Dominos tested delivering pizza by drone [video]
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Drones would be cost effective if they were at least somehow semi-automated, otherwise there is an endless supply of teenagers and people willing to use scooters to do this at minimum wage. Drone pilots/operators are presumably more skilled and would have higher hourly wages.
It seems like 'self piloting drones' > 'self driving cars' in complexity. So we aren't quite there yet.
I would also imagine that once it becomes even remotely technologically viable it will be snuffed out by legislation. But perhaps one day.. :)
How about autonomously navigating air traffic? Navigating 3d space, full of unexpected obstacles?
We don't even have sensory devices that would enable true autonomous drone flight of any complexity beyond trivial.
Plus if you are delivering to a business in a crowded downtown area you'll probably need to call the recipient while hovering then identifying and directing them to a safe drop off spot :)
With that being said, a small drone like this is harder than it looks for a couple reasons.
First, there's not enough payload capacity for a good, accurate IMU. You're stuck using lightweight but awfully noisy MEMS gyros and accelerometers along with drifty barometers.
Plus, there's not enough payload capacity for an off the shelf LIDAR or other long-range depth sensing. That means detecting obstacles needs to be delegated to 2D imagers plus CV algorithms, with some short-range depth sensing. IR ToF like a Kinect 2 or even a grid-based approach like a Kinect 1 might work in a favorable environment, but I wouldn't trust it outdoors even at close range.
If I had to build a pizza-delivery drone, I'd use a bottom-facing camera like the AR.Drone does to try to provide a position reference independent of the bad MEMS gear, and I'd use CV algorithms combined with a last-ditch short-range obstacle sensor (like IR or ultrasound) to attempt to avoid obstacles. Once I got to the destination, I'd delegate landing to a pilot, since "finding the front door" is a surprisingly hard problem.
The location of the pizzeria could even be chosen such that take-offs and landings at that end of the trip could be entirely automated, by GPS or perhaps with some much more basic CV.
Now maybe if they never had to go low but literally drop ship the packages..
You say that, but you still have obstacles to avoid (trees, tall buildings and hills), "driving" conditions to contend with (high winds) and other "vehicles" (birds, other drones of such a scheme takes off).
> ...road regulations and thrust/steering balances on the road.
Thrust and steering is a great deal harder when you don't have a solid contact (ie movement in air vs wheels on a road). If these drones were to ever be a commercial tool, then they would be bound by regulations as well.
Plus with helicopters you have additional complications that aren't an issue with self driving cars: three dimensions to worry about rather than just two (as you don't need to worry about altitude if your a car), regional air space limitations (eg are you near an air port?) and the obvious issue of somehow notifying the customer that the drone is outside their front door (assuming the AI is smart enough to determine what bit of the house is the front door).
And to make matters worse, each drone would only be capable of one drop off at a time as you have space constraints and trust issues (you couldn't trust customers not to steal other peoples food so you'd need some kind of method to secure other customers food). Where as this wouldn't be a problem with a human delivery boy nor even an automated delivery car.
But that all said, I wouldn't say that these things are more complicated either. I think they're both equally complicated but for different reasons.
> This helicopter is quite free to move and can be "easily" tracked by gps or such.
Cars can also be tracked by GPS. That's how self-driving cars work and what's used in SatNavs. Autonomous tracking is the easy bit as that's been available in consumer technology for the best part of a decade already.
The third dimension is only an issue at takeoff and at landing which are by far the greatest show stoppers here. With maybe economic feasibility.
Cars also have road navigation to handle with ugly stuff such as dynamic roadblocks and obsolete maps, all of which don't really apply to flying.
Maybe in a mid/long-term future we'll see regulations for drones but it is very close to free for all as it stands right now
I'm sure there will be some kind of regulation/standard that will deal with the way drones avoid other drones (and other tall structures) while in the air.
That's mostly tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely - the sorts of spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination skills that kids develop playing video games directly translate to fly-by-wire systems.
(The downside, of course, is that teenagers are easily bored and easily amused, and may be prone to wrecking expensive company drones doing barrel rolls and buzzing their friends.)
It looks like this was filmed in the UK (from the .co.uk address on the side of the box). Had it been filmed in the US, they could run into serious legal problems for not having a Special Airworthiness Certificate from the FAA for commercial operation.
There are also a great number of video producers out there - often relatively young folks who keep in tune with what's popular online, stay current on technology trends, and would love to earn their income by creating and selling videos which advertise brands (Dominos) and products.
So, these folks - their raison d'être is to produce videos which promote a brand and spread virally - and to achieve that, they need to 'feel' unique, but the catch is that they generally need to display the branding quite prominently in the content.
Here's a similar situation: http://www.livescience.com/23150-seagull-video-hoax.html
To me, I'd suspect both are viral marketing, if well disguised - and even if they're not, I'd suspect that viral video marketers are going to become more sophisticated at making videos 'appear' to be genuine / user-generated / found footage.
One question that springs to mind with this one is: if Dominos were beta-testing this, would they have the operator wear the Dominos delivery uniform?
Either way, they're fun to watch.