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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?

#151

Post by roarcher »

_hypx wrote: post #112
roarcher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that makes rural areas inefficient for trucks (distance between customers) is far worse for drones. Drones have to be based out of somewhere close to the customer due to their short battery life, which means you have to have a lot of bases, each of which only serves a handful of customers. A truck will burn a lot of fuel per customer, but a single one can still serve a large area on one tank and can be base…

A truck will burn a lot less fuel per kg of cargo. That's because it is carrying many packages at once and fuel consumption is split across all packages. A drone only carries one package. So in reality a truck is a way more efficient way of delivering good.

You're probably right, it's the equivalent of public transportation for cargo. And you still need a truck to deliver the packages to all those drone bases anyway.

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

#152

Post by unnah »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #149
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.

https://starship.co/ is in actual use in a few cities, but they have not exactly taken over the logistics space yet.

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

#153

Post by schiffern »

samtho wrote: post #139
schiffern wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the best compromise is something like the "drone spitter" delivery trucks from Ready Player One . The truck wouldn't need to slow down (let alone stop), multiple drones would give high utilization, and you could further optimize delivery routes by "crow flying" to houses that aren't even on the same street. https://www.inverse.com/article/43043-ready-player-one-drone... https://www.imcdb.org/v001094117.htm…

I suspect this still only works if you can utilize the capacity and have simultaneous deliveries, which would required a cluster of deliveries, thus likely not good for rural areas.

>I suspect this still only works if you can utilize the capacity and have simultaneous deliveries

You can still eliminate inefficient stop-and-go driving for some fraction of stops (ie not U-turns), and (most important) the time-wasting "last 100 feet" walk. Sure it's not as superior in rural areas vs suburban, but with low enough overhead you could still beat a traditional truck.

Naturally if the drone gear cost millions of dollars and took up half the truck, then I'd agree it wouldn't be worth it. In reality I don't think that's the trade.

UPS showed off an interesting "roof mounted" hardware approach (ignoring how they depict of the rest of the ops model). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYBu2glKHTA

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

#155

Post by [deleted] »

TheDudeMan wrote: post #134
schiffern wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the best compromise is something like the "drone spitter" delivery trucks from Ready Player One . The truck wouldn't need to slow down (let alone stop), multiple drones would give high utilization, and you could further optimize delivery routes by "crow flying" to houses that aren't even on the same street. https://www.inverse.com/article/43043-ready-player-one-drone... https://www.imcdb.org/v001094117.htm…

I had to watch an ad before I could watch that company's commercial.

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by misnome »

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.

I really doubt that cost per package drops more than adding multiple extra drivers.

The truth is that the wave of “imminent drone delivery” mania was always just marketing, and wasn’t going to make sense except in extremely limited scenarios.

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

#157

Post by subsistence234 »

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…

quintessential social justice moment

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

#158

Post by Hackbraten »

DHL was the only major German logistics company that openly talked about their delivery drone research project, which had been going on for years until they killed it in 2021. They never gave a specific reason for pulling out, but people with industry knowledge said that one of the reasons was that due to limitations of airspace vs. billions of packages the German logistics industry handles, drone delivery at scale is not going to be a thing.

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

#160

Post by rphln »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #130
BurningFrog wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One "hybrid" solution is to base the drones on a truck that drives around the city.

that sounds like a fun travelling salesman problem with more moving parts. What is the best route for this drone platform truck, taking into account how efficient it is for each drone to make its delivery, and how the truck’s position will have changed in the time it takes for the drone to return.

That is actually a problem under research; there are a few papers on it and luckily they use the obvious name — TSP with drones or TSP-D.

I gave that problem a very shallow go for a Metaheuristics assignment, and while I didn't really mess with the domain specific heuristics for it, it did seem pretty fun indeed.

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