7 ms·

It's an idea that is DOA. It will never work because it will never be economical, nor safe. If you think about it for a few minutes, you'll realize it's a joke

by MCRed 12y ago

It's an idea that is DOA. It will never work because it will never be economical, nor safe. If you think about it for a few minutes, you'll realize it's a joke-- like an April Fools joke.

minusSeven 12y ago
do you mean to say drone's are more expensive than people ?
- practicalpants 12y ago
  Their drones could easily be $30k+ a pop, and if they crash, need maintenance, irretrievably fly out of range, or simply become targets of angry people wanting to break them... all problems frequently encountered with high grade hobbyist drones.... then their value vs. an employee is questionable. Crucially we're not even talking about R&D efforts, insurance, regulatory clearing costs, and probably the biggest cost, legal mishaps - and I mean very serious lawsuits - even toy-like DJI Phantom drones can fall/ crash and kill people. I could see drone delivery to rural areas... but urban areas I don't think it's feasible at all, at least not for a long while.
  - shubb 12y ago
    And anyway, driverless cars are happening. Why do you need a drone when the robo uber taxi had a robot arm in the boot and delivers packages during slow times of day? Drones could be useful for a lot of things but if the problem is delivering heavy packages cheaply to places with road access, they are not a rational choice.
    - CPLX 12y ago
      > And anyway, driverless cars are happening. By "happening" you mean "not used for any real purpose besides research or demonstration anywhere in the world" presumably.
      - shubb 12y ago
        We have cars navigating america autonomously as we speak. [1] From a regulatory perspective, I think driver-less cars are making better progress than drones, because auto regulations are more relaxed than air. [1]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3006700/Driverless-car-begins-history-making-3-500-mile-cross-country-journey.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3006700/Driverless-c... ... Oh god I just linked the daily mail. Sorry I'm at work and picked the first link when I googled.
        CPLX 12y ago
        No, actually we don't. From your article's headline: "Two people will be in the specially rigged Audi in case of emergencies"
        narrowrail 12y ago
        Just for comparison, I had phones (flip-phones, mind you) from Samsung, LG, and Motorola with NFC in 2006. We could use them at MCD's, 7-eleven, and a few other places. Fast-forward 9 years and there has been little uptake, except that there are phones actually available to people with NFC, and acceptance is more commonplace. In general, people take much longer to adopt new technology than we would like to see. edit: grammar
  - ghaff 12y ago
    If the basic drone delivery model were viable, it seems to me as if today it would be viable to have a Kozmo 2.0 sort of service in urban areas. It might have higher labor costs (not at all clear as you could use pretty low wage workers) but it would have a whole lot less capital requirements and we know how to do it today. I guess Amazon is doing this in a very limited way with Amazon Fresh.
- imaginenore 12y ago
  Calculate how many drones you need to deliver just one truck worth of parcels. Keep in mind you need drones capable of flying across the city carrying heavy stuff. Even if you limit them to only light and small packages, there's still a range problem.
- peteretep 12y ago
  Drones that don't accidentally kill toddlers and pets and create liability nightmares? Yes, considerably more expensive than a minimum wage delivery human.
  - encoderer 12y ago
    But currently, delivery doesn't happen for anywhere near minimum wage. A fully-loaded UPS or FedEx driver probably costs $100k or close, and those trucks look pretty expensive...
    - peteretep 12y ago
      Sure, but when a delivery man decapitates little Poppy, he's criminally liable, rather than the delivery company.
flyinglizard 12y ago
I'll address some points here. 1. Safety: drones - multirotors, specifically - are very safe devices, inherently. They are incredibly simple (4-8 motors and no other moving parts). If they are dangerous, it's only because of lack of investment by the manufacturers to make mission critical hardware/software. That's the next step in the drone ecosystem though, as commercial use is gaining traction (multirotors are barely 6 years old now, IIRC. Mission critical flight systems haven't had time to develop). Furthermore, octocopters (8 motors, and there are variants with more) have built in redundancy (assuming a reasonably intelligent flight controller) against the loss of each motor. 2. Cost: An Amazon drone could be manufactured for few thousand dollars - $3k is the RETAIL COST of a DJI drone that can fly 10kg overall weight (drone, payload, batteries). That means at scale, and without retail margins, Amazon could make them for less than $10k, even if they are much larger and more sophisticated. The only wearable is the battery, and these can do many cycles (500+) before needing replacement, when properly managed. Other than that, the cost of maintenance are simply nonexistent. 3. Flight time: Simply irrelevant on an urban delivery service. An off the shelf commercial drone today can fly 10kg AUW for 20 minutes easily, lets say 12 minutes if flying at 40km/h - that means it has a range of 8km (and that's basing on simple off the shelf stuff, not purpose built and optimized systems). Manhattan is 3.7km wide and 21km long, meaning that with a handful of automated battery replacement hubs you can cover the its entire span. 4. Fleets and carrying weight: These drones will fly non stop, carrying up to 10kg at each payload. That covers 95% of the typical Amazon order and probably 99.5% of the things that you need just this second. The drones will fly non stop - I can't imagine needing more than a few dozens to cover a large city. Bottom line: the technology is definitely within reach; I'd argue it's there, just needing some rich commercial entity to tie all parts together, test and certify. Nothing here awaits a scientific breakthrough to be made possible, and I'd say that technologically, it's easier (and probably safer) than self driving cars (which no one doubts).
- ProblemFactory 12y ago
  I'm very doubtful of drone delivery until battery tech advances at least 10x. In dense, built-up areas there is no space to land. You can't fly between buildings and land on a sidewalk in Manhattan, and where would you leave the package there? In rural and suburban areas, where houses have backyards, the flight range starts to be a problem. Amazon isn't going to build a full warehouse every 5-10km, even "drone depots" seem doubtful with that density. With "drone depots" instead of proper warehouses, the packages would still have to be trucked in, so 1-2 day delivery instead of 1-2 hour delivery, and the only motivation would be cost saving over traditional mail carriers. Perhaps if batteries become a lot more capable, then having drone depots every 20-50km in suburbia might end up profitable over paying for mail.

by MCRed 12y ago

It's an idea that is DOA. It will never work because it will never be economical, nor safe. If you think about it for a few minutes, you'll realize it's a joke-- like an April Fools joke.

minusSeven 12y ago

do you mean to say drone's are more expensive than people ?

practicalpants 12y ago
Their drones could easily be $30k+ a pop, and if they crash, need maintenance, irretrievably fly out of range, or simply become targets of angry people wanting to break them... all problems frequently encountered with high grade hobbyist drones.... then their value vs. an employee is questionable. Crucially we're not even talking about R&D efforts, insurance, regulatory clearing costs, and probably the biggest cost, legal mishaps - and I mean very serious lawsuits - even toy-like DJI Phantom drones can fall/ crash and kill people. I could see drone delivery to rural areas... but urban areas I don't think it's feasible at all, at least not for a long while.
- shubb 12y ago
  And anyway, driverless cars are happening. Why do you need a drone when the robo uber taxi had a robot arm in the boot and delivers packages during slow times of day? Drones could be useful for a lot of things but if the problem is delivering heavy packages cheaply to places with road access, they are not a rational choice.
  - CPLX 12y ago
    > And anyway, driverless cars are happening. By "happening" you mean "not used for any real purpose besides research or demonstration anywhere in the world" presumably.
    - shubb 12y ago
      We have cars navigating america autonomously as we speak. [1] From a regulatory perspective, I think driver-less cars are making better progress than drones, because auto regulations are more relaxed than air. [1]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3006700/Driverless-car-begins-history-making-3-500-mile-cross-country-journey.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3006700/Driverless-c... ... Oh god I just linked the daily mail. Sorry I'm at work and picked the first link when I googled.
      - CPLX 12y ago
        No, actually we don't. From your article's headline: "Two people will be in the specially rigged Audi in case of emergencies"
      - narrowrail 12y ago
        Just for comparison, I had phones (flip-phones, mind you) from Samsung, LG, and Motorola with NFC in 2006. We could use them at MCD's, 7-eleven, and a few other places. Fast-forward 9 years and there has been little uptake, except that there are phones actually available to people with NFC, and acceptance is more commonplace. In general, people take much longer to adopt new technology than we would like to see. edit: grammar
- ghaff 12y ago
  If the basic drone delivery model were viable, it seems to me as if today it would be viable to have a Kozmo 2.0 sort of service in urban areas. It might have higher labor costs (not at all clear as you could use pretty low wage workers) but it would have a whole lot less capital requirements and we know how to do it today. I guess Amazon is doing this in a very limited way with Amazon Fresh.
imaginenore 12y ago
Calculate how many drones you need to deliver just one truck worth of parcels. Keep in mind you need drones capable of flying across the city carrying heavy stuff. Even if you limit them to only light and small packages, there's still a range problem.
peteretep 12y ago
Drones that don't accidentally kill toddlers and pets and create liability nightmares? Yes, considerably more expensive than a minimum wage delivery human.
- encoderer 12y ago
  But currently, delivery doesn't happen for anywhere near minimum wage. A fully-loaded UPS or FedEx driver probably costs $100k or close, and those trucks look pretty expensive...
  - peteretep 12y ago
    Sure, but when a delivery man decapitates little Poppy, he's criminally liable, rather than the delivery company.

flyinglizard 12y ago

I'll address some points here. 1. Safety: drones - multirotors, specifically - are very safe devices, inherently. They are incredibly simple (4-8 motors and no other moving parts). If they are dangerous, it's only because of lack of investment by the manufacturers to make mission critical hardware/software. That's the next step in the drone ecosystem though, as commercial use is gaining traction (multirotors are barely 6 years old now, IIRC. Mission critical flight systems haven't had time to develop). Furthermore, octocopters (8 motors, and there are variants with more) have built in redundancy (assuming a reasonably intelligent flight controller) against the loss of each motor. 2. Cost: An Amazon drone could be manufactured for few thousand dollars - $3k is the RETAIL COST of a DJI drone that can fly 10kg overall weight (drone, payload, batteries). That means at scale, and without retail margins, Amazon could make them for less than $10k, even if they are much larger and more sophisticated. The only wearable is the battery, and these can do many cycles (500+) before needing replacement, when properly managed. Other than that, the cost of maintenance are simply nonexistent. 3. Flight time: Simply irrelevant on an urban delivery service. An off the shelf commercial drone today can fly 10kg AUW for 20 minutes easily, lets say 12 minutes if flying at 40km/h - that means it has a range of 8km (and that's basing on simple off the shelf stuff, not purpose built and optimized systems). Manhattan is 3.7km wide and 21km long, meaning that with a handful of automated battery replacement hubs you can cover the its entire span. 4. Fleets and carrying weight: These drones will fly non stop, carrying up to 10kg at each payload. That covers 95% of the typical Amazon order and probably 99.5% of the things that you need just this second. The drones will fly non stop - I can't imagine needing more than a few dozens to cover a large city. Bottom line: the technology is definitely within reach; I'd argue it's there, just needing some rich commercial entity to tie all parts together, test and certify. Nothing here awaits a scientific breakthrough to be made possible, and I'd say that technologically, it's easier (and probably safer) than self driving cars (which no one doubts).

ProblemFactory 12y ago
I'm very doubtful of drone delivery until battery tech advances at least 10x. In dense, built-up areas there is no space to land. You can't fly between buildings and land on a sidewalk in Manhattan, and where would you leave the package there? In rural and suburban areas, where houses have backyards, the flight range starts to be a problem. Amazon isn't going to build a full warehouse every 5-10km, even "drone depots" seem doubtful with that density. With "drone depots" instead of proper warehouses, the packages would still have to be trucked in, so 1-2 day delivery instead of 1-2 hour delivery, and the only motivation would be cost saving over traditional mail carriers. Perhaps if batteries become a lot more capable, then having drone depots every 20-50km in suburbia might end up profitable over paying for mail.