51–60 of 170 posts
I think there's gonna be alot of teenage pranks and destruction. People setting the landing spot in the water or people stealing them with nets. Not sure if much recourse unless there camera footage or gps locator.
Here's what I think is more likely: A small regional airport is taken over by Amazon. They build hangars and warehouses onsite. It's ramped up to land and fly a big turbine-powered mothership every five minutes. The warehouse dispatches packages to stacks of delivery drones like the one pictured in the video. The mothership loads the delivery drones in order. The motherships take off regularly, and then as the mother…
I assume this is for bigger cities though. In Chicago you can get to over 2 million people within 6 miles as the crow flies. If you can dodge powerless and buildings it seems reasonable...
Does anyone else think that underground tunnels are a superior way to solve the last few miles problem? Tunnels about 1 foot in diameter with little wheeled vehicles pushing around payloads of takeaway food, groceries , parcels at reasonable speed with control computers determining routing and stopping collisions. A functioning network of this type would be more valuable than power or cable utility networks, and hori…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor...
My other issue with this is given changing weather conditions and the amount of wind or rain a drone can handle (energy efficiently that is) how many days per year can this service be offered vs. how many customers there actually are that need this type of delivery. (Note the example that they give ..)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the last one, but ground delivery robots would make way more sense. I don't know about 30-60 minutes, however. The soccer shoe emergency can't really be that big of a market. Emergency medicine by drone delivery I get, but the reason people go shopping nowadays is either grocery or an excuse to get out of the house. Drones are never going to eliminate the excuse to get out of the house factor.
Today's soccer shoe emergency is tomorrow's normal turnaround. Imagine trying to explain to someone living in the 90s that they just have to watch this one TV show right now . Surely they could just walk down to their local video rental store, not that many people really need to watch something right now! But once something like BitTorrent & Netflix happens it becomes the new expectation. I think something like drone…
I don't want to think whether I will need something near the end of the week. We throw big words like nothing but I concede this is one of the hard problems where the idea of express shipping (drones, land robots, or even delivery humans) in conjunction with large distribution networks could have profound impact on the way we shop.
While the distribution warehouse infrastructure of Walmart is probably nothing to laugh at, I imagine a large portion of the infrastructure is not centrally owned and managed by Walmart. Just like the famous "the network is the computer" motto, I bet Amazon thinks the warehouse infrastructure is the retail store.
(To go a little off-topic, the physical Amazon.com book shop sounds strange to me. I don't get it.)
You could also have fresh baked goods and produce economically delivered daily like they did back in the cutting edge of the 1800s.
Here's what I think is more likely: A small regional airport is taken over by Amazon. They build hangars and warehouses onsite. It's ramped up to land and fly a big turbine-powered mothership every five minutes. The warehouse dispatches packages to stacks of delivery drones like the one pictured in the video. The mothership loads the delivery drones in order. The motherships take off regularly, and then as the mother…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today's soccer shoe emergency is tomorrow's normal turnaround. Imagine trying to explain to someone living in the 90s that they just have to watch this one TV show right now . Surely they could just walk down to their local video rental store, not that many people really need to watch something right now! But once something like BitTorrent & Netflix happens it becomes the new expectation. I think something like drone…
To further elaborate your point, I think it is also about reducing friction. People will probably still go grocery shopping but if you were fairly confident that something you are not sure if you need is available both at Wally's world and at Amazon.com for about the same price, would you rather buy it anyways during your grocery run or put it off until you know you will need it? I don't want to think whether I will…
I have a fear we're on the way to creating a whole class of people who are totally dependent on the system for everything. There will always be people who are well rounded and know the relationships between things (i.e. know where the sausage comes from)
It would seem to be a better option to try and drop a package by parachute rather than have to land the drone, release and takeoff. If the package is only 5 lbs. or less and has a parachute attached that seems much safer (for both the drone and for people) than landing and taking off assuming a predetermined landing spot is located. My other issue with this is given changing weather conditions and the amount of wind…
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> wind or rain
Obviously parachute delivery is more sensitive to weather conditions. Parachutes would need active guidance to be at all practical. If the parachutes and guidance systems aren't recoverable (collected from your mailbox, maybe?) that'll add to delivery costs.