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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?

#201

Post by kylixz »

bhealy wrote: post #175
kylixz wrote: post #2

There are some companies/efforts in the space: https://www.manna.aero/ https://www.flyzipline.com/ https://wing.com/ https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2022/05/24/were-bring... Several more out there still from the initial bust. Regulations make it challenging for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) autonomous delivery, particularly in the US with the FAA. Also, it's a hard problem in autonomy to nail it every ti…

regulations in ths USA make it challenging, but in EUrope - we're flying at scale. Video here of 1 weekend of deliveries-: https://youtu.be/0lFT_K47Pa4

Definitely a fan of your work at Manna, Bobby.

Love the hardware design and the no-nonsense "get it done" with continuous drone operations in Europe. Things for us to aspire towards as another drone (non-delivery) company.

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

#202

Post by JohnFen »

JeremyNT wrote: post #179
raynr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. Drones, autonomous or not, aren't anywhere near reliable enough to do autonomous remote delivery. Final delivery is fraught with a myriad of things that can go wrong. GPS is not 100% reliable or accurate in urban areas. Failure in flight means both drone and package are lost, with the added bonus of potentially hurting or killing someone, liability for which the insurance company is not going to underwrite because…

> 4. Payloads on flying things have severe weight and volume limitations. This limits what you can deliver to things that are small and light. This point to me seems like such an obvious hard limit on how well this could ever work without some serious advancements in battery tech, and it's why the whole thing seemed like mostly snake oil to me. The x-copters have very low weight limits (and low flight times when load…

This (as well as range) depends on what size and cost you can accept. You can absolutely get drones that can carry useful loads and/or that have long ranges, but they're large and very expensive.

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

#204

Post by JohnFen »

thedougd wrote: post #172
tdeck wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "line of sight" do you mean via camera, or that someone literally has to drive out and watch the drone land? The latter seems to not make much sense but that's what I think of when I read the phrase.

Someone drives out and watches the drone land. If you order drinks, they bring them in the car.

Which seems to eliminate all of the benefits of drone delivery. If someone is driving out anyway, they could just deliver the stuff directly.

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

#205

Post by olyjohn »

schiffern wrote: post #153
samtho wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mil…

Who is gonna take the box off the shelf in the truck and attach it to the drone? Boxes are stacked on the truck and move all around, not set neatly spaced on a shelf that doesn't move. You'll need another robot to do that for you.

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

#206

Post by olyjohn »

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.

Also the drones take up more capacity in the vehicle, as does the charging station, the batteries, the loading mechanisms. And so does the second person. You can carry far less packages now.

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

#207

Post by olyjohn »

btreecat wrote: post #181
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…

As someone who used to be in the industry, and living in one of the only US locations with a current UAS delivery program I can help clarify. > 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) Nope. This isn't really the issue at all. We have an airport near by (two…

> Sorta. They don't actually land, they drop the payload while hovering. So they do need some uninstructed space to drop the package, but not much. Works well in the suburbs and rural areas but awful in the city.

What's the plan there? Leave my package out in the middle of the yard to get rained on or stolen?

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

#208

Post by [deleted] »

olyjohn wrote: post #205
schiffern wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 mil…

Who is gonna take the box off the shelf in the truck and attach it to the drone? Boxes are stacked on the truck and move all around, not set neatly spaced on a shelf that doesn't move. You'll need another robot to do that for you.

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by [deleted] »

olyjohn wrote: post #205
schiffern wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 mil…

Who is gonna take the box off the shelf in the truck and attach it to the drone? Boxes are stacked on the truck and move all around, not set neatly spaced on a shelf that doesn't move. You'll need another robot to do that for you.

[deleted]

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

#210

Post by BWStearns »

A ton of companies wanted to basically do intracity delivery but with with drones. It’s crazy hard airspace, hard from a technical standpoint wrt obstacle avoidance, and ultimately you’re competing against going downstairs and getting your own toothpaste. There’s not a ton of margin.

There were also a lot of efforts at more rural delivery schemes but mostly they’re working with quadcopter or hybrid designs which requires a ton of mass being dedicated to power. This restricts your flight time to about 30min and payload to a couple pounds (with some trade off function allowing more or less of one or the other). Even without regulation this means your delivery radius is on the order of a couple miles which means you’re competing against getting in the car or waiting a day.

I think the drone delivery concept is (without magic batteries) DOA if you’re talking about electric powered drones to areas that already have good 0-2 day options to get the thing you’re talking about delivering.

Using gas powered autonomous drones to deliver large payloads to remote areas with decent landing spots seems viable. I’m working on an air to ground glider drone prototype that can maybe be useful for “too far/logistically difficult for fast ground delivery but doesn’t have a prepared strip” but that requires being dropped from an aircraft so it needs to be worth the fractional cost of the flight etc.

Tl;dr: The power required to fly things, battery power density, and the geographical distribution of demand for delivery don’t seem to love each other.

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