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Comment by Derpdiherp | Hacker News Reader

I'm still not convinced by delivery by drone. There's many problems that have yet to be solved, some have obvious solutions that are still none trivial to implement - others at least in my mind are very much an issue.

So far as none trivial but solvable problems - there's going to have to be communication with all vendors operating delivery drones. Each drone will have to be aware of other drones by other companies and their flight-paths in the area and avoid collisions.

The biggest problem that I can see is the customer and public themselves. What is to stop someone stealing drones? Or plain vandalism of them? Follow it in a car to it's destination and you know it's going to have to come low enough down for a quick grab. Otherwise if there's some controlled drop off point, air rifles or crossbows or other publicly available small projectile weapons.

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>What is to stop someone stealing drones? Or plain vandalism of them?

Cameras on drones and laws. Stealing a motorbike is relativelly simple, and it doesn't happen that often.

Eventually the cops will start using drones, and the rest has already been told by South Park.

Haha I remember that southpark episode. I think relying on cameras and law to stop vandalism and theft is a little naive though. Perhaps you've never owned a motorbike but being an owner of one I can tell you it happens much more often than you'd think. If there's money to be made or 'fun' to be had there's a low life doing or considering how to do it.

Also, motorbikes may not be stolen that often, but plain bikes are. No camera and no law helps here, because it's treated as a low-public-harm crime and the police doesn't even really bother fighting it. One could argue that stealing drone pizza deliveries could end up like that, at least initially.

Considering that this might be due to needing a key to start the motorbike, makes me wonder why there aren't 'bike locks' that stop the pedals / wheels /handlebars from turning at all without a key.

I guess someone could literally carry it away though, which is a separate issue.

That's what usually happens. They saw off the lock, and if for some reason they can't (too strong, too much effort, not enough time, etc.) they sometimes just unscrew the locked wheel and take the rest. That's why where I live, locking a bike by its wheel is considered a very bad idea.

That's going to be one seriously dedicated pizza thief. Anyone dumb enough to go near an armed drone big enough to lift a pizza is going to end up in the emergency room.

Throw a rock at it, collect the pizza. Drones are very fragile.

> I'm still not convinced by delivery by drone. There's many problems that have yet to be solved

Of course - that's why we try things that have never been done before. It might work really well, or it might fail spectacularly. In both cases the important thing is we learn a ton for the next time we try something we've never done before.

It's important we keep trying to do things we've never done before.

The cost of operating those is also questionable, especially in China.

It is profitable to have pizza hand-delivered in the US/Europe where labor cost is high. In China, I wonder how that is even possible.

Chinese cities are notoriously expensive. Cheap labor is limited to rural areas and smaller towns where most of the huge factories are located.

The wages in a city like Shanghai, while obviously not comparable to a city like NYC, are high enough to warrant a drone solution.

Everything is relative. If the salaries are 1/4 what they are in the US (as an example), then the cost of pizza will be relatively the same too. The percentage of that pizza that goes towards paying for the delivery is pretty much the same.

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