Delivery By Drones
anthonypompliano.com
anthonypompliano.com
I.e. where does the drone land? How does the recipient pick up their package? What if you live in an apartment, how do you get your pie?
This make me think drone delivery is probably waaay more valuable in suburbia than a city setting. Delivery in the suburbia seems costlier currently (larger distances, lower densities so less stops per route, etc) and drones are well suited to deliver to a nice big front/back yard.
In cities - I don't see how they'll deliver pizzas, but maybe non-perishables can be deposited into receptacles on rooftops or street corners and picked up asynchronously.
Let's say they somehow manage to perfect street landing, so that drones won't come crashing down on people, parked cars, construction sites etc, independent of weather conditions (snow, ice) - what happens then? Does the drone wait until you go down and pick up your pizza? What would prevent people from stealing a (rather expensive, I imagine) landed drone?
Does it just drop the deliverable from a safe distance? So what about "oh hey, there's a hovering drone, let's go pick up some free pizza".
Still lots of ways for things to go wrong, but I bet there are some interesting solutions. It's all very new.
Or, hey, as long as we're spitballing, what if it were common to have some sort of household bot? A butler-bot, if you will. It might have the responsibility of ascending to the roof (via some sort of track) to take delivery. You might need some sort of defenses against burglar-bots but ... I think I'd better stop here. ;)
There seems to a bunch of seemingly plausible ways to do this, but the first group to work on the problem will surely solve it then patent the method.
I'm guessing most mail can be eliminated, tomorrow. Make snail mail marketing illegal, you take out probably 90% or more of all mail. You also take out 90% of the income for the post office, making the rest more expensive, driving people to digitize what bits they haven't already done. Convenience win, environmental win.
As for Pizza, what socially worthless tradeoff. Noise pollution, total surveillance by corporations, crashed drones and trash in your backyard, for what? So that we can get fatter with even less effort?
Rescue services, organ transplants, air pollution monitoring, emergency communications, OK. But making it easier for someone to get a Frappachino? Do we still need to solve that problem?
Millions of details need to be sorted out before even beginning to draft legislation. One must be insane to think this could "just work" and promote innovation. Try running an airport. This would be orders of magnitude more complicated. Not unfeasible, but please be patient and methodical.
How long until the drone owners start selling not ads, but data collection/reconnaissance services to corporations/governments...?
Seriously though, how are the flightpaths going to be managed once multiple services start flying drones? Centralized proximity detection service based on GPS? (Hmm startup idea anyone...)
The GPS on my iPhone is good enough to pinpoint my 2D position to within ~10 feet, so I don't see why not.
One drone is fun, hundreds need more thinking through.
> Mail, pizza, and Starbucks all delivered by drones which saves everyone money and creates more happiness
[1] http://www.beyondbars.org/starbucks_private_prison_labor
[2] http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2006/07/16/dear-starbucks-cust...
I don't see how it would create more happiness. The "oh look, a drone" reaction would lay off pretty soon. But, perhaps it can save some energy and lessen the use of fossil fuels.
Also, I see they're self-driving. How well would this work with tiny in air obstacles like power lines?
So the question "are we innovative enough to follow?" is somehow exaggerated. We could've asked the same question 4-5 years ago. The better question would be "When will the FCC adapt to innovation?"
You could have a postbox-like port that it could put items into.
We have grocery delivery in my area, but it's such a hassle because I have to be home within their time window and I have to book it a couple days in advance. Why can't I just hit a "now" button and it arrives via drone, at 2am if I so desire, when most delivery people are sleeping? Or in a rainstorm, because the drone doesn't care?
Our building doesn't have a helicopter landing pad or anything that fancy, but it's fairly clear and well-maintained (no debris or trees growing up there). There's no reason a relatively light drone can't land without issues.