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Amazon Prime Air

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Re: Amazon Prime Air

#371

Post by Plasmoid »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #338
Plasmoid wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, contention for air space wouldn't be that bad. Modern airplanes have a pressure transponder which announces your flight id and the air pressure at your location. From which you can determine a direction, id, and altitude. Create an automated ATC, some simple separation rules (100' vertical, 500' horizontal), and order that drones flying east are on odd multiples of 100', westbound flights on even multiples.…

The thing is, if this idea proves viable, there are going to be (or at least there will be demand for) many orders of magnitude more of these than there are traditional types of air vehicles... And because of the very short range, much of that will probably be in dense urban areas (so it won't be anything like evenly distributed). So... I dunno if traditional approaches to avoiding airspace contention will work so we…

Perhaps, but would the air traffic be any worse than road traffic?

Say you had 5 flight levels each direction, so 10 'levels' in all. Would we have more than an order of magnitude more flight traffic than road traffic? I would argue no.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#372

Post by gjmulhol »

5-7 years out? I bet Bezos also has teleportation on the radar for sometime in the 2200 timeframe. Why didn't he announce that?

All of this is nice, but until someone actually operationalizes this and announces that I can actually have something delivered to my house in 30 minutes, then this means little. As it stands right now, I find Amazon's promise of 2-day delivery to frequently fail (in the SF Bay Area, so a high customer density) and find their non-existent customer support to be frustrating. I would frankly be more excited if I could actually get my packages in 2 days right now than over the future prospect of 30 minute delivery.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#373

Post by cnlwsu »

stefan_kendall wrote: post #227
backprojection wrote: post #101

Will there be pirate drones that fly around looting the Amazon drones?

Yes, just like there are pirate cars that drive around looting UPS trucks.

UPS trucks would be a lot better target. More then 5 lbs worth of stuff in the back of one of those.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#374

Post by rajeevk »

gambogi wrote: post #343
diminish wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is, drone delivery was discussed already here on HN. A lot of the details were already envisioned and suggested. A lot of the commenters on this thread think it's a new idea or its's new here on HN. This is a good PR move for Amazon(edit: equal to Google's self driving car in PR power). It's likely they got inspired by some of the HN discussions. I hope they don't invent silly patents around it, such as "on…

there is no evidence hacker news had anything at all to do with this idea. Also, just because people are excited about an idea doesn't make them naïve about it's freshness. I'm certain drone delivery has been discussed by many countless people, most of whom the acronym HN means nothing to.

As I remember, this was discussed sometime ago on HN. I dont remember exact link posted on HN but here is techcruch article of a start-up that was discussed on HN

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/14/australian-startups-zookal-...

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#375

Post by bwilliams18 »

When I want to return something will a drone come by and pick up the return? because that has A LOT of value.

Imagine being able to order something on amazon just to 'try it out', you get an hour to make sure x part works, drone hangs around, and if it doesn't you drop it back in the tupperware and the drone flies it back to the fulfillment center and your card is never even charged

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#376

Post by cheapsteak »

dpcan wrote: post #81
ams6110 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't wait until the first time one shreds a customer's dog, (or face, child, etc.) as it tries to deposit a package on her front porch.

Why does this thing even have to land? Can't it drop each package with a mini parachute from about roof-top level with good accuracy? Or even 10ft, just above the height of most kids, dogs, cars and adults.

If we're talking about urban areas, and since most people in urban areas live in highrises, where would it even land on?

I'm sure there's a solution, it's incredibly fun to think about.

edit: Maybe install a landing pad by the window? People are allowed to install satelite receivers there right? Why not a small landing pad

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#377

Post by alexmarcy »

This seems like a cool technological problem to solve that is completely unnecessary. Is waiting a 1-2 days to receive something in the mail that big of a deal?

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#379

Post by ZachPruckowski »

underwater wrote: post #363
jmduke wrote: post #176

(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not for anything related to this. This is the first time I'm learning of Prime Air.) I'm somewhat disheartened by the skepticism of a lot of comments from HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Not stuff like "I wonder how they'll handle adverse weather" (which I think is intellectually interesting) but stuff like "As soon as one of these kills a dog it's done for". What merit is there in rootin…

My skepticism is based around the fact that the video and information seem like a cheap trick to gain PR. The technology is interesting and has a bunch of really tough problems that need solving. Amazon haven't even begun to acknowledged any of the issues, let alone begin to solve them. Instead they built a shiny video of a fake product to cash in on the enthusiasm for drones.

No, they built a shiny video and got it aired on a news program so they could get free media in December when people are buying Christmas presents. They also put the idea out there early so that (a) competitors will be seen as imitators and (b) it's easier to pressure the FAA if the regulations aren't what they want.

Given the target audience I wouldn't expect an in-depth coverage of how they're solving specific implementation problems. If you even get that info in the pre-launch coverage, it'll be in a totally different venue and much closer to release. Even if they've solved all the issues, they don't want to give out potentially trade secret info to competitors 18 months before launch and it'd go over the 60 Minutes' audiences' heads - while they're a smart crowd, they're not necessarily up on AI programming or robotics or whatever.

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