Kiva Systems Co-Founder: Drone Delivery Could Be As Low As 20 Cents Per Package

Hallie Siegel writes A year ago, Amazon announced its plans for Prime Air — a drone delivery service. Recently Amazon has been posting job ads, saying they are looking for drone pilots. Whatever the regulatory issues, is drone delivery financially feasible? ETH Zurich professor Raffaello D'Andrea thinks it is economically feasible to deliver small packages by drone. D'Andrea is responsible for the Flying Machine Arena ("a space where flying robots live and learn") and is co-founder of Kiva Systems, the company acquired by Amazon for $775 million in cash that innovated the robotic fulfillment system that Amazon is now implementing in many of its warehouse facilities.

Comments

Birds hate drones

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait till birds start knocking them out of the sky.

Re: Birds hate drones

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget birds. I'll knock a few down myself! Free "whatever that guy ordered"!

Re: Birds hate drones

[DarylDerksen]

Forget birds. I'll knock a few down myself! Free "whatever that guy ordered"!

Re: Birds hate drones

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a business for predator drones to steal packages.

Re: Birds hate drones

[mordjah]

They should of course be fitted to return fire with something noxious but nonetheless. .

Re: Birds hate drones

[mordjah]

Nonlethal .. fucking autocorrect..

Re: Birds hate drones

[mordjah]

And what the fuck happened to preview?! Fucking beta..

20 Cents cost or 20 Cents charge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I think instead of charging less than a traditional package delivery, they will charge 2 or 3 times more... (at least)

Re:20 Cents cost or 20 Cents charge?

[postbigbang]

I'm waiting for public easement and right of way excise taxes to be imposed on drones. A new revenue source for thirsty cities....

Re:20 Cents cost or 20 Cents charge?

[StikyPad]

Since airspace is under the purview of the FAA, not municipalities, you'll be waiting a long time. Even if they tried, the court battle would last for years.

Re:20 Cents cost or 20 Cents charge?

[postbigbang]

Airspace is, but not the first 600 feet, if memory serves.

You fell for this two years in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmmm, delicious free advertising.

Re:You fell for this two years in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't even make sense!

Now every household has a free 3D printer at home (it pays for itself in a year, remember that "study"?).

What possible use could a Luddite feature like "delivery" have?

Re:You fell for this two years in a row?

[Deadstick]

What possible use could a Luddite feature like "delivery" have?

If done with drones, it could enrich pediatricians and veterinarians...

Re:You fell for this two years in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

To deliver filament for your 3D printer.

Re:You fell for this two years in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

No more need for unreliable and hard to feed storks for baby delivery.

Re: You fell for this two years in a row?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, filament delivery will be via tubes. Underground everywhere except in New England.

Can't imagine anything going wrong

[The Real Dr John]

with millions of small delivery drones flying in the same urban/suburban airspace at the same time delivering packages

Re:Can't imagine anything going wrong

[Todd Palin]

No need to buy your own drone anymore. Maybe they can send me a drone soon. I like drones.

Re:Can't imagine anything going wrong

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You could also have self-driving delivery cars with package dispensers. Just an idea...

Re:Can't imagine anything going wrong

[Joe_Dragon]

crashes in a plane and the lawsuits will take a big out of shipper and the owners of the drone

Re:Can't imagine anything going wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

deliver a stinky bomb to a person you dislike - amazon makes it possible!

Re:Can't imagine anything going wrong

[vtcodger]

A system that can deliver Molotov Cocktails for less than the cost of a soft drink? What could possibly go wrong? This concept is almost as inherently safe and harmless as hooking every traffic light in the country to the internet.

And furthermore we're going to need it to deliver food and medicine when some bored teenager in Budapest switches every traffic light in Western Europe, Australia, and North America to a permanent red.

Re:Can't imagine anything going wrong

[blue9steel]

And furthermore we're going to need it to deliver food and medicine when some bored teenager in Budapest switches every traffic light in Western Europe, Australia, and North America to a permanent red.

Well, if you're going to pull a prank like that yellow in both directions would be funnier. (for teenage values of funny)

Practical jokes

[Beardo the Bearded]

A buddy and I were talking about how you could prank someone with this.

Find a couple out on a date, wait for the guy to check his phone, then order drone-delivered condoms.

Slow Drone from China.

[Modern]

Most of the 'small' packages I get from Amazon have 3 week lead time from China. What kind of weight are we really talking about?

Re:Slow Drone from China.

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize that they aren't suggesting drones will fly goods from the factory directly to your house, right?

Re:Slow Drone from China.

[Anonymous Coward]

What are YOU talking about? I regularly order items from Amazon who has them stocked in a nearby warehouse. I'm frequently surprised to see them at my door the next day, with free Prime shipping. They even come on Sundays.

Drone hunting

[aslashdotaccount]

We'll soon treat the phrase 'pirates of the silicon valley' in a whole new way. Gotta go spray-paint the jolly roger onto my dji.

Still not legal, right?

[__aaltlg1547]

The FAA's still not allowing commercial use of drones. So what's this about?

Re:Still not legal, right?

[rsilvergun]

It's really only a matter of time. They'll be some delays (mostly with UPS/FedEx trying to prevent it until their ready with their own drone fleets). But it's coming.

The bigger concern is what are we doing to do with all the people this puts out of work. This will basically make retail and delivery jobs obsolete. That's several million people suddenly without work and with no prospects for getting work. I guess there's always tent cities...

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Facegarden]

This is about raising awareness of the potential good things that can happen if the FAA gets their act together and allows commercial use of drones. The more good stuff we know about, the more likely they are to do something... theoretically.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[AgNO3]

People often forget that the air space over your property to like 300 feet is the property owners and they can and have had people arrested for trespassing for their drones being in their airspace. This has already been to many a court case over air rights. The FAA doesn't even if made legal to fly have the right to say you can fly in a private properties airspace. It would be interesting to see how many nets people put up to their max air space if people start flying drones with valuable stuff over their property. The FAA has ZERO say over your air rights and it varies by state as to how high they go. So they would pretty much be limited to following the roads.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Dutch Gun]

These things only go the last part of the journey, and only with small, lightweight objects (about 5lbs or so). You're still going to need a massive delivery fleet to move everything to local warehouses from other states or countries, and for heavier or bulky items you'll still need traditional delivery vehicles. There are also going to be many areas or sites for which drone delivery simply isn't practical.

Moreover, I think this is not going to be a rapid transition either. It's likely to be something that's phased in over a few decades, not a few years, so you won't see a sudden effect on the economy.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[gl4ss]

there's plenty of other commercial uses for drones apart from delivery.

mapping etc. a whole lot more feasible commercial uses than delivery.

and maybe the electricity for the drone delivery is 20 cents - but they still haven't figured out how they could make them fly in an environment they don't control.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

America isn't actually the only country in the world, despite how much you ignore the rest of it.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[phantomfive]

The FAA's still not allowing commercial use of drones. So what's this about?

It's about free advertising for Amazon, and now for Kiva, whoever they are.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[jklovanc]

People often forget that the air space over your property to like 300 feet is the property owners ...

I have looked into this extensively and have found no actual height that is considered the property of the land owner. If you have references I would love to see them. All I can find are references to the statement that "a landowner owns only so much of the airspace above their property as they may reasonably use in connection with their enjoyment of the underlying land".

It would be interesting to see how many nets people put up to their max air space

There actually has been a SCOTUS ruling in this issue.

A landowner can't arbitrarily try to prevent aircraft from overflying their land by erecting "spite poles," for example.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[AgNO3]

You might want to check on the height of those poles because the SCOTUS rulling quite clearly says. "But, a landowner may make any legitimate use of their property that they want, even if it interferes with aircraft overflying the land." that also means Air craft aren't allowed to interfere with your peaceful enjoyment of your land. IE I like to fly chinese kits and can legally leave them airborne over my property.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kiva Systems, the company acquired by Amazon for $775 million in cash

Kiva is Amazon.
If Amazon is managing to get free advertising for Amazon, and is also managing to get free advertising for Kiva^H^H^H^HAmazon, then they're getting twice as much bang for the buck. Um... err... well, I guess "for the buck" is meaningless when the advertising is free. But twice as much bang!!

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Dare nMc]

Term Drone encompasses so many things. I would think stage one is a glider drone: So a cargo plane takes off with a series of pallets with fold out auto-gyro style blades built into each palette. The plane flies over the small warehouse, and instead of landing and taking off, it unfolds and shoves out the pallet and it lands in the truck hub, and is loaded on a truck and away it goes to the destination.
Stage 2 is you order something light weight and small but time sensitive, DVD's, repair parts (auto/home)... If you order after all the trucks are all out delivering, drone is sent and lands on the delivery truck, and the driver takes it to your house.
Stage 3, is the warehouse is located at altitude, so they must only fly down to the customers, they are power launched, and only have enough power to sustain flight while loaded and maybe return, maybe just land on delivery trucks to be hauled back up.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

The FAA, not being fanbois, are taking a disciplined, mature approach to developing regulations to avoid retarded fanbois flying drones into manned aircraft. This is a good thing. The consequences of fucking up are, to say the least, severe. Worst case is killing several hundred people in an airplane, several hundred on the ground, in a mishap that destroys the drone industry. That is the worst case, and without well developed regulations, our models predict a 50/50 chance of it happening in 4 years after commercial drones are unleashed on the US.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Fwipp]

It would be interesting to see how many nets people put up to their max air space if people start flying drones with valuable stuff over their property.

I dunno, zero isn't a particularly interesting number in this context.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[FlyHelicopters]

Yes, but what REALLY happens is the FAA comes in and tells the local city/town/whatever "if you want this airport to remain open, you'll pass a local ordinance that restricts whatever we want".

And it generally happens that way.

I speak from experience, many years of working with the FAA, and they do generally get their way.

People love to sit in front of their keyboards and Goggle search this and that, then you have the real world.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[AgNO3]

Oh your right. Just like how Santa monica was forced by the FAA to limit flights into Santa monica Air port. OH WAIT. No one wants a new air port anywhere near them so I can't imagine that say West Hollywood, or Chesterfield Mo, or King of Prussia PA or Englewood CO or a zillion other Suburbs that don't want airports give a rats ass what the FAA wants. http://www.latimes.com/opinion... Lets see how this works out for the FAA.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[timeOday]

These things only go the last part of the journey, and only with small, lightweight objects (about 5lbs or so). You're still going to need a massive delivery fleet to move everything to local warehouses from other states or countries

If you ask me, interstate trucking will be automated before doorstop delivery will. Think about it, freeway driving is pretty easy.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

"legitimate" is the key word there. A spite pole , or a net designed to grab other peoples drones, would not be considered "legitimate" in any court for obvious reasons.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[jklovanc]

I like to fly chinese kits and can legally leave them airborne over my property.

That could easily be found a not legitimate. How would you keep them up 24/7? It could be easily shown to be done solely to restrict flight rather than enjoy the land. Finally, drones could avoid the strings with no problem.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[jklovanc]

I always find situations like Santa Monica almost laughable. The airport has been there since before WW2. People moved there after the airport was built and now they want to close the airport. If you don't want to live near an airport don't move near an airport.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

or, if the people living in the city want to close the airport (say, because the airport only serves a handful of interests, and annoys large parts of the city with noise and lead pollution), close the airport. it's supposed to be a democracy.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Dutch Gun]

Auto-navigating in the air seems to be vastly easier than on the ground. It's not the simple case of freeway driving you have to worry about - it's all the crazy edge cases that likely make it so damnably difficult. Commercial airliners can already pretty much fly themselves if they had to, and the military has had fully automated drones for quite some time now.

I'd take that bet, and would even spot you a decade.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that part of business audience is not profitable with a new cost saving scheme has not interested businesses that are not bound geographically and/or legally to local users. That is why postal services including phone service and mobile coverage are bound by licenses and law to do certain things also where it is not as profitable. Whether amazon is such service I doubt. I noticed recently that more and more products are delivered from another companies, it takes much more time than it used to also for standard delivery, many packages are obviously second hand (package and often content too). The range of products does not seem to be as wide as it used to be too and prices well. Now I buy in amazon only when I cannot visit o buy stuff in local shops. There are many like me.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

this worked well before.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

Several landowners were FORCED to cut down trees to below a certain height, as they were considered too high for one of the approaches to a local (county) airport. The landowners fought in court, and lost. So they certainly didn't have the air rights to 300 feet over their properties.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[drinkypoo]

These things only go the last part of the journey, and only with small, lightweight objects (about 5lbs or so). You're still going to need a massive delivery fleet to move everything to local warehouses from other states or countries,

Perhaps you could explain to us which part of this is not going to be automated away soon. They've already got automated picking and stuffing, which will only improve. It's only a matter of time before the receiving department is handled by robots, too. Trucking? It's going away.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[StikyPad]

This will basically make retail and delivery jobs obsolete. That's several million people suddenly without work and with no prospects for getting work. I guess there's always tent cities...

Yes, I'm sure all those career delivery men will be heartbroken.

Both of them.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[gewalker]

Lots of people work delivery for UPS and Fedex

UPS driver $9.97-$32.74 per hour

Fedex driver $24,780-69,440 per year

A lot better than a lot of people make, esp. considering this is not high-skill labor.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[mcrbids]

The FAA is all about protecting the commercial use of the air.

It's so one-sided that pilots don't even have a consistent right to appeal punitive actions, and the rules around "non commercial" (private) flight are so ridiculous that merely sharing the cost of a ride in a small plane with a buddy can be considered a commercial flight, if your buddy does anything work related at all. It is truly just silly.

As soon as the drones have progressed technologically to the point where they are reasonably safe *and* profitable, the FAA would be all over that. Their biggest concern is making sure everybody knows that *they* regulate it.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[blue9steel]

So they would pretty much be limited to following the roads.

For which Google already has a great application developed!

Re:Still not legal, right?

[AgNO3]

uh huh you think DOT or FAA is going to allow drones to fly over traffic? at any altitude? as for the other stuff I'm not talking about main transit. I'm talking last mile. Last mile where the drone is dealing with say this https://www.google.com/maps/pl... Or waiting at the security door at one of these zillion places in culver city (or the rest of LA.) or flying lower over house. Or how does it deliver to an apartment building? Block the door or just land and wait? (and be crushed by people pissed off that there is a drone blocking their apartment entrance. I would love to see this in Brooklyn any major downtown area. I would love to be the first person who has a drone fail over my car on the road or my property.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[Dutch Gun]

Trucking is going away soon? I think self-driving vehicles are farther away than most people think, and mass deployment is even further away. Hand delivery will be required for packages larger than 5 lbs for a while. Don't tell me a robot is going to climb out of the truck and carry that package to my doorstep too? And you think all the smaller warehouses and distribution centers in the US (or world) will suddenly find the collective billions of free dollars needed to convert all their operations to complete automation? I'm guessing those systems don't come cheap.

I think people predicting complete end-to-end automation in the near future are vastly overestimating the limitation and cost of replacing or upgrading all of today's current infrastructure. Sure, it will undoubtedly happen eventually, but I think it will be a very gradual shift over many decades, not some revolution that takes place in a few years.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[drinkypoo]

Trucking is going away soon? I think self-driving vehicles are farther away than most people think,

What? We have them already.

and mass deployment is even further away

It's obviously further away than self-driving vehicles, which are here already.

Hand delivery will be required for packages larger than 5 lbs for a while. Don't tell me a robot is going to climb out of the truck and carry that package to my doorstep too?

It's certainly within the realm of possibility. Even before that happens, the driver will be reduced to a package thrower.

Re:Still not legal, right?

[jklovanc]

That would be called the tyranny of the majority. I would still say it is not valid if the city grew up near an existing airport. Perhaps the city grew due to lower land costs caused by the existence of the airport. Now the residents want to instantly increase their land values by getting rid of the airport.

Looking for Drone Pilots

[Anonymous Coward]

So, they are hiring drone pilots. If 20cents is the price of delivery, assuming an average 30 minutes flight time per delivery, how many drones does a pilot need to handle simultaneously so that he can be paid higher than minimum wage? (Or are they going to outsource the piloting?)

Re:Looking for Drone Pilots

[olsmeister]

They probably would only need attention for the delivery portion. They could autopilot the rest of the way.

Noise

[Anonymous Coward]

They better get the noise levels on these things down so I don't hear every goddamned time a neighbor gets a package, or they're going to be facing a patchwork of local bans.

With a drone landing pad on top

[Marrow]

The truck drives to the address or general area, and a drone lifts the package and deposits it on the doorstep. Then flies back to the truck to fast-charge for the next delivery. Short hops, with added intelligence / visualization provided by the truck.

Re:With a drone landing pad on top

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I thought the buyer would be notified, perhaps through a cell phone app, with an exact ETA for the package. He could then pick the package from a dispenser on the vehicle. Depositing packages at the doorstep wouldn't fly where I live, if you pardon the pun.

Re:With a drone landing pad on top

[drinkypoo]

Depositing packages at the doorstep wouldn't fly where I live, if you pardon the pun.

No, but many of us could have them left in our back yards. I have a chain across my driveway, my front yard would also be fine.

Re:With a drone landing pad on top

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a chain across my driveway

Stay classy.

Re:With a drone landing pad on top

[drinkypoo]

Stay classy.

It's a rental in Lake County, California. Classy is not even on the fucking map. If it were, the property would have a proper gate. I'm not spending my money on one, though. This is enough to keep people from driving up our driveway every week or so just to see what's up here, which is what was happening before.

If you want to buy me the steel, though, I'll build a proper gate.

drones

[phantomfive]

Solve the problem of falling drones + shot-down drones, and then we'll see.

In comparison, route-finding and range of the drones are already solved theoretically. It's just a matter of cost/benefit.

Re:drones

[Anonymous Coward]

shot-down drones is certainly a problem that can be easily resolved by Armani suits. Welcome to Lawyerland.

Re:drones

[queazocotal]

Done right - shot-down-drones may be profitable - if you outfit them with sensors to find out who's shot it down.

Re:drones

[Feral Nerd]

Solve the problem of falling drones + shot-down drones, and then we'll see. In comparison, route-finding and range of the drones are already solved theoretically. It's just a matter of cost/benefit.

So the air traffic control issues have all been solved?

Re:drones

[phantomfive]

So the air traffic control issues have all been solved?

Yes and yes.

Re:drones

[StikyPad]

You mean like all the falling and shot-down airplanes we have? Why do people insist on solving problems that don't exist?

Re:drones

[phantomfive]

Airplanes have a human inside them. You can't solve the problem like that with drones.

Yo Dawg....

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard you like drones and delivery, so I'm delivering you a drone using my drone delivering delivery drone

Flying Piñatas!

[OzPeter]

Sign me up for some!

Hey Raffaello. Your drone never did deliver that stuff to me. You better send another drones worth.

Working the numbers.

[westlake]

To assess the costs, D'Andrea initially uses two assumptions:

Payload of up to 2 kg.
Range of 10 km with headwinds of up to 30 km/h.

Is package delivery using drones feasible?

I don't know the situation where you live.

But I don't see many warehouses here within 6 miles/10 km of a middle class residential district. 30 to 60 km would be closer to the truth. The central warehouse of our largest regional supermarket chain is 150 miles/240 km east.

Re:Working the numbers.

[Anonymous Coward]

My UPS driver gets a truck load of packages in the morning, and then drives around all day delivering them.

Perhaps they load him up with Drone/package combos, and he drives to a central location and launches them. He then drives around and delivers signature only packages while he waits for the drones to come back. Then he goes back to home base for the rest.

These things will be able to launch from one location and return to another. Perhaps they all return to the local 7 Eleven's roof, and get picked up the next morning.

how so cheap?

[Anonymous Coward]

why, outsourcing of course.. we'll have malaysian kids flying drones made in china and designed by taiwanese and indian engineers, delivering sneakers and sweaters that, ironically, those same kids and their siblings made.

pilots?

[marcello_dl]

I have seen raffaello d'andrea's youtube stuff, those drones don't look like they need much of a human to drive them. The pilot is probably gonna become a mere supervisor before this drone delivery business... ehm... takes off.

20 cents?

[thogard]

The only world that 20 cent deliveries can work is the same one where "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds...

If I order a drone through Amazon

[MadCow42]

If I order a drone through Amazon, will it deliver itself?

Re:If I order a drone through Amazon

[neo-mkrey]

My head just exploded. :)

Re:If I order a drone through Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

Ofcourse not!

It will deliver your cheap ass drone / helicopter with a more expensive drove

Free target practice

[Anonymous Coward]

From my perspective it is free target practice. Stealing your package was the bonus.

You had me

[Anonymous Coward]

at robotic fulfillment centre.
I could drone on but you know what I mean.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Say no more.