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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?

#101

Post by readthenotes1 »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #87
poopsmithe wrote: post #71

Long story short, It's the FAA's fault. Initially they said, "no, you can't do that" because there are no regulations for that. With pressure from companies, the FAA took years to create the rules to make drone deliveries legal. Finally there is some regulatory framework. Drones have to be specifically designed and manufactured to pass the FAA's certification program. We've all seen capable drones from Amazon's marke…

Good. Without their careful and considered work, the US skies would experience it's own tragedy of the commons. There's a reason air travel is so damn safe, and it's not because private companies were left to their own devices.

Wikipedia somewhat disagrees with you:

"The Air Commerce Act of May 20, 1926, is the cornerstone of the U.S. federal government's regulation of civil aviation. This landmark legislation was passed at the urging of the aviation industry, whose leaders believed the airplane could not reach its full commercial potential without federal action to improve and maintain safety standards. "

Maybe people were smarter in the '20s, maybe they were hoping for regulatory capture? Not sure, but obviously it's a good thing...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administrat...

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

#102

Post by lolinder »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #101
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. Without their careful and considered work, the US skies would experience it's own tragedy of the commons. There's a reason air travel is so damn safe, and it's not because private companies were left to their own devices.

Wikipedia somewhat disagrees with you: "The Air Commerce Act of May 20, 1926, is the cornerstone of the U.S. federal government's regulation of civil aviation. This landmark legislation was passed at the urging of the aviation industry, whose leaders believed the airplane could not reach its full commercial potential without federal action to improve and maintain safety standards. " Maybe people were smarter in the '…

That quote does not disagree with OP at all. It says that the aviation industry itself determined that they should not be "left to their own devices" (OP's words) and asked for federal regulation.

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

#103

Post by destructuredObj »

Ground delivery drones are making great strides. They're not uncommon in larger restaurants where I live, and they're also being used in the hotel industry for making deliveries from the front desk to someone's room. I expect we'll be seeing street delivery drones like this soon as well in very high density urban areas.

Aerial drone delivery however ends up requiring additional infrastructure and is far too expensive for what it's trying to accomplish, particularly because of the small payload requirements. Maybe that will change in the near future, but I still think we're a long way away.

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

#104

Post by paulmd »

mortenjorck wrote: post #69

I interviewed a few months ago with one of the leaders in the space, and when I asked the HM my standard “what do you see as the biggest challenge facing the business right now” I got a surprising answer: “the weather.” My sense is that drone delivery has the same weather dependency as self-driving cars, only greatly magnified.

Does wildfire haze get in the way? Can IR or LIDAR or something see through it reasonably well?

If you built your drone on mostly visual data... or visual-centric sensor fusion... imagine trying to deliver in NYC with The Fog. The tradeoff drones make for their airspace is being at an altitude where there's an awful lot of "terrain".

Fortunately it's not like that here but I'm not in an area that's probably dense enough for drone delivery for a bit (except subdivisions/etc).

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

#105

Post by MostlyStable »

Shawnj2 wrote: post #98
jebarker wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zipline's work in Rwanda is really inspiring. I love that they are doing real good in the world first and can leverage that to grow their commercial business.

Zip line also works because it’s for rural areas that don’t have a good road network, in the US driving would almost certainly be faster.

I imagine it depends on the size of delivery. Even with extremely good roads, zipline would probably be faster (I can't imagine that flying in a straight line is _ever_ slower than driving), just lower bandwidth. Single small package? Zipline is probably much faster. Many and/or large packages? Driving is almost certainly faster. Good roads don't change this basic fact, they just change the break even point.

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

#106

Post by darwinwhy »

atrus wrote: post #93
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor ~60% of delivery cost: https://www.dispatchtrack.com/blog/last-mile-delivery-costs-... If people have the option to get a package ~10% slower for ~60% cheaper, they'll take the slower option the vast majority of the time. I would have assumed that the savings in labor would be eaten by drones using more energy, but it looks like drones can actually be significantly more energy efficient than light-trucks for de…

Except it wouldn't be 10% slower for 60% cheaper of their item, it's 60% cheaper for the delivery cost which is a small fraction of the overall cost.

Have you looked up small, light items on Amazon and seen that they pack them up packs of large N? They do that to hide the fact that delivery is actually a very large fraction of cost on such items. Food delivery, as mentioned in the OP, is another example.

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

#107

Post by Cerium »

darwinwhy wrote: post #106
atrus wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it wouldn't be 10% slower for 60% cheaper of their item, it's 60% cheaper for the delivery cost which is a small fraction of the overall cost.

Have you looked up small, light items on Amazon and seen that they pack them up packs of large N? They do that to hide the fact that delivery is actually a very large fraction of cost on such items. Food delivery, as mentioned in the OP, is another example.

Exactly - rule of thumb is that about $4 of any small item on Amazon goes to Amazon. That seven dollar cable is really at best a $3 cable, including costs to get the item to Amazon in the first place.

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

#108

Post by thedougd »

There are food delivery drones near me. Two recent data points:

1) They’re expanding the delivery territory.

2) They’re still using pilots with line of sight to make the delivery.

I think that’s odd. Maybe someone is moving the goalposts, or maybe there’s not a clear roadmap to broad approval.

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

#109

Post by NotYourLawyer »

datavirtue wrote: post #73
Analemma_ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue there is that the battery tech to support long distance delivery drones does not exist yet.

Winner. Battery capacity needs to double and charge twice as fast to make EV adoption possible.

Swappable batteries makes the charge time a nonissue.

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

#110

Post by ARandomerDude »

myself248 wrote: post #86
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.

That's how I've always imagined it. The top of the FedEx truck is a mini-helipad, and there are two people on the truck. As the truck makes its normal route stopping to deliver heavy packages on foot, there are two drones darting back and forth delivering light ones, with someone constantly feeding them packages and batteries. Somewhere years ago I have a chat log where I describe the whole thing as imagined, includi…

I would bet money that the cost of

- a second person (pay + benefits + training)

- drones

- helipad

- vehicle idle time for loading the drones

is more expensive than one person just driving the boxes around.

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