Delivery Drones: More Feasible If They Come By Truck

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 19, 2015 @05:54AM from the last-mile-problem dept.

malachiorion writes Amazon's drone delivery service was never going to work. It was too autonomous, and simply too risky to be approved by the FAA in the timeframe that Jeff Bezos specified (as early as this year). And yet, the media is still hung up on Amazon, and much of the coverage of the FAA's newly released drone rules center around Prime Air, a program that was essentially a PR stunt. Meanwhile, a Cincinnati-based company that makes electric delivery trucks has an idea that's been largely ignored, but that's much more feasible. The Horsefly launches from and returns to a delivery truck once it reaches a given neighborhood, with a mix of autonomous flight to destination, driver-specified drop-off locations, and remote-piloted landings. The company will still need to secure exemptions from the FAA, but unlike Amazon, they at least have a chance. There's more detail about Amp's technically impressive (and seemingly damn tough) drone in my story for Popular Science.

1 of 129 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:Here are the FACTS by ShanghaiBill · 2015-02-19 07:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

lots of naysayers
Always remember that Slashdot has lots and lots of cynical naysayers, they are disproportionately modded up, and they are nearly always wrong about anything that has a "social" aspect. Here are some consensus predictions from Slashdot:
1. Smart phones are stupid, and will never catch on. They are a solution looking for a problem.
2. Tablets are even stupider, and will definitely fail, because you can't write code on a tablet.
3. Facebook will be out of business by 2008.
4. Nobody will use "the cloud" because any home user can build their own triple-redundant RAID storage system, and battery backed whole-house conditioned power.