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Comment by waterlesscloud | Hacker News Reader

Here's the thing, though. The problems the 'critical thinkers' point out are usually so obvious as to be completely uninteresting.

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.

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Yeah, here's my solution to the myriad problems with this idea: self-driving electric cars as delivery vehicles. It's far more realistic and practical in every conceivable way.

Are you sure? Self driving cars have to deal with human drivers, cyclists and pedestrians - none of which are in the sky at the same numbers. They also can't communicate intelligently with those in the ways that drones could intelligently avoid collisions by being in constant contact with everything near them. Self driving cars are constrained to roads while drones may be able to fly in different areas. Drones can fly up and down too, so there won't be any traffic jams - they can be avoided even easier since every vehicle can be in communication with each other.

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.

"drones could intelligently avoid collisions by being in constant contact with everything near them"

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.

Fair points, "everything around them" was an unreasonable overstatement. Weather will be a lot tougher to deal with (I suspect it becomes efficient or resistant for a long time, with weather resistant stuff being heavier) than for a car. You're probably right about birds too..these probably look a lot easier to peck into than a car. Again, anything protecting the package is going to weigh it down.

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.

"I would be surprised if the skies were more dangerous for a drone than the roads for a car"

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

personally, i don't suspect any of the obstacles really matter.

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.

I'm pretty sure ebooks haven't crashed and killed anyone and landing isn't the only problem.

Nope, and now perhaps you can appreciate how hard it is to come up with solutions. Problems are easy to spot, your intuitions on solutions is often wrong. Thousands of drones are in use right now, this very day, serving useful purposes. Drones can already survive heavy wind and rain. Part of the reason is that open space is far less obstructed and much easier to navigate in an automated fashion than public roads. In comparison to drones, the number of non-experimental self-driving cars is probably close to zero.

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.

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