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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?

#141

Post by snapetom »

peepeepoopoo18 wrote: post #122
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 is a bit surprising. It’s not like housing around airports are particularly popular for noise reasons. Here in Seattle, if you don’t count float planes, we don’t even have general aviation airports to worry about until you hit Boeing field to the south and Paine field in the north (again Boeing related). Most new town homes have rooftop decks (because Seattle doesn’t get much snow), why can’t they land on those?

Renton Airport, Boeing Field, Seatac, Paine Field Harvey Field, Arlington Field, plus scores of smaller poorly marked airstrips if you check OpenStreetMap. It turns out very few places in the US are sufficiently far away from an "airport" to allow drones to operate. Even out in the boonies.

You're clear with no restrictions from about Downtown to North Lynnwood. Even then, as you approach Paine and SeaTac, you can fly with altitude restrictions (300, 200ft, etc). On the eastside along 405, permissible areas are even greater.

https://b4ufly.aloft.ai/?lat=47.124171412997555&long=-122.39...

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

#144

Post by hot_gril »

tikhonj wrote: post #30
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…

Surprisingly, I still see them around in Berkeley. As a pedestrian they're a bit annoying underfoot but mostly harmless. As a potential customer, they're so slow and ineffective that I've never felt tempted to try them out. They're thoroughly dull even as a novelty.

Hmm, I don't live there anymore but have visited the university a few times lately. Haven't seen any Kiwi bots. Last time was this month, which is summer and not peak business there, but other times were during school.

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

#145

Post by andrewinardeer »

ajhurliman wrote: post #12
djohnston wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is happening in select parts of Australia.

https://wing.com/en_au/press/australia/

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

#146

Post by 1attice »

jareklupinski wrote: post #56
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.

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

winning response. Thank you for the clarity and simplicity.

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

#148

Post by imtringued »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #129
ARandomerDude wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think so. You're describing the total cost and ignoring the larger amount of packages being delivered. Cost per package drops.

What delivery men need isn't messing around with slow and complicated drone launches. They need the equivalent of a mailbox, i.e. package lockers in front of every apartment building and in front of every house. Then all they have to do is get off the delivery vehicle, retrieve the package, open the locker, insert the package, close the locker and then go back to the vehicle.

At that point you have reached human peak efficiency and then the only thing you can do is build a self driving delivery van with an integrated crane/robot arm to operate the locker.

Self driving is hard. Building a robot arm that inserts packages sideways into a locker doesn't appear as difficult. The post office can dictate the package formats and add visual markers to make it easier for the robot to grab the right side.

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

#149

Post by princevegeta89 »

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…

Forget Drones, even the land robots [the ones that look like small moving pillars] haven't been put to actual use - the companies that made them or built software for them ended up raising good cash and exiting by getting sold to other big companies in the logistics space, but no one knows for sure what their future is, lol.
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