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Amazon Prime Air

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Re: Amazon Prime Air

#211

Post by stefan_kendall »

tcohn wrote: post #118
wiremine wrote: post #32

Just watched the 60 minutes segment: Bezos say they won't be ready until 2015 at the earliest, likely 2016. (Edit: as the commenter below pointed out, I misheard the timeframe: is is 4-5 years out) He said the range is 10 miles, which is good enough for most residential areas. They are aiming for delivery in 30 minutes. The drones are autonomous: you plug in the GPS coordinates and away they go. The biggest challenge…

I think Bezos is wondering how society will respond. It is up to us. Some will welcome this as an improvement in delivery efficiency and service. Some will say it will make our cities crowded and noisy not only on the streets with cars and trucks, but in the sky too. I like my blue silent sky. I recall scenes of sci-fi worlds like the 5th Element. I suggest we tax externalities. If you order by sky, you'll create vis…

You must live nowhere near anywhere. My sky is plenty filled with buildings, airplanes, helicopters, and even the occasional hot air balloon.

You keep your taxes to yourself. I have a package that needs delivering in under 30 minutes by drone.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#212

Post by mapmeld »

crusso wrote: post #179
kyro wrote: post #152

This concept and forward thinking is of the type I make a conscious effort to protect from skepticism and naysayers. Aside from any obvious or glaring safety issues, ideas like this one, that teeter on the reality-joke line, are the exact ones that bring about true disruption. And that's why I encourage everyone around me to keep an open and forgiving mind, like you would with a child. Will Amazon Prime Air work? I d…

like you would with a child Why would we turn off our critical thinking skills when contemplating claims of a leap in technology that transcends what many of us understand to be possible currently? There are times to encourage creative thought, like with children or within the context of a brainstorming meeting. But most of the time we should evaluate claims critically with the best practices of the Scientific Method…

> Why would we turn off our critical thinking skills when contemplating claims of a leap in technology that transcends what many of us understand to be possible currently?

Because it's Amazon, and they're one of a few companies able to choose the technology, location, and customer base for the system, and willing to operate a service at a loss. If it's only possible to deliver this to suburban homes in Little Rock, Arkansas, and they lose money on each delivery, then they still can do it.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#213

Post by waterlesscloud »

dakrisht wrote: post #130

This is an awesome idea of course. It's a glimpse into the future. I remember tweeting with Chris Anderson of 3D Robotics about a year ago about autonomous package delivery from A > B. I'm sure Bezos and team started nerding out on this concept years ago. Eventually, "vehicles" the size of UPS trucks will be delivering packages autonomously all over the world. This is definitely a glimpse into that day. And it won't…

The "Why" has to do with increasing market size for Amazon.

If they can deliver small items to you in 30 minutes with no delivery fee, all sorts of things you need in the very short term stop being a trip to the store and become a drone shipment from Amazon. This opens up HUGE markets for them.

I also think people are thinking of the distribution network a bit wrong. They can keep a large number of items in a small space, particularly if the warehouse becomes sort of like those old magnetic tape storage robots you used to see. You could condense an entire Wallgreen's (almost every item of which is drone-able) down to a large room. So the practicality of having a number of them in a city becomes more and more viable. Of course you'd have software optimizing for the most common items on a per-distribution center basis (I bet Amazon already does this on a macro scale).

Add in long-haul robotic trucks feeding the distribution centers and you can see where this is going.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#214

Post by stefan_kendall »

konaseer wrote: post #22

what if someone shoots downs these drones for invasion of privacy/trespassing/target shooting etc ?

You can't fire a weapon within city limits in most (all?) cities in the U.S.

And you don't own the airspace above your land, or airplanes and helicopters could not fly.

And you don't just shoot at anything in the sky when you're out shooting.

And civil courts exist to fine you heavily for this sort of behavior if it does occur.

Why don't you just shoot at UPS vehicles for driving down your neighborhood streets?

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#217

Post by ryankuykendall »

maxerickson wrote: post #160
scoot wrote: post #124

http://www.amazon.com/primeair When will I be able to choose Prime Air as a delivery option? A: We hope the FAA's rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time. Sorry, but not a chance. I'm intimately familiar with the flight controller, motor and batter technology behind multi-rotors, and I can state unequivocally that this is just not ready for 'prime'-time (so-to-speak :) There…

Having to have several sets of batteries seems like on of the simpler problems to deal with.

Why not just put the battery in the payload lid?

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#219

Post by dannypgh »

crusso wrote: post #150
toyg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just another option to add to the mix. Not everyone chooses next-day delivery, not everyone will choose 30-min delivery; the classic delivery infrastructure will likely remain in place. The service will just periodically be disabled: "due to severe weather in your area, PrimeAir is currently not available. Please check back later, or choose standard delivery."

It's still a question of capacity. Any drone deliveries that need to be made will take away from other delivery capacity. Given that standard vehicle delivery will be much more time consuming and much less parallelized than the drone delivery, drone outages will place a thrashing level of load on standard delivery unless a great deal of unutilized standard delivery capacity is kept idle most of the time. That costs m…

That doesn't seem like a difficult problem to solve. Delivery isn't free, even if the customer isn't the one paying for it. If standard delivery becomes more expensive due to the weather-linked bursty nature of the load requiring additional provisioning, you just need to charge more for standard delivery. Which I'd expect a company like amazon to implement as a fair-weather discount, given the propensity of humans to be loss averse.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#220

Post by andrewtbham »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #60

It doesn't seem like the battery density exists for anything except fairly short distances with very small packages. For the vast majority of deliveries, this could only be a "last mile" mechanism, with the bulk of each delivery happening via more traditional transport. 30-minute delivery from the warehouse? Not going to be possible for 99% of purchases, even those that are under the weight limits. Moreover, you can'…

bezos said the current range is 10 miles on 60 minutes.
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