Amazon files patent for flying warehouse
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
It uses the familiar UAV for "unmanned aerial vehicles" and introduces AFC for "aerial fulfillment center."
They have visions of the AFCs not only being placed above metropolitan areas where people can simply browse the inventories of them, but actually moving into place in on demand scenarios:
"An AFC may navigate to an area based on various positioning factors. For example, a temporal event (e.g., a football game) may be expected to produce a demand for certain types of items (e.g., sporting paraphernalia, food products, etc.). In advance of the event, the items may be delivered to the AFC in a quantity sufficient to satisfy the expected demand and the AFC may navigate to a position such that UAVs deployed from the AFC can safely navigate to the location of the event and deliver the items, thereby satisfying the demand. In some implementations, the AFC may navigate to a lower altitude and provide advertising for the temporal event or for other occasions (e.g., product announcements, product releases, sales)."
Very reminiscent of carriers from StarCraft slowly lumbering into position and releasing robotic fleets from their bowels.
But they don't stop at just advertising for these "temporal events." Bringing up visions of the omnipresent geisha blimp from Blade Runner, they describe ways in which ads can be displayed around 2,000 feet in the air above cities as well.
There's language like "docking bays" and "dirigibles" in a world with shuttles going to and from AFCs, charging and repairing UAVs autonomously.
The patent is a long read, as patents tend to be, but definitely fun if you're into this sort of stuff.
[1] - http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=...
In no small part it's building up a nuclear arsenal, as it were. With the way patents are being used to attack companies and extort them, having many patents in your arsenal gives others pause for thought as the odds of there not being something you're doing that isn't covered by a patent they hold gets lower and lower all the time.
It sounds quite ambitious with current technology of drones but if successful could really change the landscape of public events. I wonder how long it would be before the NFL banned them from selling merchandise at games.
It does sound pretty awesome - but after the novelty wears off, is this a viable business?
If you're going to a tailgate party, chances are you're going to bring the food with you - after all, Amazon is going to have to charge some additional delivery fee vs. you just picking things up at your local store.
The cost of a blimp to have a refrigeration system onboard, the cost of carrying brats around just in case someone orders them, plus the cost of the drone to make a special trip down to you all adds cost on top of the base food item price.
That doesn't even take into account the cost to Amazon to purchase the brats in the first place, and have them shipped/trucked to their facilities before loading onto this blimp. The grocery store pays this same acquisition fee, and pays for storage, but that's about it.
Right now, you even have to pay an additional fee just to use Amazon Fresh - again, because it's the convenience you're paying for.
So, I'd wager, after people use the service a few times for kicks, they'll get tired of paying more for the novelty of a drone delivery to their car in a parking lot... and go back to using regular grocery stores. This drone delivery thing is probably better for last-second/forgotten items - but again, that's the convenience your're paying for.
I worked in catering and behind the scenes for large events in some big stadiums. A huge part of stadiums and venues is devoted to storage for inventory of things: food, beverage, apparel, merchandise, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and so on.
When a big game or event occurs, you need to have tens of thousands of t-shirts, thousands of rolls of toilet paper, thousands of hotdogs, hundreds of kegs, and more.
The logistics, manpower, and square footage behind the delivery, storage, and receipt of these goods is no small thing.
Rather than knowing you're going to want 45,000 T-Shirts on Sunday and ordering, receiving, handling, and storing that inventory ahead of time, the AFC would simply move into place at an appropriate time and delivery would be able to occur as soon as the AFC arrived.
You wouldn't need to store hundreds of thousands of "things," as the day before the event, you would be able to have the AFC parked at your location, with the inventory that would've otherwise been shipped to you and stored onsite, and you can simply unload to the appropriate points of usage or sale.
It would be akin to simply unloading it from the "truck" and putting it where it needs to be used for the day or the next day. This is what occurs for smaller events and at smaller venues and having a massive "truck" to unload from, with automated unloaders, would be quite an interesting evolution to this large scale problem.
Keep in mind this is helping out for events that are already planned that have a well understood set of needs. The possibilities for events that are not planned, like disaster relief, or humanitarian aid, would also be very interesting applications.
"Floating warehouse" not just "floating store."
That's probably grouchy of me; I am a regular user of Amazon Prime. But there probably is some limit to instant wish fulfillment especially to the degree it makes the environment less pleasant for everyone.
I also proposed drone delivery at the same hackathon - though granted, not delivering from the FC, but having drones deliver the "last 1/20th of a mile" from a delivery truck to the persons door, so the truck could just roll down the street without the driver stopping every 50 feet, and the drones could constantly be recharged. Gur Kimchi(who went on to lead some of the amazon drone business) was my VP at the time, told me it was a silly idea :(
Oh well, ideas are cheap.
If drone delivery does become ubiquitous, I'd imagine some kind of drone rooftop helipad with a package shoot into the house/apartment would quickly become standardized ... or something along those lines.
The airships, themselves, could even be drones.
It'd be a really interesting thought experiment to try to revise our legal systems in a way that allows them to match the pace of technical change whilst keeping protections from government overreach in place.
All kidding aside, this looks awesome. I know drone delivery has its concerns, and there will always be naysayers on any new technology, but I'm excited about the ways in which drones can start improving our lives.
The potential energy stored by the height of the airship is the solution to the battery problem. It might also solve much of the noise and air traffic problem if these drones are basically floating down silently from above, and then with no cargo they can head back up either loudly but instantly or quietly and calmly.
Regardless of whether it's a good idea, is it novel, and non-obvious?