts false dichotomies. If the particular technical solution being considered fails to produce a delightful customer experience then you better start thinking about other solutions. Many of the projects on which I worked turned out much better when Jeff challenged us break out of our little technical boxes and consider alternate solutions that preserved the customer experience. I can sense that my answer will be frustrating to some who don't like being told that they aren't thinking big enough / creatively enough / bold enough / outside the box enough. Believe me, I felt that way too when working on Jeff projects. I left his office in frustration many times only to realize several hours or days later that I would have been better served by focusing on creative problem solving instead of trying to convince Jeff that X was not possible. I have immense respect for Jeff. I also have increased respect for Sergy because he appears to be asking the right types of questions at Google.
- drcode 12y agoInteresting that they use an hoverable airplane design instead of a quadrocopter... I wonder if this is in part because a failed engine en-route is less likely to cause a human injury, since an airplane is able to glide to the ground.
- asynchronous13 12y agoThe biggest advantages of a fixed wing over a quadrotor are endurance and range. A fixed wing can carry more payload with less energy. The ability to glide if the engine goes out is a bonus, but probably not the driving reason to select it as a platform.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoWhile I find this technologically interesting, I wonder if a drone bucket brigade might not be a better use for a technology that can pick up 10 lbs at point A and drop it over point B. A five thousand such drones, even at $10,000 each or $50M could keep 3,000 gallons of water[1] per (speed/distance) seconds dropping continuously on a wildfire. [1] That being somewhat more than a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane skycrane can deliver, and with better failover characteristics.
- nikcub 12y agoThe current quads/drones have problems with naturally occurring thermals in calm weather and the slightest winds - they don't come close to surviving the climate surrounding a wild fire. When the tech and price scale are right for this application, you'll definitely see it as it has been discussed and is actively being worked on.
- baddox 12y agoI can't say anything about wild fire conditions, but even a decent hobbyist drone will not have problems with thermals in calm weather or slight winds. A commercial drone will be even better.
- Intermernet 12y agoUnfortunately the thermals rising from large fires can be ridiculously powerful. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrocumulonimbus_cloud http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrocumulonimbus_cloud: "On the 18 of January 2003, a supercell thunderstorm formed from a pyrocumulonimbus cloud associated with a severe wildfire, during the 2003 Canberra bushfires in Canberra, Australia. The supercell resulted in a huge fire tornado, rated at EF3 on the fujita scale, the first confirmed violent fire tornado. The tornado and associated fire killed 4 people and injured 492."
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
- rdlecler1 12y agoAgriculture is probably a better petri dish for all this technology. Farms are already dangerous, you need to cover large swaths of land, and it's unlikely that you're going to hit anything, or anyone if it falls from the sky. That said, I could imagine a world where a FedEx drone is permitted to provide last meter service from the roof of a truck, taking the package from the street to the doorstep. Additionally, widespread use of drones may reshape where core resources are stored and allocated. In Manhattan for instance, maybe lightweight warehouses are placed on rooftops for quick deliver of common products within a few minutes of ordering.
- bigiain 12y agoHmmm, who needs FedEx? I'm now imagining a shipping container that get floated from China to $city stacked up top on a regular container ship, then without even unloading it from the ship, the roof slides back and the walls collapse, and a flock of disposable single-use drones launches out - delivering random manufactured crap directly to the purchaser bypassing the expensive first-world logistics chain...
- asynchronous13 12y agoThat is a very cool idea! When you mentioned the shipping container, I was thinking about a heavy lifting helicopter that plucks an entire shipping container off the cargo ship and drops it on an 18 wheeler already on a highway (or on a train already in motion...). Bypassing the bottleneck at a port could save a lot of time and money, too.
- harshreality 12y agoCustoms and domestic security nightmare. Random manufactured crap could range from things that the government doesn't like (drugs) to things that might be dangerous (enriched uranium) to things that are very bad (like weaponized anthrax or the fictional Fusarium spirale[1]). [1] http://mycorant.com/book-review-spiral-by-paul-mceuen/ http://mycorant.com/book-review-spiral-by-paul-mceuen/
- 12y ago
- Wingman4l7 12y agoWhat struck me about this design is that the drone is a lot less susceptible to end-user interference / damage / theft -- the drone hovers way out of reach and drops the package from a quickly-retracted line.
- orasis 12y agoOne question: How loud is it? The quad rotors that I have been around are disturbingly loud.
- ryankshaw 12y agoBoth when I read this and when I heard amazon's announcement, I, like most people I see here, thought about the "get whatever I order off the internet to my doorstep, asap" use case--and I think that's still a ways off (because of the 0.01% edge cases, the regulation, etc). But the use case that this article touched on, which to me was a "ah ha! we could do that today" is the case where the sending and receiving parties are more fixed (not just any random person's door), where they could actually build a drone-pad (like a heli-pad, but much more basic), where you could program in all of the specific obstacles on the route (exactly where, if there are electrical lines, what flight pattern to take, etc), and where you could train both the sender and receiver, and cord off the landing area (so you'd never run into the random guy or dog tries to grab the drone problem) examples: * delivery of medical supplies/medicine to a facility in a very remote area where it would not make sense to stock the items there permanently. * very expensive restaurant at a ski resort in the middle of Colorado that gets a drone delivery of fresh seafood from a CA pier every day (an existing business transaction they do anyway that could be done faster, more efficiently than a human operated aircraft) * the delivery of anything else to a ski resort (you have very wealthy people wanting things in a very remote location) * something on top of a cruise ship, for medical items or whatever other thing a passenger really needed while at sea. * something at the Ebola treatment areas right now in Africa.
- enneff 12y ago* delivery of anti-venom to snake bite victims!
- georgemcbay 12y agoDelivery of lots of things for search and rescue operations would probably be pretty useful, if somewhat niche. I've heard of quite a few S&R stories where they knew where the person was but couldn't safely get there until daylight. It seems like being able to drop off a care package in such situations would be useful. In some situations like harsh cold snowy weather a drone is unlikely to be of much use, but dropping a couple of liters of water to someone stuck overnight in the desert could be the difference between pulling in a dangerously dehydrated lost hiker in the morning versus picking up someone who just needs a lift back to civilization. Of course, drones (even sans delivery ability) seem like a good fit for S&R anyway -- relatively cheap (compared to manned helicopter searches) and safe way to cover last known areas of missing folks to try to locate them from the air.
- 31reasons 12y agoRobots , Drones and AI. Sounds familiar!
- damian2000 12y agoCould something like this eventually replace the postman? I'm thinking of something on top of your roof that could be an aerial target for the device to drop stuff onto.
- icebraining 12y agoMaybe for single-family dwellings, but I wouldn't want my neighbors peeking (or outright stealing) my letters and packages. My mailbox is not exactly a vault, but it's enough of a deterrent to stop privacy violations and petty theft.
- trhway 12y agoultimate delivery vehicle :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kDay5OWDPn4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kDay...
- maw 12y ago"A zipping comes across the sky." Good allusion, and I didn't even like that damn book!
- abad79 12y agoI think Google intentions to deliver a Drone program, are much bigger and will try to create a great value proposition for buyers to use their eCommerce solutions and payments. This way you will more eager to choose Google and not Amazon.