I'm quite interested to see how much people buy into it in the US. From a consumer point of view it seems they're directly competing with established services (eg. Uber Eats), and the main differentiator is a gimmick.
My bet is that drones will be able to service these deliveries MUCH more quickly than humans. They're not in traffic. They can scale up with demand much more easily (much of the wait for Door Dash et al. is just getting someone available to make the delivery). Those advantages even get more pronounced with distance (up to whatever serviceable distance drones will have).
I'm very bullish on the idea of drone delivery. I'm hopeful that it will empower smaller businesses to compete with Amazon prime even, but that's probably a pipe dream.
Come on... this is an awful idea.
I think it's an extremely niche market, so I think it'll only be successful if you charge out the nose for the delivery.
I live in a small rural town in Scotland, yet Amazon and others can deliver stuff to my door the next day. In big cities, some companies even offer same-day delivery.
Honestly, I don't need my stuff any quicker than that.
I'm sure there are some genuinely useful niche uses for drones - for example, there was a recent HN post about a company in Africa doing drone delivery of medical supplies to remote and inaccessible locations.
But I don't think it's a good idea to fill our skies with noisy, flying lithium batteries, just so you can get a pizza in 16 minutes instead of 18.
If a drone service could deliver a blender in 5 minutes when you had blending to do, and take it away again when you're done, the blender could get much better utilisation by being shared with the entire town, at a lower economic and environmental cost.
The same probably applies to nearly everything in your house.
I could see how drone delivery might work for high value items, but they could just as easily be delivered in an EV van/truck carrying hundreds of items instead of just one. One genuinely useful case might be quickly flying blood/organs to a hospital.
There is also the human cost to consider; the noise of a single drone is very irritating, I can't imagine the horror of having our skies filled with the things.
I know of course you were generalising, but in my particular case, I actually do use my mini-blender quite often (for making curry pastes) :)
The main risk I can see are if it comes straight at your windshield or you're on a motorcycle.
Right now when you get an IFR clearance the ATC system ensures you have separation from other aircraft. This needs to be accounted for somehow.
Try cutting off the "mufflers" on your car and see how far you get before getting pulled over a gifted a citation for it.
It’s still a hell of a noise when you have intermitent traffic mixed with ponctual congestion.
IMHO, you guys need to put laws+fines in place to prevent the abusive use of horns (people literally use it even when they have to stop at a red light behind someone else...), and mandate that sirens only be used in real emergency situations. Big cities are so much nicer with less aggresive noises. Not to mention your liking automatic and hybrid cars makes traffic overall very silent by default.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_Acts
"The most draconian restrictions and speed limits were imposed by the 1865 act (the "Red Flag Act"), which required all road locomotives, which included automobiles, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) in the country and 2 mph (3.2 km/h) in the city, as well as requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of road vehicles hauling multiple wagons.
...
In addition to any concerns about the state of the roads, by the 1860s, there was concern that the widespread use of traction engines, such as road locomotives and agricultural engines, would endanger the safety of the public. It was feared that engines and their trailers might cause fatal accidents, scare horses, block narrow lanes, and disturb the locals by operating at night. Although all of these fears were justified and were soon realized, there was a gradual acceptance of the machines as they became more common in commerce."
Have you though about how many packages of the size and weight one of these drones can carry fit in the smallest delivery lorry? Judging from the video, I'd say one thousand is a good estimate. It means you need one thousand drone trips, both ways, to deliver what fits in a few square metres. How does this scale?
And then think of all those drones in pouring rain, or hail, or strong winds, or just at night in areas with vertical obstacles. It's just absurd.
I am sceptical about whether this has applications within a busy city (buildings become a problem and safety becomes a concern) but I think they're going to be perfect for areas a bit outside cities where deliveries don't exist or the quality of delivery service isn't so good.
Packages left outdoors get stolen in a few minutes, which happens more often than not with Amazon's gig economy delivery drivers. They seem incapable of delivering packages to our locker, let alone a pile by the mailboxes. They're left outside the front door way too often.
That’s definitely not true, you very much have to deal with it at all levels of government, federal, state, county, city, etc.
My lips mouth "antisocial", but I guess it's business thinking as usual.
Consumers already get "free" shipping, so they don't notice that.
But at some point, they'll see lower prices for products.
Relative to autonomous vehicles, this has less complications from other drivers, but more from wind, rain, gravity, possibly battery life, etc.
The areas coverable by AVs and autonomous drones could differ given their different challenges.
continuous battery innovation and expanding flying range / lift power will make drone delivery a regular every day occurrence, just like uber service or amazon next day delivery service have become.
there are so many ideas and applications that are just waiting to be unleashed...!!! we live in truly amazing times!
The core idea of crypto currency (i.e. byzantine fault tolerance) is 2000 years old. The fact that this happens now already demonstrates that there never was any need for this and there won't be.
Of course there was and still is. The three main purposes as I see them are as follows:
1) International money transfer free of regulatory oversight.
2) Anonymous purchase and money laundering
3) Decentralized currency free of government manipulation - Bitcoin falls short of this.
Cryptocurrency is a great solution for all of these needs. Of course I agree that most currencies add little or no value to their core product, especially the ICO crowd.
Similarly, you can just say illegal purchases. The other things have been largely debunked. Interestingly, you didn't even mention the giant primary use case of buying illegal things.
No, “disenfranchisement”. Read the Declaration, it was about usurpations of the right of the people to govern themselves. “No...without representation” is the key part, not “taxation”.
That's been inverted for propaganda purposes by modern anti-tax activists.
But, in a any case, “slavery” would have to be the Civil War, the Texas Revolution, or—indirectly, by way of the previous item—the Mexican-American War.