Amazon Prime Air • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#591

Post by gnarbarian » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 6:38 AM UTC

greyshi wrote: post #455

michaelt wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Those companies are very different from Amazon.

what's even more exciting to me is that they could develop their own complete distribution system by pushing cheap drones out to the edge of their network.

Warehouses->Jets->Drones

with barely any people in the entire process to slow things down and make it expensive.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#592

Post by csmuk » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 9:06 AM UTC

gnarbarian wrote: post #590

csmuk wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course the counter-story: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1144377 (page 5+ is most interesting) These are injuries caused by helicopters, drones, quadcopters etc. I don't want that shit floating around me. They are seriously dangerous bits of kit. Yes I know the "versus cars" argument but cars don't intentionally fall out of the sky on you and have roads to go on.

Lord knows there's no use for an automobile, when you consider the danger it poses compared to the reliable horse.

If we had flying cars with chainsaws at each corner, I'd agree.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#593

Post by lanbird » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 11:30 AM UTC

I will shoot this one , if i see the drones. You can get a camera, a gps and a hover for free!

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#594

Post by samograd » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 12:52 PM UTC

This is so awesome to see the robots coming and not having them being programmed kill people.

Thanks Jeff.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#595

Post by easy_rider » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 2:30 PM UTC

antocv wrote: post #434

If it works as it does, this would be a great way to hoard those small boxes that come along with the package, and later resell them :D

or just resell the drone

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#596

Post by leoc » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:21 PM UTC

UK bookseller Waterstones response: http://www.waterstones.com/blog/2013/12/introducing-o-w-l-s/

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#597

Post by bagacrap » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 3:59 PM UTC

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…

Isn't that already the case when bad weather strikes? Delivery trucks take longer to drive around in bad rain, or blizzards, or unpredictable traffic (resulting from accidents or road closures). The slower the truck, the more of them you need.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#598

Post by MushCraze » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 4:47 PM UTC

All I can say is HAHAHAHAHA! Too much work for a single package. If ever this will push through, I wonder how much a delivery would cost.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#599

Post by gnarbarian » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 4:55 PM UTC

csmuk wrote: post #592

gnarbarian wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lord knows there's no use for an automobile, when you consider the danger it poses compared to the reliable horse.

If we had flying cars with chainsaws at each corner, I'd agree.

It's totally worth it. just force them to be computer controlled when flying low altitude in densely populated areas.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#600

Post by BigBalli » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

Ehm… you know it's just a marketing stunt for CyberMonday, right?? http://amzn.to/1k6StXg

"Putting Prime Air into commercial use will take some number of years as we advance the technology and wait for the necessary FAA rules and regulations."