Joking aside, that does raise the idea of using a delivery truck as sort of a carrier for rechargable drones; truck drives around, packages are automatically distributed to a pool of drones who handle the last hundred yards of delivery and return to the truck to reload/recharge.
Technically anybody right now could just shoot a poor Amazon delivery drivers with a shotgun now to rob them but it would be murder as opposed to destruction of property. Very few would do so vs snaring or shooting a drone. It is one hell of a bizzare systemic perverse incentive - putting a human body to be at risk reduces the robbery incentive and frequency. Reminds me of one account of Italian medieval cities of merchants plastering their walls with the Virgin Mary so people wouldn't dare to blasphemously piss on her image.
Not to worry... Drones are corporate property and corporations are people, therefore destroying the drone is murder. Don't agree? Take it up with these heavily armed protection drones we built for the delivery drones.
I love dogs, but think their time in LE are fading. Both as an affront to the rights of the people and of the dogs. The 'beast of burden' ethic is quickly becoming outdated.
Make a blimp mothership and keep it under 400 ft (FAA class G).
You save energy by dropping drone packages down the gravity well rather than flying it up from ground-based transport.
Of course the size/weight of some packages delivered via amazon would be an issue in terms of using a drone at all. Not sure about the energy use for flying drones... Land based drones could also work for some deliveries.
However, this is likely another one of those "the exceptions are the norm" problems where the exceptional cases (long packages, unusual elevators, etc.) happen so often that it's just better to keep a human in the loop.
not having to stop the truck would be a huge carbon saver, would it not?