Direct link to PR video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNySOrI2Ny8&app=desktop
Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
21–30 of 204 posts
Re: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
#2213 minute delivery. Pretty nice! Also, "Amazon’s proposed use of drones may drive down the cost to deliver small packages crosstown to as little as $1, a fraction of existing same-day delivery options, according to a 2015 study by New York-based ARK Invest that tried to quantify the savings from the use of drones compared with delivery trucks and couriers."
Most data I've seen does actually suggest that drones won't be cost competitive with delivery trucks anytime soon - esp. across cities. However, speed can indeed be a USP that would be difficult to match with delivery trucks.
Edit: Also interesting: https://www.flexport.com/blog/drone-delivery-economics/
Re: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
#23I see the test flight conveniently took place over farmland. What happens when one of these has a mid-flight failure and hits someone over the head?
An insurance claim and/or lawsuit, no different than a delivery driver or truck "failure" and resulting traffic accident.
Re: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
#24I'm trying not to be cynical, but to me this still feels like there is a huge gap between now and scaling this into urban areas.
As other commenters have pointed out, how is Amazon going to operate drone fleets in cities?
Of course we must take small steps to get to the Amazon utopia, but we must question how much hype there is on these kinds of 'demos'. After all, it's drone technology demonstrating pickup/dropoff over rural land.
Re: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
#25I feel like this is a stunt. Drone delivery only works with customers that have private backyards - so won't work in a city, since the payload is unsecured after the drones drop it off. In a suburban/rural context, density is lower, meaning that with the limited range of drones, distribution centers won't be able to take advantage of density. Thus the range of products available at each distribution center will be much lower (it's much more efficient from an inventory/logistics standpoint to have one distribution center in midtown Manhattan with many products, rather than many distribution centers spread across the suburbs of NYC, say), forcing customers to choose from a given list of a few hundred products. Drone delivery is thus high convenience, ultra-high speed, low volume, high cost -- but more importantly, a low-choice process. What kind of things will you buy from a list that you need delivered within 30 minutes?
Re: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
#26Vacations are already being soiled by people flying loud drones in areas of natural beauty, now we get to have our day-to-day skies soiled by fleets of drones delivering popcorn. Am I the only one who doesn't want this specifically because of the noise nuisance?
I don't know about you being the only one, but personally, I certainly prefer the buzz if it means fewer vehicles on the roads every day.
Re: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right, the same number of people who are hijacking ups trucks.
UPS truck hijacked in Chicago: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/12/01/thieves-steal-package... UPS truck hijacked in Boston: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2016/11/10/dorchester-ups-truck-c... UPS truck hijacked in Milwaukee: http://fox6now.com/2015/12/11/it-seems-to-be-getting-worse-m... UPS truck hijacked in Florida: http://www.wptv.com/news/region-st-lucie-county/fort-pierce/... Georgia: http://www.cbs46.com/story/153…
Are you trying to make a point? If so, could you be more clear?
Re: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
#28While the technology to move a package from point A to point B safely and autonomously is pretty cool, I think the more interesting story is what will happen to enable this feat. One thing Amazon has done right over the years has been figuring out how to blow away existing practices and technologies in the shipping and fulfillment space to replace or upgrade them with processes or tech allowing for ridiculous savings in cost and time.
The "13 min -- click to delivery." is really neat but there are so many services necessary to bring it to reality that are really fascinating as well:
1) The website itself probably speaking to dozens of micro services to take the order and complete the order.
2) The fulfillment of the order in an automated warehouse. For the most part, a huge robotic fleet is employed to find, process, package, and ready a package for delivery.
3) The movement of the package to the drone delivery platform or fleet.
3a) The attachment or delivery of the payload to the drone itself.
4) The delivery, tracking, and confirmation of delivery, for the package itself.
5) The return, maintenance, and readiness completion of the drone for the next flight.
All of these processes are going to involve dozens of technologies, robots, humans, global services, local services, legal regulations, and more. The video shows a small garage and a single unit on tracks with a human finishing the packaging. All of this will have to replaced, scaled, and automated in a variety of capacities before this becomes cost effective.
Really interesting time to be alive to watch these processes evolve as they will be almost invisible and taken for granted in the next 20 years or so.
Re: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
#29I feel like this is a stunt. Drone delivery only works with customers that have private backyards - so won't work in a city, since the payload is unsecured after the drones drop it off. In a suburban/rural context, density is lower, meaning that with the limited range of drones, distribution centers won't be able to take advantage of density. Thus the range of products available at each distribution center will be mu…
I can see drones being used in cities to dump packages into the top of packet vending machines that already exist, that open up with a PIN code. It'd be much easier too because the route can be hardcoded towards the machine.
Re: Amazon has made its first drone delivery to an actual customer
#30These things should fly over roads five to six feet above ground. That fixes most of the safety concerns