Hacker News Reader

Comment by djohnston | Hacker News Reader

2 is surprising as that’s the opposite of where I’d expect delivery drones to be useful. You don’t need them in dense urban environments where a stocked truck offloads inventory with low mileage. You want them in rural areas where as the crow flies makes a difference and it’s expensive to have a truck driving about sparsely populated areas.

View on HN

The thing that makes rural areas inefficient for trucks (distance between customers) is far worse for drones. Drones have to be based out of somewhere close to the customer due to their short battery life, which means you have to have a lot of bases, each of which only serves a handful of customers. A truck will burn a lot of fuel per customer, but a single one can still serve a large area on one tank and can be based out of a nearby city.

A truck will burn a lot less fuel per kg of cargo. That's because it is carrying many packages at once and fuel consumption is split across all packages. A drone only carries one package. So in reality a truck is a way more efficient way of delivering good.

Seems like the best compromise is something like the "drone spitter" delivery trucks from Ready Player One.

The truck wouldn't need to slow down (let alone stop), multiple drones would give high utilization, and you could further optimize delivery routes by "crow flying" to houses that aren't even on the same street.

https://www.inverse.com/article/43043-ready-player-one-drone...

https://www.imcdb.org/v001094117.html

Anytime you think, "ah, the solution is this thing from Ready Player One", step back and remember the following:

- that book was set in a shitty gig economy dystopia, even if the main character managed to personally get rich in the end

- that book was fucking terrible and it's frankly embarrassing that grown adults make reference to it in a positive manner

You know what’s even worse? The audiobook version, narrated by Will Wheaton.

I had to watch an ad before I could watch that company's commercial.

I suspect this still only works if you can utilize the capacity and have simultaneous deliveries, which would required a cluster of deliveries, thus likely not good for rural areas.

>I suspect this still only works if you can utilize the capacity and have simultaneous deliveries

You can still eliminate inefficient stop-and-go driving for some fraction of stops (ie not U-turns), and (most important) the time-wasting "last 100 feet" walk. Sure it's not as superior in rural areas vs suburban, but with low enough overhead you could still beat a traditional truck.

Naturally if the drone gear cost millions of dollars and took up half the truck, then I'd agree it wouldn't be worth it. In reality I don't think that's the trade.

UPS showed off an interesting "roof mounted" hardware approach (ignoring how they depict of the rest of the ops model). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYBu2glKHTA

The numbers I've seen don't pencil out costwise even without assuming the more fuel efficient hybrid and electric trucks becoming popular.

Can you share why you think it makes sense cost wise?

Who is gonna take the box off the shelf in the truck and attach it to the drone? Boxes are stacked on the truck and move all around, not set neatly spaced on a shelf that doesn't move. You'll need another robot to do that for you.

You're probably right, it's the equivalent of public transportation for cargo. And you still need a truck to deliver the packages to all those drone bases anyway.

One of them also don't need to generate upwards lift. A helicopter is also less efficient than a truck.

A drone must supply its own lift against the pull of gravity.

A truck gets that for free via tyres and tarmac.

Air travel makes sense for high-value and time-sensitive payloads, most especially passengers, but also communications (airmail delivery was, and remains, a significant revenue source for airlines).

Fixed-wing drones (as Zipline uses in Rwanda) are more efficient than rotary craft, as forward velocity generates lift, though at a cost of being unable to hover, which makes point delivery to locations lacking a landing strip (or other capture device) more challenging. Zipine utilises parachutes (and lightweight cargo) for its deliveries. Pivot-rotor craft (which Zipline seems to be experimenting with for urban deliveries) make hovering more viable whilst preserving the efficiency of fixed-wing flight.

I still see this as an option with very limited applicability.

One "hybrid" solution is to base the drones on a truck that drives around the city.

An aircraft carrier aircraft carrier!

that sounds like a fun travelling salesman problem with more moving parts. What is the best route for this drone platform truck, taking into account how efficient it is for each drone to make its delivery, and how the truck’s position will have changed in the time it takes for the drone to return.

That is actually a problem under research; there are a few papers on it and luckily they use the obvious name — TSP with drones or TSP-D.

I gave that problem a very shallow go for a Metaheuristics assignment, and while I didn't really mess with the domain specific heuristics for it, it did seem pretty fun indeed.

I'd like to see someone try integrating them into the delivery trucks. Roof mount it, make it easy to load from the back storage area, and have it auto charge. That way drivers can choose to hand off smaller packages to it and launch when they are delivering close by.

This is a wonderful idea! I’d love to see this implemented somewhere.

The old "why not both" solution :)

(I'm not being sarcastic. "Why not both?" thinking is powerful!)

Where have I seen this before?

https://wiki.factorio.com/Personal_roboport

And the 'drone spitter' USPS vans in the Ready Player One film.

That's how I've always imagined it. The top of the FedEx truck is a mini-helipad, and there are two people on the truck. As the truck makes its normal route stopping to deliver heavy packages on foot, there are two drones darting back and forth delivering light ones, with someone constantly feeding them packages and batteries.

Somewhere years ago I have a chat log where I describe the whole thing as imagined, including the phrase "print out helipad_qr.pdf and tape it to your driveway" as part of the process. ;)

I would bet money that the cost of

- a second person (pay + benefits + training)

- drones

- helipad

- vehicle idle time for loading the drones

is more expensive than one person just driving the boxes around.

I don't think so.

You're describing the total cost and ignoring the larger amount of packages being delivered.

Cost per package drops.

What delivery men need isn't messing around with slow and complicated drone launches. They need the equivalent of a mailbox, i.e. package lockers in front of every apartment building and in front of every house. Then all they have to do is get off the delivery vehicle, retrieve the package, open the locker, insert the package, close the locker and then go back to the vehicle.

At that point you have reached human peak efficiency and then the only thing you can do is build a self driving delivery van with an integrated crane/robot arm to operate the locker.

Self driving is hard. Building a robot arm that inserts packages sideways into a locker doesn't appear as difficult. The post office can dictate the package formats and add visual markers to make it easier for the robot to grab the right side.

Sounds lethal for cyclists and children on toys to pull out a metal rod over sidewalks and what not.

Just put the mailbox so the postman reaches it from the driver seat window.

No SaaS, apps, drones or VC money needed.

I really doubt that cost per package drops more than adding multiple extra drivers.

The truth is that the wave of “imminent drone delivery” mania was always just marketing, and wasn’t going to make sense except in extremely limited scenarios.

Also the drones take up more capacity in the vehicle, as does the charging station, the batteries, the loading mechanisms. And so does the second person. You can carry far less packages now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYBu2glKHTA

I don't remember seeing this demo, but considering it is exactly what I imagined and it's a demonstration from 6 years ago, maybe I did.

It would probably be a lot cheaper and safe to make an autonomous or semi-autonomous wheeled platform that unloads and delivers the packages, sort of a motorized pallet cart, which would be usable also for bigger loads.

I saw a demo recently where they had a drone flying high and it zip-lined a package down to the destination directly below it, so the drone never had to get close to the ground. I’m not sure if that’s current strategy but it seems like a cool idea to cut down on noise and proximity issues.

I think this is the popular route they’re going, to avoid drone theft/vandalism, problem is still the liability of dropping things on people’s heads regardless of CV or other sensors.

That’s actually an idea: create a lightweight Ariel tram way just for package delivery. Sort of like the old vacuum tube networks some cities used to have.

This is happening in select parts of Australia.

https://wing.com/en_au/press/australia/

This is how Manna Aero (1) are doing it in Ireland (2) and soon parts of Texas (3).

1. https://www.manna.aero/

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCnpxmhWRuw and https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/drone-regulation-ir...

3. https://dronelife.com/2023/05/08/manna-drone-delivery-flies-...

The issue there is that the battery tech to support long distance delivery drones does not exist yet.

Interesting, I am woefully ignorant on typical drone ranges.

Winner. Battery capacity needs to double and charge twice as fast to make EV adoption possible.

Swappable batteries makes the charge time a nonissue.

Swappable 1000lb batteries? Gasoline weighs 80lbs.

Now I’m imagining a larger, fixed-wing loitering drone carrying the package(s) and a small last-mile drone that detaches, drops its payload at the destination and then returns to the mothership.

There should be even larger drones that are always in the air that are used as supply hubs for these smaller drones. Actually those should be whole warehouses where people work.

Why not a zeppelin?

(The prospect of delivery drones is silly, but whatever it is fun to think about).

2 is wrong and you are exactly right. Amazon explains drones are exactly for meant for rural areas here: https://youtu.be/yMqbj4Kj-z0?t=688

A lone driver might get paid X $/hour but in a rural area, only reach a single house with his truck, whereas the same driver might make 10x deliveries in the same time period in an urban area. And optimally, you'd have one drone pilot controlling multiple drones at the same time with each one taking less time than a car.

I'm guessing the biggest cost here isn't fuel or energy, it's the staffing.

In his point #2, he is saying you can deliver to rural areas, but not to densely populated areas like cities, where there are not enough landing sites. I have no idea whether this is correct or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com