I find this both amazing and weird. But feels like a gimmick. I have trouble imagining that it's cheaper than human delivery. I always assumed the end game for drone delivery was "last 50 ft"....
I find this both amazing and weird. But feels like a gimmick. I have trouble imagining that it's cheaper than human delivery.
I always assumed the end game for drone delivery was "last 50 ft". Like there's a special truck that just drives slowly down the street while the drones fly back and forth to the porches.
IDK, I'd bet its a wash at best but I think Amazon is probably doing it more as a research thing than anything else. Maybe it doesn't make financial sense but they'll be one of the first learning...
I have trouble imagining that it's cheaper than human delivery.
IDK, I'd bet its a wash at best but I think Amazon is probably doing it more as a research thing than anything else. Maybe it doesn't make financial sense but they'll be one of the first learning how to do it and they'll work on how to have it make money later.
Edit: I would LOVE to see a breakdown on what the different costs associated with each delivery method would be.
My partner works as a technical program manager for Alphabet's drone delivery startup and it is very much a prospective market for delivery. I'll see if I can get her to dig up any of the cost...
My partner works as a technical program manager for Alphabet's drone delivery startup and it is very much a prospective market for delivery. I'll see if I can get her to dig up any of the cost breakdown material she has access to that can be shared publicly.
Even with her as part of the team, I'm not sure it's a future I'm excited for.
I mean...I'm not usually one for theivery, but if there was a constant shuffling of drones around me in an urban area I'd be tempted to get a shotgun and skeet my way to a payday. If only because...
I mean...I'm not usually one for theivery, but if there was a constant shuffling of drones around me in an urban area I'd be tempted to get a shotgun and skeet my way to a payday.
If only because I've been conditioned since seeing Return of the Jedi to always distrust drones and shoot them out of the sky ASAP.
I live in an area which has drone delivery for several fast food restaurants, through a 3rd party company. It's a similar system though with a more controlled delivery system using an extending...
I live in an area which has drone delivery for several fast food restaurants, through a 3rd party company. It's a similar system though with a more controlled delivery system using an extending string to lower the food to the ground from height.
They've been at it for around 3-4 years now and are incredibly popular in the area, I see drones overhead nearly all the time going back and forth delivering food. I have no idea if they're cost effective yet, but with how expensive Uber eats is and the drivers still don't make a living wage, I wouldn't be surprised if it was already cheaper to use a drone vs having an actual human deliver the food.
I'm curious if the drones have ever bothered you? I rememeber reading about exactly the drones you are talking about, and their aim was to make sure they flew high enough that there wouldn't be...
I'm curious if the drones have ever bothered you?
I rememeber reading about exactly the drones you are talking about, and their aim was to make sure they flew high enough that there wouldn't be much noise for people at ground level. So I'm curious if, in practice after a few years, it's actually been a nuisance or not.
If I'm out and about walking around the neighborhood, the buzzing can be a little annoying sometimes, but far less annoying than something like a loud car revving their engine while driving past...
If I'm out and about walking around the neighborhood, the buzzing can be a little annoying sometimes, but far less annoying than something like a loud car revving their engine while driving past (happens often) or having delivery driver cars block up the thin roads because they park in the middle of the street to do their deliveries.
I personally would say the tradeoff is well worth it, it gets cars off the road and the noise pollution is not a big deal to me as I only really hear it when they're directly overhead. I am not very in touch with my neighbors but I've not heard any complaints about the drones from anyone in the area either, everyone seems to be happy with the service so far.
Dunno what service is operating near @OBLIVIATER, but I recall from an Adam Savage video about Wing that they've been working on reshaping the rotors specifically to reduce noise (small promo...
Dunno what service is operating near @OBLIVIATER, but I recall from an Adam Savage video about Wing that they've been working on reshaping the rotors specifically to reduce noise (small promo video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF1VXd4Fr40)
It might not be cheaper now, with initial hardware, R&D and engineering costs, but it would/will be cheaper in the long term. Human powered delivery is expensive. Once the hardware and software is...
It might not be cheaper now, with initial hardware, R&D and engineering costs, but it would/will be cheaper in the long term. Human powered delivery is expensive. Once the hardware and software is dialed in a large drone program could be run by a handful of people who'd mostly be there for maintenance and troubleshooting. In the meantime it's good PR.
I don't imagine any cost savings will be allowed to escape the company before it goes into shareholder and executive pockets.
This remains to be seen, unless you can back that statement up with some serious research. I'm a researcher in this field. I work on the government side so I'm not extremely knowledgeable about...
but it would/will be cheaper in the long term.
This remains to be seen, unless you can back that statement up with some serious research. I'm a researcher in this field. I work on the government side so I'm not extremely knowledgeable about the economics of these systems, but they are very expensive to run. In the slightly larger small passenger vehicle segment, many companies have closed up shop in the last few years without ever delivering a working product.
Aircraft are extremely expensive to operate compared to wheeled vehicles. We've know this long before the ubiquity of multirotor vehicles. Adding a bunch of extra rotors doesn't make it any cheaper.
Slightly larger? :D It does though, when you're Amazon and your goal is to eventually deploy countless drones across your global distribution network. Then all those rotors are being mass...
In the slightly larger small passenger vehicle segment
Slightly larger? :D
Adding a bunch of extra rotors doesn't make it any cheaper.
It does though, when you're Amazon and your goal is to eventually deploy countless drones across your global distribution network. Then all those rotors are being mass produced.
Drones are already cheap, lots of factories produce them at scale. Right now Amazon is likely experimenting and building them from scratch and spending a lot of money. But the goal is no doubt to one day settle on a mass manufacturable design.
It's entirely possible that the program fails for some reason, but the only reason they're doing it in the first place is to reduce expenses.
I’m not the OP, but I’m trying to figure out how I would estimate the long term cost of drone deliveries. How does this sound? Per flight Labour to load drone Electricity Extra packaging for hard...
I’m not the OP, but I’m trying to figure out how I would estimate the long term cost of drone deliveries. How does this sound?
Per flight
Labour to load drone
Electricity
Extra packaging for hard landing
Potential labour for operator to directly control drone
My only thoughts on this is that it’s an unnecessary technological advance that will only do harm to local bird populations and maybe take jobs away. Just, why is this necessary? Do we really need...
My only thoughts on this is that it’s an unnecessary technological advance that will only do harm to local bird populations and maybe take jobs away. Just, why is this necessary? Do we really need Amazon to be more efficient?!
Consumption is unlikely to decrease no matter what we do (without major societal change.) Assuming a drone delivery service is actually more efficient, it makes sense from an environmental...
Consumption is unlikely to decrease no matter what we do (without major societal change.) Assuming a drone delivery service is actually more efficient, it makes sense from an environmental standpoint to reduce pollution from delivery trucks and cars. I don't know if anyone has the numbers to back up any claims, but a reduction in cars on the road would be a net positive for pretty much all ecosystems.
Its difficult to stop the waves of progress, humans will always strive to achieve increasing levels of efficiency even at the cost of short term or more commonly long term harm to their surrounding environments. Stopping the ever marching forward progression after cars but before drones seems like an arbitrary and maybe even counterproductive line in the sand.
The way most efficiency improvements have gone, it doesn't actually reduce consumption, rather consumption continues to increase. I'd wager that the actual energy expended to deliver goods in the...
The way most efficiency improvements have gone, it doesn't actually reduce consumption, rather consumption continues to increase. I'd wager that the actual energy expended to deliver goods in the air is higher in aggregate due to needing to fight gravity the whole time. But it might be faster and thus further increase demand for instant gratification.
If there was one thing I learned by ditching Amazon Prime....most of what I order on Amazon I don't need to be delivered the same day. In fact, a non-zero percentage of it I don't really need at all. We could probably reduce a lot of impulse purchasing simply by banning fast and free delivery. But slowing down consumption is antithetical to a culture that has been raised to tie its happiness to ever-increasing consumption.
Your mention of the energy usage of fighting gravity the whole way makes me wonder if it is actually more energy efficient even with that. Like is it actually worse to have a lightweight drone...
Your mention of the energy usage of fighting gravity the whole way makes me wonder if it is actually more energy efficient even with that. Like is it actually worse to have a lightweight drone fight against gravity or have a heavy van fight to accelerate from a stop? Getting thousands of pounds moving is also pretty intensive.
I don't actually know this answer, but now I'm curious.
If you’re just looking at averages, the van is way more efficient. That’s because a delivery van doesn’t go from the warehouse to your house, it goes from the warehouse to a bajillion houses. Your...
If you’re just looking at averages, the van is way more efficient. That’s because a delivery van doesn’t go from the warehouse to your house, it goes from the warehouse to a bajillion houses. Your portion of the total emissions is but a fraction.
That’s why delivery is much more efficient, energy wise, than people going to the grocery store.
Oh I get that delivery routes are more efficient when comparing it to a car per delivery. But weight is such a big factor in energy required to move something that I was questioning if the same...
Oh I get that delivery routes are more efficient when comparing it to a car per delivery. But weight is such a big factor in energy required to move something that I was questioning if the same logic holds when comparing to a drone per delivery. Obviously there would be a lot of factors, like route density and length of trip though.
Does it harm the birds? I know that windmills harm both birds and butterflies, and they’re stationary so you’d think they would be easier to avoid than a drone. I think cars/trucks harm birds as...
Does it harm the birds?
I know that windmills harm both birds and butterflies, and they’re stationary so you’d think they would be easier to avoid than a drone.
I think cars/trucks harm birds as well, though, I see dead raptors on the highway sometimes cause the tiny birds dive low to get away from them.
This is really cool! The major tech companies have spent a decade trying to get this working, and I’d imagine that the advancements in ML (re. sensing especially) have probably gone a long way...
This is really cool! The major tech companies have spent a decade trying to get this working, and I’d imagine that the advancements in ML (re. sensing especially) have probably gone a long way towards making it more viable. Still, the biggest hurdles have always been regulatory and market size (coordinating and logging all these flight paths requires interop’ing with ancient government agencies, and these deliveries are currently most valuable to sparse suburban locales).
For the posters asking why this is useful, Zipline has proven its effectiveness for delivering medicine to rural areas, and I’d note that every truck mile saved delivering clarinet reeds by drone is a huge brake dust/wheel rubber/asphalt rut pollution reduction mechanism. I think I’d still prefer land-based drones, but realistically, flying seems like the best way to avoid harm.
I feel like something is broken in my brain... I cannot and will not subject myself to vertical video, no matter the quality of its content. I decided to never interact with the format almost 10...
I feel like something is broken in my brain... I cannot and will not subject myself to vertical video, no matter the quality of its content. I decided to never interact with the format almost 10 years ago, and I'm still going strong. Who knows what crazy things I have missed.
I live within the catchment area for Walmart's drone delivery pilot. A team is required to follow the drone on the ground. The drones are extremely loud. It's obnoxious and kind of pointless.
I live within the catchment area for Walmart's drone delivery pilot. A team is required to follow the drone on the ground. The drones are extremely loud. It's obnoxious and kind of pointless.
The reason a team is required to follow the drone is an FAA regulation, not a technical limitation. Once these systems have proven effective in their alpha trials those regulations will likely be...
The reason a team is required to follow the drone is an FAA regulation, not a technical limitation. Once these systems have proven effective in their alpha trials those regulations will likely be changed and a line of sight ground operator will no longer be required
I find this both amazing and weird. But feels like a gimmick. I have trouble imagining that it's cheaper than human delivery.
I always assumed the end game for drone delivery was "last 50 ft". Like there's a special truck that just drives slowly down the street while the drones fly back and forth to the porches.
IDK, I'd bet its a wash at best but I think Amazon is probably doing it more as a research thing than anything else. Maybe it doesn't make financial sense but they'll be one of the first learning how to do it and they'll work on how to have it make money later.
Edit: I would LOVE to see a breakdown on what the different costs associated with each delivery method would be.
My partner works as a technical program manager for Alphabet's drone delivery startup and it is very much a prospective market for delivery. I'll see if I can get her to dig up any of the cost breakdown material she has access to that can be shared publicly.
Even with her as part of the team, I'm not sure it's a future I'm excited for.
I mean...I'm not usually one for theivery, but if there was a constant shuffling of drones around me in an urban area I'd be tempted to get a shotgun and skeet my way to a payday.
If only because I've been conditioned since seeing Return of the Jedi to always distrust drones and shoot them out of the sky ASAP.
Do you mean the probe droid in The Empire Strikes Back?
You're right. That's what I get for not drinking my coffee first.
I live in an area which has drone delivery for several fast food restaurants, through a 3rd party company. It's a similar system though with a more controlled delivery system using an extending string to lower the food to the ground from height.
They've been at it for around 3-4 years now and are incredibly popular in the area, I see drones overhead nearly all the time going back and forth delivering food. I have no idea if they're cost effective yet, but with how expensive Uber eats is and the drivers still don't make a living wage, I wouldn't be surprised if it was already cheaper to use a drone vs having an actual human deliver the food.
I'm curious if the drones have ever bothered you?
I rememeber reading about exactly the drones you are talking about, and their aim was to make sure they flew high enough that there wouldn't be much noise for people at ground level. So I'm curious if, in practice after a few years, it's actually been a nuisance or not.
If I'm out and about walking around the neighborhood, the buzzing can be a little annoying sometimes, but far less annoying than something like a loud car revving their engine while driving past (happens often) or having delivery driver cars block up the thin roads because they park in the middle of the street to do their deliveries.
I personally would say the tradeoff is well worth it, it gets cars off the road and the noise pollution is not a big deal to me as I only really hear it when they're directly overhead. I am not very in touch with my neighbors but I've not heard any complaints about the drones from anyone in the area either, everyone seems to be happy with the service so far.
Thanks for the reply! Appreciate it!
Dunno what service is operating near @OBLIVIATER, but I recall from an Adam Savage video about Wing that they've been working on reshaping the rotors specifically to reduce noise (small promo video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zF1VXd4Fr40)
It might not be cheaper now, with initial hardware, R&D and engineering costs, but it would/will be cheaper in the long term. Human powered delivery is expensive. Once the hardware and software is dialed in a large drone program could be run by a handful of people who'd mostly be there for maintenance and troubleshooting. In the meantime it's good PR.
I don't imagine any cost savings will be allowed to escape the company before it goes into shareholder and executive pockets.
This remains to be seen, unless you can back that statement up with some serious research. I'm a researcher in this field. I work on the government side so I'm not extremely knowledgeable about the economics of these systems, but they are very expensive to run. In the slightly larger small passenger vehicle segment, many companies have closed up shop in the last few years without ever delivering a working product.
Aircraft are extremely expensive to operate compared to wheeled vehicles. We've know this long before the ubiquity of multirotor vehicles. Adding a bunch of extra rotors doesn't make it any cheaper.
Slightly larger? :D
It does though, when you're Amazon and your goal is to eventually deploy countless drones across your global distribution network. Then all those rotors are being mass produced.
Drones are already cheap, lots of factories produce them at scale. Right now Amazon is likely experimenting and building them from scratch and spending a lot of money. But the goal is no doubt to one day settle on a mass manufacturable design.
It's entirely possible that the program fails for some reason, but the only reason they're doing it in the first place is to reduce expenses.
I’m not the OP, but I’m trying to figure out how I would estimate the long term cost of drone deliveries. How does this sound?
Factorio IRL when?
If I can ride a conveyor to work, I'd be down with it. In this vein, I recommend the classic Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov.
My only thoughts on this is that it’s an unnecessary technological advance that will only do harm to local bird populations and maybe take jobs away. Just, why is this necessary? Do we really need Amazon to be more efficient?!
Consumption is unlikely to decrease no matter what we do (without major societal change.) Assuming a drone delivery service is actually more efficient, it makes sense from an environmental standpoint to reduce pollution from delivery trucks and cars. I don't know if anyone has the numbers to back up any claims, but a reduction in cars on the road would be a net positive for pretty much all ecosystems.
Its difficult to stop the waves of progress, humans will always strive to achieve increasing levels of efficiency even at the cost of short term or more commonly long term harm to their surrounding environments. Stopping the ever marching forward progression after cars but before drones seems like an arbitrary and maybe even counterproductive line in the sand.
The way most efficiency improvements have gone, it doesn't actually reduce consumption, rather consumption continues to increase. I'd wager that the actual energy expended to deliver goods in the air is higher in aggregate due to needing to fight gravity the whole time. But it might be faster and thus further increase demand for instant gratification.
If there was one thing I learned by ditching Amazon Prime....most of what I order on Amazon I don't need to be delivered the same day. In fact, a non-zero percentage of it I don't really need at all. We could probably reduce a lot of impulse purchasing simply by banning fast and free delivery. But slowing down consumption is antithetical to a culture that has been raised to tie its happiness to ever-increasing consumption.
Your mention of the energy usage of fighting gravity the whole way makes me wonder if it is actually more energy efficient even with that. Like is it actually worse to have a lightweight drone fight against gravity or have a heavy van fight to accelerate from a stop? Getting thousands of pounds moving is also pretty intensive.
I don't actually know this answer, but now I'm curious.
If you’re just looking at averages, the van is way more efficient. That’s because a delivery van doesn’t go from the warehouse to your house, it goes from the warehouse to a bajillion houses. Your portion of the total emissions is but a fraction.
That’s why delivery is much more efficient, energy wise, than people going to the grocery store.
Oh I get that delivery routes are more efficient when comparing it to a car per delivery. But weight is such a big factor in energy required to move something that I was questioning if the same logic holds when comparing to a drone per delivery. Obviously there would be a lot of factors, like route density and length of trip though.
Does it harm the birds?
I know that windmills harm both birds and butterflies, and they’re stationary so you’d think they would be easier to avoid than a drone.
I think cars/trucks harm birds as well, though, I see dead raptors on the highway sometimes cause the tiny birds dive low to get away from them.
This is really cool! The major tech companies have spent a decade trying to get this working, and I’d imagine that the advancements in ML (re. sensing especially) have probably gone a long way towards making it more viable. Still, the biggest hurdles have always been regulatory and market size (coordinating and logging all these flight paths requires interop’ing with ancient government agencies, and these deliveries are currently most valuable to sparse suburban locales).
For the posters asking why this is useful, Zipline has proven its effectiveness for delivering medicine to rural areas, and I’d note that every truck mile saved delivering clarinet reeds by drone is a huge brake dust/wheel rubber/asphalt rut pollution reduction mechanism. I think I’d still prefer land-based drones, but realistically, flying seems like the best way to avoid harm.
I feel like something is broken in my brain... I cannot and will not subject myself to vertical video, no matter the quality of its content. I decided to never interact with the format almost 10 years ago, and I'm still going strong. Who knows what crazy things I have missed.
Also, get off my lawn
I live within the catchment area for Walmart's drone delivery pilot. A team is required to follow the drone on the ground. The drones are extremely loud. It's obnoxious and kind of pointless.
The reason a team is required to follow the drone is an FAA regulation, not a technical limitation. Once these systems have proven effective in their alpha trials those regulations will likely be changed and a line of sight ground operator will no longer be required
Apropos of nothing, I wonder how high a jet of water could reach with a compressor and a firehose nozzle.