Australian Startups To Begin Delivering Textbook Orders By Drone | Hacker News Reader

Australian Startups To Begin Delivering Textbook Orders By Drone

techcrunch.com

Am I the only person around here who thinks that the correct solution to prompt textbook delivery around campus is a wifi or 3G network and an ebook reader, rather than a noisy flying machine of questionable safety?

(Five stars for WTF-grade novelty of start-up proposal, one star for safety and efficacy.)

Yeah, not sure about the choice of products but I've no doubt this is going to be a very normal way to receive goods in the future.

I guess they view these as two separate problems: as long as we are using physical textbooks, their solution makes sense.

As for safety, I think it's good for pioneers to go ahead while making their best efforts in safety (they discuss safety in the article). Either the government bans them immediately, or they wait until things get bigger before introducing regulation. If everyone waited until the full set of safety regulations was in place, nothing would get done.

I'd always go for the noisy flying machine of questionable safety myself. It sounds more fun and any accidents might just filter out some of the less quick-witted on campus, or at least those who fail to watch the skies. This is probably why I don't get to run a university.

I wouldn't be surprised if the textbook was more of a proof of concept or maybe a stunt.

Australia is a big place, and it may cost less for a "pony express" to run predator drones across the country instead of trucks.

Electronic textbooks are rubbish compared to paper textbooks. They win only on weight and ease of copying (they should win on price, but the electronic version is often more expensive than the paper version). I have many of my textbooks in both electronic and paper format and the electronic version is what I use when I'm away from my paper, as the "better than nothing" backup.

The usability of a paper textbook is far superior. Easier to add my own notes to (notes which, I might add, I can be sure will be there the next time I read it, and the next, and forever), easier to write and draw on, easier to add my own coloured sticky tabs, easier to have five or six open at once, easier to literally put my fingers in it and flick back and forth to compare, and a fixed format that I know will be usable five, ten, and fifty years from now. Also more pleasant to read (except for those grey market overseas editions which sometimes are not well printed and on bad paper, but at one-tenth the price it's a fair trade-off!).

So, they decided the following must be true: - Textbooks are something that people want right away and can be delivered outside - Students are willing to pay a premium for fast delivery from a nearby location fairly often - A small helicopter is an efficient way to deliver thick paper books

I feel like they couldn't have chosen a worse product to deliver via drone.

The killer-app for drone delivery is drugs, legal or illegal.

Nah, Its Pizza.

Drone delivery methods attack the aspect of delivery with the lowest value-added, and there isn't much evidence that it can do it more efficiently than current methods that get aggregated to a truck and then disaggregated on a route.

When you pay for a person to deliver something within the same city (the relevant range for drone delivery methods), well over 80% of that value is attributed to a human being that is capable of doing the following things: Finding obscure building entrances, knocking on doors, collecting signatures, backing up vehicles around obscured corners into loading docks without hitting trash cans and sleeping homeless people, identifying obscured address signs, pressing the correct buttongs on elevators, avoiding malicious dogs, and placing packages in places that are obvious to the recipient and non-obvious to thieves.

To be sure, this also applies to driverless-vehicle delivery as well, although the value-added aspect that is provided by humans is lower because the relevant range of the vehicles is higher.

I believe this would be perfect for transporting Automated external defibrillators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillato...) to people with heart problems immediately.

These have to be provided very quickly in order to maximize chance of survival. If someone saw a person collapse in a city he could call an Ambulance, and a drone with one of them attached would be sent to the location of the phone via GPS. The people there could then use the machine to attempt to save the persons life. This should be way faster than ambulances, especially in cities, and in the face of saving lives the cost would be negligible.

EDIT: Ah, urgent medical supplies are mentioned in the end of the article. I really hope this works out!

As with most major innovations that start with a military background, such as the Internet, SMS, GPS and satellites, when applied to a community problem they have a significant and positive impact on society.

Not sure if I should laugh or cry.

Let's hope they don't run into anyone: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/queens/teen-killed-remot...

A RC helicopter is not a toy. Helicopter blades are really dangerous, and a helicopter is at least 10 times harder to control than a quad drone. Flying a RC helicopter is like balancing a stick on your finger, with strange inertia and with optical feedback only. The drones have built-in stabilization circuits, but this is optional (and quite expensive) for RC helicopters. Most RC helicopters cannot hover by themselves, the hovering is actively controlled by the handler at all times.

The blades are long, very strong (usually carbon fiber) and the linear speed at the end point can reach more than 100km/h. Even a smaller 450-class RC helicopter blade can break a bone, and that was a class 700 one. Compared to that, the small drones are realy friendly - most of the drone propellers can be stopped by a finger without getting hurt.

This will be crush by regulations. The future of delivery is in Google hands right now. They got two amazing technologies,Bufferbox and the Google driverless car, and a big enough lobby power to change the laws.

Things will be delivered by autonomous Bufferbox vehicles.

Weve invented drones that can deliver textbooks but were still using physical textbooks?

The books should be delivered by google's driver less cars.

i wonder what the cost per mile would be for each method (drone and car)

What will it take to convert all cargo planes into drones?

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