I think there's gonna be alot of teenage pranks and destruction. People setting the landing spot in the water or people stealing them with nets. Not sure if much recourse unless there camera footage or gps locator.
Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
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Re: Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
#22Here's what I think is more likely:
A small regional airport is taken over by Amazon. They build hangars and warehouses onsite.
It's ramped up to land and fly a big turbine-powered mothership every five minutes. The warehouse dispatches packages to stacks of delivery drones like the one pictured in the video. The mothership loads the delivery drones in order. The motherships take off regularly, and then as the mothership flies near the target swath, the drones are released one by one and glide to the target zone efficiently before doing a vertical landing.
Empty, they return autonomously to a small recovery facility in a vacant lot somewhere within ~5km. They're packed into a pickup or a semi and returned to the airfield in stacks.
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Why?
Because VTOL flight is not easy to do at long ranges; Batteries generally limit that to 10-30 minutes since vehicle mass fraction is large. Because very small planes are only a small multiple (2-5x) more efficient than VTOL flight. Because high speeds are something vehicles like this are not great at.
A drone like this doesn't have a great straight-line range when you sling a heavy load under it; Amazon is not going to erect sizable warehouses within ~5km of every plausible delivery. Their stock is too large, and too sparsely ordered.
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Or, even more likely?
Replace the flying mothership with a box truck dispenser. The driver stops at his target neighborhood, sends the drones out, they deliver autonomously, takes the drones back in 10 minutes later, and returns to regional warehouse in the next 20-50 minutes of driving, for 30 to 60 minute delivery.
Amazon gets to deliver to a neighborhood rather than to a house.
Re: Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
#23While I find the technology impressive, it makes me wonder if "Black Friday" is going to look like the Blitz, a low hum and looking up, wave after wave of aircraft coming over the city looking for the right place to drop their payload ...
Re: Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
#24I like the placards placed in "safe landing zones". Simple solution to hard problem.
And mess with your neighbor's life by placing your own landing placards in your fenced-off backyard.
How does this "mess with your neighbor's life"? I wouldn't see this being a huge concern unless you happened to place 4 or 5 orders a day.
Re: Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
#25Re: Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
#26I like the placards placed in "safe landing zones". Simple solution to hard problem.
I remember when Amazon first announced the idea two years ago there was a lot of brainstorming in the hn comments and that idea was pretty popular. No idea if it influenced Amazon but would be cool if so.
*found the thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6833223
"This is just one idea. Perhaps Amazon provides you with a beacon for the drone, or you get a big QR code for the drone to target your house & they don't need pilots at all. Who knows!" -owenmarshall
Re: Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
#27I think there's gonna be alot of teenage pranks and destruction. People setting the landing spot in the water or people stealing them with nets. Not sure if much recourse unless there camera footage or gps locator.
Yeah, I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of drone hunting going on, until Amazon figures out a way to secure these things.
Re: Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
#28Here's what I think is more likely: A small regional airport is taken over by Amazon. They build hangars and warehouses onsite. It's ramped up to land and fly a big turbine-powered mothership every five minutes. The warehouse dispatches packages to stacks of delivery drones like the one pictured in the video. The mothership loads the delivery drones in order. The motherships take off regularly, and then as the mother…
I agree with the last one, but ground delivery robots would make way more sense. I don't know about 30-60 minutes, however.
The soccer shoe emergency can't really be that big of a market. Emergency medicine by drone delivery I get, but the reason people go shopping nowadays is either grocery or an excuse to get out of the house.
Drones are never going to eliminate the excuse to get out of the house factor.
Re: Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
#29Here's what I think is more likely: A small regional airport is taken over by Amazon. They build hangars and warehouses onsite. It's ramped up to land and fly a big turbine-powered mothership every five minutes. The warehouse dispatches packages to stacks of delivery drones like the one pictured in the video. The mothership loads the delivery drones in order. The motherships take off regularly, and then as the mother…
I assume this is for bigger cities though. In Chicago you can get to over 2 million people within 6 miles as the crow flies. If you can dodge powerless and buildings it seems reasonable...
Re: Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design
#30I wonder how can delivery with drones be more economically effective than with cars and drivers, with "distances of 10 miles or more"? Which, if I'm not mistaken, still somewhat exceeds capabilities of today's drones.
People are expensive.