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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?

#51

Post by tshaddox »

Analemma_ wrote: post #5

I 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…

> And it turns out that once you exclude "houses within X miles of an airport" and "houses without an LZ", there aren't enough customers left to make delivery drones worth it.

That would make sense if this was some incredibly capital-intense thing to develop and enjoyed immense economies of scale. But I don't see why that would be the case. Surely there are many thousands of towns each with tens of thousands of single-family homes that are sufficiently far from an airport and currently served by daily package deliveries via automobile. Unless we're considering every tiny community airport.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?

#52

Post by kaycebasques »

tnel77 wrote: post #35
ortusdux wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see someone try integrating them into the delivery trucks. Roof mount it, make it easy to load from the back storage area, and have it auto charge. That way drivers can choose to hand off smaller packages to it and launch when they are delivering close by.

This is a wonderful idea! I’d love to see this implemented somewhere.

The old "why not both" solution :)

(I'm not being sarcastic. "Why not both?" thinking is powerful!)

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?

#53

Post by NovaDudely »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #36
TillE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like Theranos, basic immutable laws of nature make the whole idea absurd. Namely, that it requires a ton of energy to keep an object aloft. It's just wildly inefficient, and will never see serious usage outside of tiny niches. Not until we get science fiction antigravity or tiny fusion reactors or something.

Doesn't it also require a ton of energy to move a five ton truck to my driveway in order to deliver a 100g charging cable? I'm not sure the laws of physics are on the side of the status quo here.

Amazon's delivery always felt odd to me because of this exact situation. Long term how sustainable can it be to work on such an extreme scale like that? The margins they must be hiding on via products must be good.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?

#54

Post by Incipient »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #36
TillE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like Theranos, basic immutable laws of nature make the whole idea absurd. Namely, that it requires a ton of energy to keep an object aloft. It's just wildly inefficient, and will never see serious usage outside of tiny niches. Not until we get science fiction antigravity or tiny fusion reactors or something.

Doesn't it also require a ton of energy to move a five ton truck to my driveway in order to deliver a 100g charging cable? I'm not sure the laws of physics are on the side of the status quo here.

Hovering like a drone has to overcome gravity, which is hard/expensive. A truck only has to overcome rolling friction, which is easy/cheap.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?

#55

Post by CSMastermind »

I think that Wendover has the best summary: https://youtu.be/J-M98KLgaUU

Here's the tl;dr:

The "last foot" problem is the biggest killer. Getting a drone into the air and to its target is not the hard problem - getting a package safely to the ground at someone's home is.

It would require either a very specific neighborhood or a big advance in computer vision and AI tech.

Where we have seen success in this space are places with dedicated delivery zones in controlled environments where existing transport infrastructure is not a good alternative.

Also this quote: "most people are simply willing to wait two or three days to receive their package while ALL customers wants their packages delivered as cheaply and simply as possible."

Uber eats and door dash largely solve the problem that drone delivery was supposed to solve and if you're going to have autonomous delivery doing it via ground robots is much easier than trying to do it from a drone.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?

#56

Post by jareklupinski »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #36
TillE wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much like Theranos, basic immutable laws of nature make the whole idea absurd. Namely, that it requires a ton of energy to keep an object aloft. It's just wildly inefficient, and will never see serious usage outside of tiny niches. Not until we get science fiction antigravity or tiny fusion reactors or something.

Doesn't it also require a ton of energy to move a five ton truck to my driveway in order to deliver a 100g charging cable? I'm not sure the laws of physics are on the side of the status quo here.

you probably paid at least $5 for that cable, but the cost of materials in the cable was likely less than a dollar

the rest of the money went into the gas tank of the truck

you and everyone else who ordered a cable that day on that route chipped in to fill the truck up

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?

#57

Post by jeffalyanak »

TillE wrote: post #27
Jasper_ wrote: post #4

Are you kidding me? It was all basically vaporware that disappeared when the free money ended. The Kiwi food delivery robots were basically fake -- they only went about 1/8 of a mile automatically. So they'd drive a car to the end of a street with your food and a robot, and then get the robot out of the car, put the food inside, and then the robot would hobble over a couple hundred feet to your door. Absolutely usele…

Much like Theranos, basic immutable laws of nature make the whole idea absurd. Namely, that it requires a ton of energy to keep an object aloft. It's just wildly inefficient, and will never see serious usage outside of tiny niches. Not until we get science fiction antigravity or tiny fusion reactors or something.

Ironically one of the areas it _is_ being used successfully is in delivery of blood to some areas in Rwanda, but they're using fixed-wing drones and are even doing slingshot launches. [1]

The economics are totally different, though. The "product" is very high value and has a short shelf life, so being able to deliver it quickly is a big benefit.

On top of that, using a fixed-wing delivery vehicle and launching it with a human-powered slingshot makes it actually reasonably energy-efficient.

[1]https://youtu.be/bnoUBfLxZz0

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?

#58

Post by BizarroLand »

l33t233372 wrote: post #39
sebzim4500 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it also require a ton of energy to move a five ton truck to my driveway in order to deliver a 100g charging cable? I'm not sure the laws of physics are on the side of the status quo here.

I would bet that even the worst Amazon truck gets more pounds of product per Joule expended than the best drone for any reasonably real world distance/load.

The difference is both direct ground contact and fuel capacity.

Even if a drone could carry the energy equivalent of a 20 gallon fuel tank with it, it would waste the majority of that energy both keeping itself and its energy aloft.

Tires and other ground plane vehicles, mitigate the majority of that waste in exchange for increased navigational difficulty (regarding obstacles like buildings and trees but also moving objects like vehicles in its path).

The self-driving robots made some sense but only for very local (couple of block radius) delivery.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?

#59

Post by pests »

com2kid wrote: post #37
Jasper_ wrote: post #4

Are you kidding me? It was all basically vaporware that disappeared when the free money ended. The Kiwi food delivery robots were basically fake -- they only went about 1/8 of a mile automatically. So they'd drive a car to the end of a street with your food and a robot, and then get the robot out of the car, put the food inside, and then the robot would hobble over a couple hundred feet to your door. Absolutely usele…

> > > The Kiwibots do not figure out their own routes. Instead, people in Colombia, the home country of Chavez and his two co-founders, plot “waypoints” for the bots to follow, sending them instructions every five to 10 seconds on where to go ooh ooh! When people say reporting can be racist, this is a perfect example! Including extra negative details that are not pertinent to the story at all. Imagine if every story…

I think you ran across the Chavez name and your brain stopped processing. Its evident in your replacement examples not even making sense in the original quote.

It seems you may be the one having issues with race.

Re: Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?

#60

Post by jeffalyanak »

com2kid wrote: post #37
Jasper_ wrote: post #4

Are you kidding me? It was all basically vaporware that disappeared when the free money ended. The Kiwi food delivery robots were basically fake -- they only went about 1/8 of a mile automatically. So they'd drive a car to the end of a street with your food and a robot, and then get the robot out of the car, put the food inside, and then the robot would hobble over a couple hundred feet to your door. Absolutely usele…

> > > The Kiwibots do not figure out their own routes. Instead, people in Colombia, the home country of Chavez and his two co-founders, plot “waypoints” for the bots to follow, sending them instructions every five to 10 seconds on where to go ooh ooh! When people say reporting can be racist, this is a perfect example! Including extra negative details that are not pertinent to the story at all. Imagine if every story…

> Imagine if every story about a US company mentioned started with, "The new startup, which is based in the United States (home of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy)..."

If Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy founded a company together then your headline would make sense, but I don't understand why this would compare to anything the author of this article wrote.

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