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Comment by alooPotato | Hacker News Reader

Anyone know how these type of "logistics" companies are planning on solving the last 10 feet problem.

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.

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That is my biggest concern too.

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".

Really interesting thought around theft. Since there is already anti-collision software included, maybe anti-theft software is next to be developed?

There seem like a lot of logistical issues but there are some opportunities as well. Because delivery is so quick, customers might be expected to wait at the designated delivery point or no delivery will take place. A smartphone might well play a role. You order your pizza, and when it's ready for delivery you receive a notification that you have five minutes to get outside. Once outside the smartphone might also be used for verification purposes via some sort of wireless connection.

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. ;)

Lessons from Santa Claus; If your house has a roof pickup mechanism for drones we may deliver there. Locking and securing capsules wouldn't be a big problem. QR Codes, cameras, cryptographic locks, Bluetooth maybe used.

May be something like, GPS + "Bluetooth pairing at destination". This could allow the fly-copter to lock onto the target when in vicinity of the original (or updated) destination GPS coordinates.

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 would think one of the best way is to have a drone operator take control of the drone when it has reached it's delivery location, in order to ensure a safe delivery. This would require you to keep a drone operator at hand, but if you have multiple drones in air at the same time, it might pay off.

How about a large QR tag :) With the data: DROP-ZONE-house-number-5a :)

Good point. Drone can easily locate the land area with QR tag.

The article points out that the drones don't have onboard cameras.

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