There are still pretty serious technical and engineering hurdles to overcome to make this kind of idea feasible. It was always hype without substance. But even assuming these challenges were overcome, which is inevitable eventually even if it's a century from now, I get the feeling this would largely end up getting banned in many places. I think regular people hanging out in their backyards and going for walks in the neighborhood would feel a vague persistent menace if there were constantly drones zipping around overhead. Think about the fact that you can load up a delivery truck with hundreds of packages at a time. Drones don't have that kind of cargo capacity. The fleet would need to be massive to replace truck deliveries. The sky would be full of them.
Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
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Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
#12I don't remember where, but I read a lengthy comment from someone in the industry which said there were two main things preventing delivery drones from being a viable market: 1. FAA regulations - delivery drones can't operate within X miles of an airport (technically they can, but it requires a much stricter degree of certification and compliance nobody wants to bother with) 2. Drones need a landing space, so people…
2 is surprising as that’s the opposite of where I’d expect delivery drones to be useful. You don’t need them in dense urban environments where a stocked truck offloads inventory with low mileage. You want them in rural areas where as the crow flies makes a difference and it’s expensive to have a truck driving about sparsely populated areas.
I saw a demo recently where they had a drone flying high and it zip-lined a package down to the destination directly below it, so the drone never had to get close to the ground. I’m not sure if that’s current strategy but it seems like a cool idea to cut down on noise and proximity issues.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
#13I seen some drones in Africa delivering small packages into remote villages, mostly medication. It is small RC airplane (not quad copter), dropping parashutes on an airfield. It replaced much bigger Cesnas.
And drone delivery is quite successful at Ukraine...
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
#14I don't remember where, but I read a lengthy comment from someone in the industry which said there were two main things preventing delivery drones from being a viable market: 1. FAA regulations - delivery drones can't operate within X miles of an airport (technically they can, but it requires a much stricter degree of certification and compliance nobody wants to bother with) 2. Drones need a landing space, so people…
2 is surprising as that’s the opposite of where I’d expect delivery drones to be useful. You don’t need them in dense urban environments where a stocked truck offloads inventory with low mileage. You want them in rural areas where as the crow flies makes a difference and it’s expensive to have a truck driving about sparsely populated areas.
The issue there is that the battery tech to support long distance delivery drones does not exist yet.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
#15My friend had coffee delivered via drone (Canberra, Australia) and it was pretty fun. Certainly feels less wasteful (energetically) than a car & driver. The massive drone was pretty cool, too. That being said, Canberra is probably the perfect city for a drone delivery service, with so much open space.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
#1675% of blood deliveries in Rwanda outside Kigali are done via drone (flyzipline.com)
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
#17It's probably because exploiting humans with offering them "gig work" is still cheaper... that and bribing^W lobbying lawmakers to allow continuation said exploitation.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
#18Same thing that happened to self driving cars, bloodless blood tests, the 'Metaverse', and 'Social Media but with Nice People'.
The point of the thing is to have an impossibile to achieve project that is nonetheless popular enough to generate endless rounds of new investment.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
#19From a European perspective: regulation is just catching up. Risk assessment and safety frameworks have been established and (non-autonomous) beyond line of sight operations are slowly becoming feasible to do on a regular basis. Operating many drones (+ manned vehicles) in the same airspace needs a traffic management solution (U-Space) which is also seeing some initial trial runs now.
Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
#20Wing seems to be making solid real-world progress. They regularly post updates to YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wing/videos