Smart Drone Mailbox Secures the Future of “Last Inch” Deliveries | Hacker News Reader

Smart Drone Mailbox Secures the Future of “Last Inch” Deliveries

now.northropgrumman.com

34 pointsjelliclesfarm41 comments

My first thought is that something like this would do well in my home town, where the average person is over 60 and a millionaire. Most of the area is zoned 5+ acre per lot, and no one wants to build by the road, so its plenty of old people with nice houses and long driveways.

Ok, fully aware that this is a really tiny problem, and does not in any way apply to 99% of people, but my mailbox is ~500' from my front door, and on really rainy days I'd love to have a drone bring my mail back the the house.

For now my 11 and 14 year olds will have to suffice - maybe this tech will be mature by the time the last kid moves out?

-- edit: ok, I skimmed the article too fast and assumed this was a mailbox that WAS a drone, not FOR a drone. Not quite as cool.

Most people I know in rural areas with this problem drive to their mailboxes in their truck/side-by-side/ATV.

If you'd like to create your own solution, refer to https://www.usps.com/manage/mailboxes.htm to get information on the dimensions and requirements of a compliant mailbox.

If it's really bad weather, I'll usually just wait until the next day. There's very little I'm anxiously waiting for. One of my neighbors always ride their ATV down the driveway to get their mail. Like mine, it's long but not that long (~500 ft.). Personally, I find it a good excuse to stretch my legs especially these days.

>“The mailbox has not been disrupted since 1858 (when the U.S. Postal Service was launched),” said O’Toole. “Between smart cars, smart phones and smart houses, it’s time for the mailbox to catch up.”

That is such an irksome sentence. And inaccurate, too? The Post Office goes back to the late 1700s, home delivery wasn't a thing until 1863, and the mailbox wasn't really a thing until around 1915.

I hope your READY to REVOLUTIONIZE LAST INCH MAIL DELIVERY via DISRUPTING TRADITIONAL MECHANISMS OF MAIL and make the world a better place.

Mailboxes were around since 1896, with standards being published in 1901. The current iconic design dates to 1915.

Before then, home delivery was via mail slot or by handing the recipient the mail directly.

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/open-source-icon-rura...

> Before then, home delivery was via mail slot or by handing the recipient the mail directly.

Here in the UK it still is (also options for delivering to a neighbour or collecting from the local post depot)

All I really see if a faraday cage lined mailbox which I can remotely open, drone falls in and then I can salvage it for parts for my own drone. :)

Drones are noisy. 100's of them flying in your neighborhood at once is a very bad plan.

This rarely comes up when the general topic of using drones to solve problems like this is discussed. Even just one drone is quite loud, I can’t imagine many of them. Next to my home. In flight potentially many times a day.

To my recollection, it comes up all the time. By all means, use drones to deliver emergency supplies and things like that. But buzzing around all day in a neighborhood? No thank you.

For what it's worth, the big tech companies working on drone delivery (including Uber & Amazon) are aware of noise concerns and are working with noise control researchers to develop quieter drones and noise control criteria.

There's a lot of active research on quiet drones. Expect that issue to get sorted out.

Defense, law enforcement, etc are interested.

I'm not terribly worried about the noise of drones.

While I don't have a ton of experience with the type of drones that could carry a payload of an average package, the ones I have seen aren't nearly as loud as something like a car.

I'd rather there was less car noise too, but I can't imagine drones will be any worse and they'll reduce the even louder delivery trucks that currently drive up and down my street all day.

kI recon apart from my next door neighbours Harley (and, to be honest, probably my Ducati) by far the most traffic noise I notice at home has to be all the food delivery drivers on poorly maintained scooters, second only to parcel delivery drivers who leave their diesel vans idling out front while dropping off parcels.

As an anecdatapoint to refute that, I have about 7 or 8 working quadcopters right now. (No, more, at least 9.)

All but one of them is totally silent from 100m up. Most of them I can't even make out the noise from 50m up.

I don't think I'd be personally bothered too much by delivery drones that flew at ~100m and only dropped straight down to my or my neighbours houses to make final delivery. (But I live with a fair bit of aircraft noise already, I'm less than 1km from the main runway at Sydney airport and directly under it's flightpath, so perhaps my level of annoyance isn't typical.)

My largest these days isn't exactly a heavy lifter though, 10 inch props capable of lifting a dslr and a reasonably heavy lens on a gimbal - probably 1 - 1.2kg or so of practical payload. I do occasionally play as camera operator of a friend's big octacopter - 16inch props carrying 3 gimballed dslrs (and 3 fixed gopros), so probably 5+kg payload, which is similarly quiet, imperceptible at 100m altitude.

(My "noisy" one is one of my smallest, a 4inch prop FPV racing drone that runs 6 cells, it'll do close to 100mph straight up, and practically vanishes within 1 sec if you punch the throttle right open. But it's tiny little props are doing 60+k rpm at full throttle. It's very very annoyingly noisy when flown with vigour. Still hovers fairly quietly though, but its noisier in correcting for gusts than ess extreme 4inch sized quads.)

I haven't done any math on this but I suspect it could be possible that the sweet spot height of noise mitigation might be close to intersecting with the anti sweet spot of maximum damage from a fall/dropped payload.

Personally... I want the opposite. I want my own drone that I can send to businesses to do pickups for me. Pharmacies, pizza, etc.

I don’t see that this has been pointed out in this article or in the comments section here, but the common mailboxes you will find in US residences are solely for the use of USPS and the resident. It’s a federal crime for a courier like UPS or FedEx or Amazon to deposit things inside them, or indeed for you to pop a note to your neighbour if it is not affixed with postage (of course nobody cares about that). Most homes could easily do with a lockable (non-mail) delivery box, and I doubt that drones are going to drive adoption of that... I must say though, I vastly prefer the mail slot that is found in the U.K. and rest of Europe far more commonly as a model.

not sure the reality of this.

who are the people buying a ~$1000? mains-connected - and pretty huge, ugly and imposing - "smart mailbox" just to get deliveries of the dozen or so items a year that will be under the 500g or so weight limit for drone deliveries?

who lives in an area where wind and rain are such a rare occurence that they will happily postpone a delivery a day or two, has the room and money for such a device and doesn't already have a back yard where the drone could drop it.

seems like an invention looking for a reason to exist, or more likely just a "we're-relevant" marketing exercise for northrop.

FWIW, it only has to be ugly and imposing from the air. I'd much prefer something on my roof for this that delivers the packages directly inside. Makes it easier for the drones, prevents porch pirates, etc.

Basically I want the drones to drop my stuff down a chimney like Santa Claus.

Dumbwaiters make a resurgence, except now they hookup to the roof.

Seems like roof delivery could also be safer, since there's generally less people on a roof than on the ground.

I have a balcony and find it cool. I dunno about $1000 but I'd definitely think about it.

Cool isn't a "I would definitely buy this product" though because it'd never be as good as I imagine it to be. I might get in on version 5 or so like I did with Roombas

What does this drone solution solve that a “smart” (electronic locking) package delivery box wouldn’t?

A drone can land on it.

I reckon this is the actual product here.

Almost nobody needs a drone to deliver their packages. Many many people would like a solution to porch pirates (or untrustworthy neighbours). A somewhat securely bolted down "Amazon prime standard carton" sized mailbox with a remote unlockable lid and some digital signature type of delivery notification sounds like a product to me. Something short of "secure against a determined thief with a crowbar/anglegrinder, but effective against casual swiping of parcels left by front doors - and priced appropriately (so the crowbar guy doesn't assume only people with expensive parcels would bother).

"Drones" makes good clickbait though.

Right. Give delivery drivers an NFC token to unlock (what tech are current package readers using?) and secure the box to a porch, wall, etc.

Sell them at Home Depot and just be done with it.

Yeah, the trick/moat here would be getting big enough uptake on delivery companies to have drivers with whatever's needed to authenticate.

Eventually - but initially it could probably be done with purchasers simply entering a lockbox code into the delivery address lines.

Seems like something that could be replicated with a square piece of cardboard and a QR code sticker the drone reads.

https://www.ryzerobotics.com/tello-edu

"Mission pads" are available as part of the educational pack for the inexpensive Ryze Tello drone.

What's the scam here?

> Smart Drone Mailbox Secures the Future of “Last Inch” Deliveries

This is not last inch, it's to the mailbox. I don't want to have to go to my mailbox, delivery drivers or other drone companies can go to my porch. Why am I paying the $10,000+ for this tech to have to walk the 10 meters to my mailbox?

"Sensor technology that can detect explosives and biohazards", "Printers", "Heating and cooling"

Is this a patent thing?

How will they handle snow?

Castle doctrines and make your day laws have to be updated to allow automated defences and booby traps. Right now the classical legal question of securing your mail box against vandalism and theft leaves you vulnerable to civil lawsuit and criminal prosecution. I can see this product finding customers in the Prairies and certain parts of the Midwest. New York and California? A one way trip to jail and bankruptcy.

You'd want "one way" drone delivery mailboxes just like a regular mailbox is one way and must be opened with a key.

The package should be dropped on a trapdoor with a locked compartment underneath. It's still vulnerable to theft and vandalism, but it's no different from anything dropped by the mailman.

Colorado's "Make my day" law seem a little out-of-place in this discussion, as it only concerns deadly force and is only applicable to intruders into your house (ie once the intruder has crossed the threshold of your door or a window). "Porch pirates" and package thieves are a big enough concern now that they probably warrant their own laws, but I don't think we should be authorizing deadly force against them.

How serious is this comment?

Did we read the same article?

This is, in practical terms, a bigger version of a one-way mail slot. I fail to see how it would be a 'defense' or 'trap', and indeed a major part of the point of authenticating drones would be to avoid the problems that could come with accidentally trapping small animals with a much simpler one-way spring mechanism.

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