Amazon to deliver by drone? Don't believe the hype
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
The drones could be almost fully automated - fly to this GPS point above the person's house, at which point control is handed to a pilot for the landing & package drop.
>How is the transfer of the package enacted? What stops someone else stealing the package along the way?
I'd imagine the same way it's done today, the same way USPS/UPS handles packages - by dropping them on my porch and hoping my neighbors are honest.
>And what happens when next door's kid decides to shoot the drone with his BB rifle?
He gets a spanking and the drone gets repaired? The same thing that would happen if he shot the tires off the Fedex truck?
This article raises some good points about the political ramifications of drone technology, and some excellent ones about it being a PR move to squelch negative reporting, but I'm left with the feeling that, if he were alive a century ago, James Ball wouldn't be out of place writing an article titled "Sears & Roebuck to stop horse-drawn carriage delivery in favor of the automobile? Don't believe the hype".
In the real world, you can't "fly to this GPS point". If this were possible, we would have automated airplanes and pilots would be out of their jobs. Remember the real world has other aircraft and a number of interesting obstacles: power lines, lamp posts, fences, trees, cranes, trucks, chimneys, kites and all other kinds of interesting stuff.
Flying blind to a preprogrammed GPS location is simply impossible in the real world.
Also, remember that GPS isn't quite enough to drop a package right on your doorstep. You need much more than that.
I didn't intend to rule out the need for clever self-flying technology on the part of Amazon.
But comparing the challenges that face an airplane that carries people at very high speeds and altitudes to a low altitude slow-moving drone is pretty silly.
Google's self driving car does this at road speed limits. There's no reason a drone doing 20 MPH with an extra degree of freedom couldn't do it as well.
>Also, remember that GPS isn't quite enough to drop a package right on your doorstep. You need much more than that.
>> at which point control is handed to a pilot for the landing & package drop
Good, how?
Do you think 4G can allow you to do that? With enough latency?
Flying military drones is a very complicated matter.
Today civilian drones are flown with visual contact and at close range.
So, no.
Well, if we assume that the drone is pilotless up to the point when the drone needs to land:
* the drone flies to the GPS point in question and hovers pending instruction
* the drone takes a picture of the ground area and sends it via 4G to a controller
* the controller identifies a landing point and transmits it back to the drone
* the drone uses its obstacle avoidance systems to land, drop the package, and take back off for a return to Amazon's center.
This is just one idea. Perhaps Amazon provides you with a beacon for the drone, or you get a big QR code for the drone to target your house & they don't need pilots at all. Who knows!
Either way, it seems to me that the most interesting thing would be the collision avoidance systems for automated flight. But considering Google can do this with a car on highways, I'd imagine that a slow moving drone that can also operate along the Z axis would be easier.
> Flying military drones is a very complicated matter.
I'm sure it is - but military drones have an incredibly different mission; comparing them to a slow package delivery drone isn't really worthwhile. Hell, according to Wiki the Predator drone's stall speed is 60 mph - Amazon drones sound like they will be much slower, at least at first.
The flight is manually pre-planned. You also need to consider obstacles (and other aircraft).
People always seem to think planes fly 'autonomously', but they don't. They can fly 'automatic' maybe 90% of the time, but they don't fly themselves.
So far I've heard these drones won't work because existing aircraft can't do this, or because military drones can't do that.
But no one seems to consider that these drones don't fulfill the same role as a Predator drone or a jumbo jet, so many of these objections are incredibly odd.
I remember seeing a link on HN several weeks ago about a flying robot that was designed to bump into walls and reorient itself. What if we had an army of package delivering robots that flew at 5 MPH, did best-case collision avoidance, and if they bumped into the side of a brick wall it's not a huge deal?
If an Amazon drone runs into bad weather it could be programmed to land on the nearest flat roof. If unexpected airspace congestion is detected it could just turn back to home. Or hover in place until things resolve. Or(...)
We aren't trying to safely land an airplane full of humans at 100 knots, or deliver a Hellfire missile on a moving target. We are flying a lightweight, slow moving drone with a tiny package. The considerations are completely different.
That's not the reason why I think this Amazon drone thing is just a way to generate some media hype, I can think of many other reasons why the idea is silly and won't work. You can find most if not all of them in other peoples posts in the various Amazon drone articles, I don't have to list them here.
My main point was not that delivery drones are impossible because planes or military drones still need pilots, I just wanted to point out that 'self-flying planes' are so often used as proof for other types of autonomous vehicles, which is based on the false premise that planes are autonomous.
GPS is certainly enough to fly it to the visual vicinity of your house. I can imagine needing to supply a landing marker (large QR code?) to tell it exactly where to land.
This kind of process will probably happening anyway for hazard avoidance.
As someone who makes delivery robots for hospitals, let me say that I envy navigation problems of flying drones. I'd seriously worry about power and range and weather and how you recover a drone that has a problem and crashes, but not navigation in general.
Assume it will never work in NYC, but could it work in Albuquerque, New Mexico? Assume it won't fly if the winds are over mph. Assume that only human operated landings are performed the first time to scope the landing zone, with future approach and landings to be automated. Assume that anything unexpected causes the delivery to get canceled.
In the 60 Minutes interview, Bezos was optimistic but more cautious about when it would be ready -- more like 2018+. Also, the earlier part of the segment was about how it took Amazon Fresh 5 years to expand grocery delivery to its second city. Bezos, of all tech companies, knows the value of staying with a problem for the long term. If I had to bet if Amazon could figure this out over the next 50 years, I would say yes. Sooner is a bonus.
These things don't follow. We actually do have automated airplanes and pilots jobs are really just there for passenger comfort, but that is because Autoland and autopilot utilize ILS' and other sensor data besides GPS to make it precise enough.
So while your point about GPS alone being insufficient for precision delivery is correct, the overall thought that we can't do precision delivery is misguided.
Come on, people. Being able to draw a trajectory isn't the same as moving a physical object through space. And moving a drone to a predetermined GPS location in ideal conditions while you are watching it and when you know there is nothing around has nothing to do with day-to-day deliveries using drones.
These drones have a 10 miles range, I would guess they are intended for densely populated metropolitan areas where it is viable to have a closeby Amazon warehouse. So in most cases simply there is no porch.
If the story had been - 'Amazon to deploy motor bikes to deliver packages within 10 miles of their distribution centre' it'd have received a lot less attention.
Packages are routinely delivered quickly, accurately, securely and cheaply in urban areas. I do think Amazon are solving a problem that doesn't exist. Nice bit of PR though.
Amazon would not need a full-fledged distribution center as a drone base. Orders received by, say, 10am could be put on a truck from a distribution center that's an hour or two's drive from the center of the metro area. The truck goes to the drone base in the middle of town and unloads. You can still deliver before 5pm.
How do you get your packages now?
The customer must have a smartphone and place the order with Amazon's special app. The app then continually uploads the customer's gps data to Amazon so the drone can target. Once the drone gets close, the phone also gives a distinctive beacon using wifi for the drone to hone in on. When it's time to receive the package, the app displays a specific QR code and the drone scans it.
It's the customer's responsibility to be outside at the right time, but the app will tell them when to within a few minutes. Likewise, if the phone's battery dies during delivery, the delivery is aborted for a partial refund (the app provides warnings).
Some people will worry about accruing "failure to receive" charges due to Amazon's failings, but once a good track record is established, that will fade. Others will worry about the NSA seizing all that location data, but they already have it from the cell phone companies.
You wouldn't even need to do this. If you have a garden (even a communal one) then the drone could simply land there instead. Or perhaps a balcony, if large enough. I can imagine Amazon sending you a beacon of some kind which the drone could communicate with when nearby to pinpoint where it's supposed to land.
So now you have to put a camera and a remote control system with a range of many miles on the drone. And it can only work if there's a line of sight.
Fail.
Pack it in, boys. Until someone develops some sort of wireless technology which we could use to receive information from the drone as well as control it, and deploys it widely across high population-density areas, this drone idea just won't be feasible.
I just can't wrap my head around how these are possible in areas like Manhattan where they would be most useful. Not to mention 4 or 5 years is probably about the understatement of the century as to when it will be permitted by the FAA.
The range of the drones is already horrible.
The costs of controlling drones over the wireless networks would be pretty high too.
Likely nominal. Considering the drone probably has a camera already for routine (non-piloted operations) weight wouldn't be significant. Power wouldn't be huge as wireless service wouldn't be required until the drone is ready to land. Besides, this isn't a long-flight drone.
>The range of the drones is already horrible.
The range of the drones is likely driven by business, not technology. I'm sure if Amazon is serious about this program they've selected a 10 mile radius from their processing centers as a way to control costs & give the drone high operating time margins. If they do it, and it works, I wouldn't be surprised to see larger runs in the future.
>The costs of controlling drones over the wireless networks would be pretty high too.
I can't speak to that directly, but don't forget Amazon already subsidizes wireless costs with Whispernet on the Kindle, so I wouldn't be surprised if they've got some good agreements with wireless networks already. Of course the data needs for video is much greater than for sending an ebook, but this is a lower-volume proposition, both in actual wireless use time & customer count.
On October 9, 1903, two months before the Wright brothers flew for the first time, the New York times declared "The ridiculous fiasco which attended the attempt at aerial navigation in the Langley flying machine was not unexpected… it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years" [1]
I imagine someone like James Ball wrote that article, too.
[1] http://www.skygod.com/quotes/times1903.pdf
edit: rmc indicated I wrote date as 2013, fixed to 1903
Plus, following your argument you could swat away any criticism of any outlandish claim by saying that people once thought the world was flat. Hardly constructive. Not that there are any claims of this magnitude by Amazon or in this article.
He didn't called it "hot air and baloney" because he thinks it would never physically work. He called it that because he believes it was timed to coincide with Cyber Monday. The bureaucratic hurdles for this are too numerous to mention. It goes in the Hyperloop-from-LA-to-NYC category.
I doubt he's missed the mark since there's not many other logical reasons for Amazon to announce this possibility five years in advance.
It's Amazon.com marketing hype. Go buy something.
> I doubt he's missed the mark since there's not many other logical reasons for Amazon to announce this possibility five years in advance.
Getting public support early so they have an easier time of getting the legislation passed to make this possible.
Getting public support early so they can get people thinking/accepting of drop off locations in and around their homes and businesses.
Getting people interested in working for a forward thinking company, and therefore attracting engineers wanting to work on interesting things.
But no. It's just marketing hype.
You know what is purely hype in order to get page views? This article by Lyons.
66 years later we landed men on the moon. Funny how fast things take off once your crack that first big problem.
That said, Bezos is a businessman. Everything he does promotes Amazon in several different ways. This video will be used as negotiation muscle with delivery companies. It'll be used during union negotiations within UPS. It'll be used to make Amazon look technologically progressive and not just America's biggest mall. It'll make Bezos look good to investors. It'll spook smaller companies trying to get into this game (how's the nook doing?).
It might also lead to actually landing packages on people's front porches.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm thinking that Bezos isn't investing in drones to deliver ebooks.
Many political websites do the same thing: they use a linkbait headline, briefly mention something in the news that is barely tangential to the actual message they want to get out, then say whatever it is they wanted to in the first place. Huffington Post 101.
"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
> We call them nay-sayers.
Strangely these 'critical thinkers' rarely apply their massive brainpower to then thinking of potential solutions for the problems that everyone else has also seen.
In other words, no one is impressed by your ability to see problems. Everyone else here can see them too. We've all got brains, thanks. The trick is to use them to solve problems, that's the valuable skill.
For what it's worth I think your solution is likely better, but not in every conceivable way. There are real benefits of taking self-driving cars and giving them 3 dimensions and no human obstacles.
I noticed that you didn't bring up weather or birds, neither of which will communicate with the drone. I cannot wait for ravens to figure out some drones have food in them.
"3 dimensions and no human obstacles"
There are an amazing number of obstacles in both an urban and rural environment for a drone to navigate. Cables going from building to building are one such example. Never mind that the architects understand delivery by people/ground vehicle where drones are going to have to figure out how to fit in. Roads are used for travel and have mechanisms / procedures to clear them for use, the air routes are for drones are going to be something different.
I would be surprised if the skies were more dangerous for a drone than the roads for a car, but I probably did understate the problems. I do agree though that self-driving cars for delivery are more more likely and practical in the near term.
We have a huge amount of experience with cars and people. We have designed large systems and procedures for cars and people. We are getting some experience[1] with automated cars which is helped greatly by the experience, systems, and rules developed for cars and people.
We don't know the form that automated car deliveries will take, but the unknown distance is from the curb to the domicile. With drones, we have nothing from the warehouse to the domicile and no experience to draw from.
We know what to do in a car crash, I get the feeling drones are really going to go send people into a tizzy. The amount of crap hanging above people's heads is amazing and there is no map to help.
I might be more pessimistic because of the blowing snow outside currently.
1) automated cars in snow seems to be a bit lacking
look at it like a cart-before-the-horse problem. similar to the ebook/kindle, amazon will simply create something that solves an enormous pain point for people and then effectively whitelist the delivery of it.
meaning, the ebook is to the kindle as air prime is to pre-determined-as-safe landing spot in your yard. you can't have your 30 minute delivery unless you've gotten your landing spot signed off by amazon. just like (back then anyway) you couldn't read your amazon ebook unless you had a place to deliver it.
Self-driving cars also would have no flexibility in package placement, making the idea a non-starter. Amazon isn't going to leave your packages at the curb.
One problem people seem to be having is that they think Amazon has to come up with a perfect solution that covers every edge case. They don't. They can start using drones for carefully defined environments and expand from there.
Presume you meant 1903 there.... (A reverse Y2K bug!)
(trying to practice your style of fancy ad-hominem debating)
What threw me off in particular about the article though was the tone. It's fine to be skeptical but you don't need to be a sarcastic prat about it.
"Bezos' neat trick has knocked several real stories about Amazon out of the way. Last week's Panorama investigation into Amazon's working and hiring practices, suggesting that the site's employees had an increased risk of mental illness, is the latest in a long line of pieces about the company's working conditions – zero-hour contracts, short breaks, and employees' every move tracked by internal systems. Amazon's drone debacle also moved discussion of its tax bill – another long-running controversy, sparked by the Guardian's revelation last year that the company had UK sales of £7bn but paid no UK corporation tax – to the margins."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/15/drone-book-deli...
As far as why the difference in coverage? I would guess that a company like Amazon generally announces these sorts of initiatives when they're pretty much available, which makes the "earliest in 2015" bit turn this into a big PR stunt imo.
I'm surprised the general population is inclined to believe such bullshit - in fact I'm surprised Amazon themselves are inclined to believe it.
Flying by "drone" is:
- more expensive
- not reliable (at all)
- prone to theft (of the drone, not the package, mind you)
- doesn't work at all in bad weather
- less efficient than current delivery methods
- easy & fun to circumvent (oh crap someone killed the 1300mhz range, our 10 000 drones just fell off the sky, military style, QUICK NEWS STORY)
it goes on and on, forever, literally... if anything I think automated driving cars are easier to get right.
"Amazon's drone debacle also moved discussion of its tax bill – another long-running controversy, sparked by the Guardian's revelation last year that the company had UK sales of £7bn but paid no UK corporation tax "
- Introducing your own newspaper into the debate negates any chance you have that this is in impartial journalistic piece. Secondly, I doubt Bezos is thinking about some UK tax noise when deciding whether or not to discuss drone's with 60 minutes.
"It's too late for the clickfarms already. But outlets and journalists who'd like to think of themselves as serious must stop regurgitating this crap. And, even more importantly, you,concerned citizen, must try to stop clicking on it."
- Let me lecture both my peers and my audience on how they need to behave. I'm uniquely qualified to do this because........well for no real reason actually except a heightened sense of self worth.
Hack job.
But there is a big difference between "Bezos thinks drone deliveries would be cool in 5 years time", and "Amazon starts drone deliveries". The article rightly concludes that at this time, it's a PR trick for driving black friday sales.
The concept of drone deliveries isn't that novel: at least 10 companies have announced that they are working on or have put out promotional videos of the same thing in the last few years. The novel and interesting bit would be to figure out the real logistical difficulties, which Amazon nor the others have yet presented.
* http://mashable.com/2013/06/05/dominos-drone/
* http://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/09/04/chinese-firm-tests-dro...
* http://www.dezeen.com/2013/10/16/flying-drones-to-deliver-te...
If you mean as "hackers", to pick a word from the name of this website, who were for a long time, rightly or wrongly, supposed to be conscientious watchdogs of present and future technology, no.
If for no other reason, as technologists who witnessed Stallman, Assange, Bradley, Snowden, so on in their lifetimes, you're supposed to be first and foremost astute critics of the future that dominant forces of the realm of technology such as Amazon are aiming to build. And rather than enthusiastically applaud whatever new and possibly exciting technology they bring to the table that contributes to your present or future paycheck and their private profit, you're supposed to take political responsibility for the future you help build by being their employees, customers and unpaid evangelists.
The notion of being unquestioning "champions of the future" is a general trait of most HN participants, and in direct contrast to what you problematize, what I find problematic is the great wave of instant enthusiasm we're seeing among so-called "hackers" for Amazon's stated intentions.
> Aren't we supposed to the be champions of the future?
Otoh, it is interesting to see that everybody is OK with Amazon drones taking aerial pictures of their yards.
I'd sell/give away clip-on baskets with a fat QR-code or similar imprinted on the inside bottom (or with embedded iBeacon-like-tech or even infrared lights similar to the Wii) to all customers who want to use this service and ask them to attach it to a window-sill, preferably upstairs or to the the back of the house. This would allow the copter to make a secure drop. As the copters are weight-limited anyway the baskets could also be.
It's also worth noting that as this service is for urgent items (why else would you pay extra for a 30 min service) why would you need to worry about the recipient being out? With GPS built-into mobile phones, 4G internet, bluetooth and iBeacon-like tech you could inform the recipient just before delivery or even better and it directly to them (or a special basket placed on the ground).
Moreover, Bezos, who almost never talks about products in advance, was talking about something which won't be available for at least several years -- complete with a video demo.
I believe that Amazon has been investing time, money, and energy in this delivery-by-drone system. And I'm even excited by this possibility, far-off as it might be, and unlikely to come to my part of the world (i.e., Israel) in the foreseeable future. So this wasn't a just damage-control press tour, as the Guardian author seems to think.
But something is going on here, and I can't put my finger on it. Maybe Amazon is just trying to encourage more people to buy from them during the US "holiday shopping period," as it's known. Maybe this is something of an attempt to soften the negative image that Amazon workers' conditions have received lately. (Several of my relatives were talking about it over the weekend, so it has struck a chord with some people.) Maybe it's a "don't hurt us, since we're doing such cool things" image campaign. I'm really not sure. But this does seem rather out of character, and I'm glad that at least someone is raising questions about it.
In the end, the Segway hardly lived up to all the hype. I mean, Bezo's himself was quoted as saying, "Cities will be built around these devices." Which should give you a good idea of how masterful he's at over hyping certain things. I now take most of his announcements with a pound of salt, considering his colorful history.
The battery life life of the craft is determined by the weight/battery capacity ratio. Since is hardly any aerodynamics, the multicopter is constantly fighting the force of gravity by delivering an equal force using its motors and props.
An optimistic range estimate for current batteries would be about 10 mi, but the craft would also have to return, so make that 5mi.
Now imagine what happens when you attach a payload to it.
Regulations may change, and flight controlers keep getting better, but batteries would need significant improvement for this to become viable.
No, what they actually think is that in six hours they can think of several dealbreaker problems that Amazon has also thought of but doesn't care about, because it's a publicity stunt.
Is it anti-competitively avoiding tax, poor working conditions, or drones?
It clearly is inevitable that at some point things will be delivered in this manner, but simply whining about it in this way is just an attempt to take away from anyone that tries to make progress, because heaven help the Guardian if they ever acknowledge someone in the private sector contributing to the advance of humanity.
1.) The Guardian et al. complain about working conditions at Amazon.
2.) Amazon puts out PR hinting that many of those workers will be replaced by automation before too long.
3.) The Guardian says it's just shopping season hype to distract from the working conditions and such.
Basically Amazon just called their bluff, and is now under pressure to deliver some seriously impressive results. How can a reporter complain about working conditions for drones? Will they go full-on Luddite and try to blame Amazon for destroying jobs? This should be interesting.
- They use a octocopter; that's great for the payload, plus it adds some redundancy; If a motor fails the others take over to get back safely without crashing. A bad thing about this is that it's a heavy lift, so more battery drain, so it needs a bigger battery == even more drain. I think you can get 30 minutes of flight time at the max out of that, with a lot of heavy batteries.
- Multicopters carrying payloads use powerful electronic motors; You do not want to put a finger near a spinning prop, for safety reasons a UAV within reach of people or animals should always be controlled by a human, what if someone runs up to the package to pick it up and the UAV automatically spins up to return to home?
- Auto landing is possible, but might be dangerous; The current systems (for example ArduPilot) use GPS and acc/baro/gyro/compasses to achieve autonomous flight. It works if your in field without trees around you, but the system can't find the best spot to land for you, so you need to land it by hand for this delivery service, controlled by a pilot over FPV (first person, wireless video connection).
- Experimental FPV ranges over 10 miles are possible, but not fail proof, especially in a non-line of sight environment or while landing (low to the ground).
Hate it to be a nay-sayer, this will have a future but the tech isn't here yet at this moment to accomplish it fully autonomous and safe.
I wonder if something like SawStop (http://www.sawstop.com/why-sawstop/the-technology) could be adapted to help with this. Probably not worth the weight I guess.
You don't know when the UPS guy is going to show up, but presumably, with this system, it's fast enough that you will be right where the order is dropped off.
Second of all, you wont see the air being open to commercial solutions until the government is done with it. Its just how things work. Neither FAA nor any other government organisation will allow anyone to ask questions why is amazon flying stuff around but yet the streets are not patrolled by unmanned aircrafts? or a fire put out by a team of cooperating drones? Until then (10 years?) Jeff is just advertising himself, a day before cyber Monday (like article is indicating) and as usually he's doing great job!
So far in just the HN threads, I've read some pretty innovative ideas (QR code landing pads that homes can setup for the drones). I'm pretty sure with the hive mind of the internet this problem can be solved by the collective engineer/lawyer/politician/etc
We put men on the moon I think we can put amazon packages in people's backyards!
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/27/21645567-...
Oh, and here is a 2007 guardian article about flying cars:http://www.theguardian.com/science/2007/aug/31/3
And here is an older one poo-pooing the idea: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2005/jun/16/1
Now I ask, which is hype and which is journalism?
Yes, because urban areas full of terror targets aren't already full of platforms for weapons delivery. It's not like anyone can strap on a backpack and walk into a crowded mall.
Terror is not that real a threat. If you're worried about the terror prospects, you've already lost. Terror has been possible since the invention of explosives. Most people are friendly and cooperative, and do not value random acts of violence. Real work to combat terror involves improving the lives of marginalized people, and hunting down the few rabid dogs that are spreading their disease.
The fact that Amazon is trying to generate good PR is a tangental story in my opinion, and I wonder if investing in a drone delivery program just to show it off would be the most cost effective way to get good press.
I am also very unimpressed with the challenges that Mr. Ball identified. He probably had fun fashioning himself as some kind of technology muckraker, but please go after uninspired technology instead of taking easy shots at interesting and bold ideas.
As to the issues he raised with the idea itself, the reality is that every single one of the issues will be resolved. This type of delivery, along with privately owned drones carrying out mundane tasks that would normally have us driving around town, is our future. It will happen, the only question is when.
Does this refute his claim that Amazon are using an uptick in publicity to hide opposition to Amazon's business practices?
Autonomous ground delivery does suffer from reduced navigational flexibility (anything other than curbside delivery is tricky). But it potentially has lower operating costs and safer failure modes. It may also be easier to integrate into existing regulatory frameworks.
If a start-up had done this, they'd write a blog called "how we hacked cyber monday" and the CEO would be your new man-crush, he'd then write an e-book called "PR hacking for profit and more profit", you'd drool when he spoke at the next TED, then a couple years from now your review of the prime air service would be full of OMGs
My point is it's a smart move now for the PR and in the future for what this tech could do, one does not damn the other. Amazon has more than proven its tech chops are beyond that of a just a website, combine that with the fact that the copter tech has been advancing on it's own at a fast pace and I think you'd be a fool to bet against Amazon on this one.
If they develop the technology, they're not restricted to using it in the USA. Some country will allow them, then it's another issue of the USA lagging behind due to regulations and we'll get it eventually. Bezos was more than transparent about 2015 being the best case scenario and not giving any true expectations. Either way, it's a matter of when, not if.
Would it be unpredictable that USPS/Fedex/DHL start doing something like it too?
Somebody will figure out a way.
The consequences if I did "believe the hype" are terrible, I'm sure, although I can't think of a single one right now.
That being said, some delivery people simply dump the package in front of my flat and shipment tracking says I (who wasn't home) signed for it. And of course the fun of living in a dorm with 120 people and the illegible signature (are there others?) and you don't know who it belongs to (because the slip of paper in your mailbox just says "delivered to neighbour").
I don't think the handover issue is a fundamental problem with the drones though. For example you could receive an automated phone call to let you know the package is hovering above your house. If you're ordering something to be delivered in 30 minutes you're probably going to be there to receive it.
But I still see theft in transit as an issue. The moral/mental threshold is surely much lower for shooting down a mechanical fly than it is for raiding a van.
If a police car is nearby it could be on the scene before the drone even hits the ground and having a few stories of parents getting a giant bill might do the trick.
Personally, I can see the appeal of the strategy "just don't have crime"; things are a lot more convenient that way.
How would you safeguard against that?