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Amazon Prime Air

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Re: Amazon Prime Air

#481

Post by mattlutze »

why-el wrote: post #451
pavs wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You give HN and its small eco-chamber way too much credit.

This. I don't think it's realized how insignificant to the real world our discussions are sometimes (note: sometimes ). They are lovely, intellectual, and interesting, but not as important as you go about your day thinking they are.

Further, discovery of old discussion of topics is discouraged by the HN user experience. The only way for the OP to know it had been discussed is to have HN always tapped in. Since for most of us this is untenable (I hope most people here have better things during the day than to do than camp the HN trending board) the implication is incredibly exclusionary to most of the potential contributing population.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#482

Post by mattlutze »

diminish wrote: post #333
goronbjorn wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What merit is there in rooting for failure for failure's sake? You must be new to Hacker News…

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…

Most people don't camp HN and probably won't know how often a topic has been discussed here.

And, while "one flight delivery"/lame marketing patents would indeed be dumb, I kinda want to see a grid of drones tossing boxes to each other mid-air like acrobats. I think that would be sweet.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#483

Post by MarkMc »

fragsworth wrote: post #26

Brick-and-mortar stores are doomed. I can only see a few types of products remaining in brick-and-mortars: Clothes that you want to try for size, fruits and vegetables that you want to sample, and restaurants... any others?

Jewellery. Tiffany & Co isn't going anywhere.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#484

Post by [deleted] »

rev087 wrote: post #480
michaelt wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I'm into politics, so I've learned to judge by results rather than claims and reputation. And there isn't a drone on my doorstep yet.

If there ever will be one, someone needs to announce it first. And if the timing is commercially interesting for Amazon, that just reflect the fact that Amazon is a company with financial intereste, just like any other company.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#485

Post by akulbe »

It seems to me that if this is to seriously take off, it would require a distribution center in every major city, at the very least.

If anyone can pull it off, I think Amazon can.

I wrote a term paper on them for my last class in school, based on the then - predicted entry into grocery delivery.

I feel like Amazon is one of the few large companies that has been innovative and has the possibility to be seriously disruptive to the economy.

Some of what was talked about... same-day delivery of groceries. They'd likely have their own fleet. What does this mean for the existing big name grocers? Same-day delivery of regular merchandise. What would this mean for UPS and/or FedEx?

If I were a Mom & Pop shop, and I knew Amazon was coming to town, that would make me lose sleep at night at least as much as Walmart, if not more.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#486

Post by xerophtye »

Houshalter wrote: post #473
xerophtye wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm.... I couldn't see that video (restrictions on work internet) but AFAIK such small drones can fly up to a certain altitude. Sure you have an insanely large amount of sky up their but can these machines access that?

Imagine how many of these could fit on a single flat road. Then imagine stacking dozens of roads on top of that. Then imagine the roads are several times wider because there isn't any property or buildings in the way up there (with the exception of a few tall buildings in big cities.) It will be a long, long, long time before we run out of airspace. It isn't the limiting resource at all.

I never doubted that we dont have enough of airspace, my question was can these lightweight machines make proper use of all that open space? how high can they fly? Because i am assuming these are relatively low-altitude aircrafts.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#487

Post by Udo »

qwertz123 wrote: post #407
meritt wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kills a dog!? I don't know what sort of half-ass dogs these people have but I'd be vastly more worried about my dog fucking up one of these drones and being held responsible for replacement costs.

My dog would definitely try to take it out but it's the same as with cats: I would be more worried about the old guy losing an eye than hurting the cat. Those rotor blades look pretty dangerous to me.

My cat killed my small RC helicopter, by carefully observing and then jumping at it, and when it was down she kept hitting it until parts came off and I took it away - but for a moment there I was worried that she had hurt herself on the blades. I can't imagine Prime Air won't have some kind of shielding in place.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#488

Post by pilsetnieks »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #312
DufusM wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it works too - it seems so cool. But I am not sure this is the big problem in this space. Current delivery time = 1 day for last mile + >1 day for warehouse -> local area This method reduces the last mile delivery time down to 30 mins but it is not clear how the second part would be optimized down. At least, without losing the value proposition of Amazon - giant centralized warehouses instead of local retail o…

It's like the levels of caching in a computer. (just using orders of magnitude for an example, the actual numbers for best efficiency probably aren't quite so nice) The 1000 most frequently ordered items in a warehouse near your neighborhood. The 10000 most frequently ordered items in a city-wide warehouse. The 100,000 most frequently ordered items in a regional warehouse. Amazon already has the regional warehouse pa…

Plus they don't have to roll out worldwide simultaneously, they can just do a few select cities at first.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#489

Post by icebraining »

gregpilling wrote: post #298
flyinglizard wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it can work with minor interruption to everyday life if the drone are confined to the paths of major highways. It will reduce their noise pollution (and be marginally safer in a crash). The bigger impact would be on smaller retailers, that don't have this service. This service is an absolute killer, making it faster to order a toothpaste from Amazon compared to picking it up at a shop outside your house.

Why would a small store serving a local population not be able to offer this? There is a lot of open source drone stuff out there, so the technology should be readily available. At least available within a year of Amazon putting it into service. If my local mom-n-pop store has an app and a drone, I would shop there.

I can think of a few problems:

1) Scale: a small store might not have enough sales to justify buying a single drone and training the staff to use it.

2) Regulation: licensing and certifications to be allowed to use these - particularly in a completely hands-off way - may have high fixed costs that a small store can't afford.

3) Lack of knowledge: most small store managers probably don't have any idea of how to set this up, or that it is even possible.

And in the end, why would you buy from the local mom-n-pop store? Nostalgia? Helping the people you know? I think that'd wear out pretty soon or just not work for many people.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#490

Post by nichochar »

michaelt wrote: post #440
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…

Textbook drone delivery: http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/14/zookal-starts-world-first-d... Cake drone delivery: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/1020621... Pizza drone delivery: http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/dominos-tests-delivery-pizza-r... Parcel delivery drones: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57601531-76/drones-in-chin... Beer delivery drones: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/brandin…

Either that, or disruptive innovation that media has picked up.
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