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How Amazon's Drone Deliveries Will Work (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a new interview, Amazon has revealed details of the drone delivery program they're building out. VP Paul Misener said, "Prime Air is a future delivery service that will get packages to customers within 30 minutes of them ordering it online at Amazon.com. The goals we've set for ourselves are: The range has to be over 10 miles. These things will weigh about 55 pounds each, but they'll be able to deliver parcels that weigh up to five pounds. It turns out that the vast majority of the things we sell at Amazon weigh less than five pounds." They haven't set pricing yet, but deliveries will follow the same protocols that trucks do now — if you're not home, it'll be left on your doorstep or in your yard. The company is developing different kinds of drones to service different climates. They also expect the regulatory issues to dissipate once they can demonstrate how safe the drones are. Amazon anticipates the vast majority of drone flying to be done between altitudes of 200ft and 400ft.
While I don't think the idea makes a lot of sense (Pinkdot anyone?), it is pretty cool. Serious question: why send these from a warehouse? Why not load a flat bed truck up with 50 or so, and drive it to the closest point that all 50 deliveries share and then release them from the back of the flat bed all at the same time. The video linked in the post shows a drone being launched from a warehouse; not too many people live near amazon warehouses.
"Amazon wants to show how safe their drones are" and yet in every news story "drones" are the new menace, I guess they are only "safe" when in the hands of a large greedy corp.
Between 200 and 400 feet eh? So what happens to all the hobbyist in your flight path Amazon?
Oh yes once again corporate "rights" trump anything or anyone with out sufficiently capitol to invoke litigation.
What happens to the concept of air space ownership when your delivery flies over my house?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Will they use shells like contractors / subcontractors to cover there ass if some thing goes wrong?
These will never be safe. Unmanned 60 pounds of plastic and metal with whirring blades 100-200 feet above populated areas? Yeah right. Amazon is just throwing investors money down a black hole. Just like the Fire TV, Fire Tablet and Phone.
We need drones that can carry people, to the unemployment office.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I live in London, houses with gardens are not affordable for most people now, how will this work with apartments? I don't have my own garden & my front door is a security door to the block of flats, will the drone over next to my balcony (it has a roof so it can't drop directly on it) so that I can grab the package?
It turns out that the vast majority of the things we sell at Amazon weigh less than five pounds.
Sure, but surely the average customer buys several things at a time? They should be looking at the weight of the average basket/delivery instead of the average item.
Will the drones/packages be resistant to birdshot fired by inbred rednecks screaming "GUBMINT SPAHS!"?
along WITH the package.
I just imagine kids playing nearby just absolutely freaking out at throwing stuff at it as it passes by. What could possibly go wrong?
Amazon's all growed up, they'll just lean on lawmakers to bend rules when shit happens, like every other giant company
Stop adding words that don't really add anything to the context, pleaase!
("Building out a program" is just the same as "building a program" -- the 'out' is implicit here)
I wonder how will they behave with the fire / police department flight restrictions (aka deliver something in a fire area will launch an alert and ground the helicopters / planes).
I'm sure they will be reviewing that.
And also how do they will behave when they land the drone and someone launchs a net over it and kidnaps the drone.
The plan is probably to eventually have a small fleet of drones attached to a self-driving (probably electric drive) vehicle where they can return to recharge after making the delivery hop locally. The drone fleet could also hop to a new vehicle that was dispatched from the local warehouse with new deliveries. I would not be surprised if the vehicles will also be able to recharge themselves at their own charging ports at the warehouse or somewhere on the delivery route.
My yard is completely covered by trees, including the street area (NH is nice). Good luck.
Personally I don't have a problem with these if they're human controlled and their fallback is to stay still hovering if a connection is lost. The biggest annoyance will be noise, if they fly directly to someplace instead of following the roadways and walkways (if they start flying through my back yard I will put up netting), and the privacy destruction aspects of their cameras.
The idea sounds cool enough, but how does it benefit the customer? I am struggling to figure out what issue is solved by drone delivery. Drones are not faster than cars so it is not a speed issue. The drones require pilots so it is not a labor issue. Drones are expensive compared to a scooter or a used car so it is not a cost issue. Drones can't fly in bad weather so it is not a reliability issue...
If you are only 10 miles from your customer, you might as well open a retail store. Order on-line and pick up at the counter.
Pizza delivery has been 30 minutes or less for decades and they do not need drones.
For those who missed it, there is already a commercial mocking drone deliveries. The standing on the doorstep with a bewildered look as the drone drops what is implied to be a fragile package from about 8' in the air. I think it will be a long road to hoe for customer acceptance. The inevitable will happen. Packages will disappear without a trace. Packages will end up in the neighbors backyard. Drones will crash (just like FEDEX vans crash).
The FAA should just ask Amazon to write the laws on commercial drone delivery and save us taxpayers the time and money. Honestly, I trust Amazon to write better rules for this (and take far less time to do so) than the FAA will ever be able to do. They took over a decade to come up with their current "register your drone" website that doesn't do anything but give the feds another list.
I love Amazon's marketing strategy of release info about drone delivery, pretend it was all a practical joke when people laugh at it, then actually try to do it. Calling your own idea crap and then lying about it then doing it anyway is definitely the right way to promote your service.
One thing aerial drones can do that delivery guys can't is access a fenced back yard. Instead of dropping it off on the front porch, they can drop it off on your back patio.
The 'not at home' delivery is the most confusing to me. I can't imagine they'd get very close too the door. They definitely can't 'hide it inconspicuously' behind something. I guess even when you are at home, they can't really knock on the door. So I guess it's just the middle of the yard every time.
At least the backyard would be better.
--Welcome to the Realm of the Hawke--
Barrage Ballon
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The Response? What if someone shoots at a truck. Murder verses shooing down a drone. Vast difference in crime. Plus the Trucks are on established travel routes that only cross private property via established rights of way (roads).
For an idea of what they are trying to replace, go find your local UPS distro center. See how many Package cars (UPS calls em cars) leave between 8 and 9 am each morning. Now multiple that by say 300 and you have an idea of off peak season flights (off peak average package car has around 500 items of which a large percentage are amazon packages). Come Christmas time, up that to over 700 items per car so say 400 or so Amazon packages. Now add in the packages sent via FedEx and USPS.
Yes Amazon would space those out over the course of a day, and not all those packages that are from Amazon are under 5 lbs. But that's still several thousand drone flights every day in your average UPS distro center delivery area. In Utah the Salt Lake City metro area (about 1 million people) is serviced by three centers all at one location. At Christmas peak season that's over 300 cars. Just one center will deliver 70k packages a day. And then there are people like me, I live less than a mile from a civilian airport and about two miles from an Air Force Base, no drone deliveries for me. This is a pipe dream. No city is going to want swarms of Amazon drones filling the skies everyday.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Drone, deliver my package to my BACK YARD. It's fully enclosed, fenced, locked gates... my package will be safe there. What porch thieves can't see they can't take.
our glorious 3D printed future, isn't it? I thought a 3D printer would mean we download the DESIGN and 3D print it in our 3D printed home sitting in our 3D printed furniture? 3D print the 3D printed 3D game changing future!
My address is off by more than 1/4 mile in gps, google maps, google earth, and mapquest. Truly awful.
Getting regular deliveries is sometimes a problem especially since I am on a road named with a SOUTH at the end and the same road exists in my zipcode as a NORTH! My house number exists on the north too, although there is no structure there.
Now a computer is going to get this right? I am slightly skeptical.
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
Quote: " if you're not home, it'll be left on your doorstep or in your yard."
Is Amazon really this clueless? A package left on a doorstep is at enough risk, but at least thieves have to drive by slowly—and suspiciously—to spot it. They can drive by quickly and still spot those left out on a front lawn. Heck, a clever enough thief could have a drone of their own that looks a lot of Amazon's. It'd followed behind Amazon's, none being the wiser, then guided by a distant operator, dip down and steal that package.
This isn't rocket science. My old Seattle neighborhood, just a few miles from Amazon's global headquarters, has been troubled by package thefts.
I'm curious about the feasibility of front yards combined with the 10 mile limit.
As the population density increases, yard size decreases. Vast swathes of London do not have drone accessible front yards, for example, even in full sized houses. I presume they've crunched the numbers and found that it's feasible in some places (I don't imagine they've missed such an obvious thing). I'm curious about where it would work.
In the area I live in, even the full sized houses (with a few exceptions) have small front yards, about 3 wheely bins deep and the width of the house. Compounding matters they ll have a front wall or hedge, the road is weakly tree lined and there are telegraph poles stringing roof-height wires across the road. This is somewhat typical of the Greater Loondon area.
I'm sort of imaginging suburban America (even with large houses, a lot of houses fit in a 10 mile radius), but that's mostly what I know from film and TV where people seem to have large, treeless, obstacle free front yards. My time in the US didn't involve the 'burbs in any way, so I don't know.
Any dwellers of such regions care to comment?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
"Hey, John. The Amazon drone crashed again. Here; I think this is the dildo you were expecting."
I look forward to following my GPS to the coordinates my package was actually delivered at, probably a nearby field. Should add an extra thrill to getting packages.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Drones don't last forever, how do they expect them to leave service? Are they going to throw old but functional drones on the scrap heap? Wait until they don't start and are too hard to repair?
What proportion are going to end up falling from the sky over populated areas and how dangerous are those going to be?
I stole this Sig
Drones need to be restricted to altitudes under 400 feet, but above 200 feet, and only allowed to be flown in a few designated areas. A drone needs to be defined as any device that has a camera of any kind, and is capable of remote controlled flight. The designated areas need to be well away from all residential and industrial areas. Drones flying low enough to the ground to be brought down from the ground over residential areas should be fair game to be shot down, with no penalties attached!!
The point of the drone delivery service is speed, taking the time for enough orders to load a truck to come in, then loading it, then having it drive around would eat up A LOT of time. Simply slapping the package on a drone and sending it out, while decreasing their coverage area, significantly speeds delivery times. If the service takes off they may very well offer a slower delivery service that does utilize vans for areas which are not near an Amazon warehouse.
>> How Amazon's Drone Deliveries Will Work
Easy: just like flying cars. And just as realistic.
Hey, look over their!
Most houses around here have four to six stories with 8 to 18 flats. A drone could only deliver to the entrance of the house. That, however, is directly on the sidewalk. Every pedestrian will be able to take it away or accidently kick it or fall over it. This is at best a solution for urban areas where no robberies take place.
We were thinking: Manned aircraft above 500 feet. Between 400 and 500 feet there’d be a no-fly zone — a safety buffer. Between 200 and 400 feet would be a transit zone, where drones could fly fairly quickly, horizontally. And then below 200 feet, that would be limited to certain operations. For us, it would be takeoff and landing. For others, it might be aerial photography. The realtors, for example, wouldn’t need to fly above 200 feet to get a great shot of a house.
Isn't Amazon's plan an awesome one. They appropriate a 50% slice of the airspace presently allowed for everyone else. But, they're generous enough to leave 200 feet for other operators. Then what, ban amateur operators completely? Or, will they allow the last 50 feet for amateurs.
This is a bullshit land grab attempt. The thing that really bothers me is that Amazon could get away with it. They have the lobbying power that amateur drone operators lack and cannot hope to compete with.
I wonder if they had considered possible theft vectors. Who's to stop people from following these drones around and knocking them from the air to steal the goods/drone/parts/etc.
You don't use the drone to deliver the packages silly, you put them up to survey wind speed/direction and identify the target then fire the packages from a canon on the top of the truck or you drop the package from 10,000' and use the drone to operate the tiny cardboard control surfaces and deploy the package's parachute.
The package itself makes a doorbell noise when it lands.
Nullius in verba
To quote Flounder from Animal House: "Oh boy, is this great!"
I've heard of almost no drones outfitting with the full avoidance capabilities of a self-driving car.
University mailrooms arent set up to cope with hundred of boxes students are ordering. So they are partnering with businesses on universities to help them do this. Large apartment complexes have the same complaint. One US chain is refusign to hold packages at their admin office.
I read Amazon is considering buying an existing shipping fleet like UPS or building one of their own. They get burned every other Christmas by insufficient capacity. Drones are another option which may or may not be cheaper.
Have you yet thought about the amount of noise this fleet will generate in your neighborhood? Or, how much visual pollution there will be with hundreds of these flying around in your area? You won't be able to look up without seeing these things moving. How about the noise and movement disrupting animals and birds, especially those in areas above the ground that aren't normally bothered by the movements at ground level?
And, who has done the math to see how much energy will be imparted on a toddler's head when a five pound package is released at 400 feet above the ground? Who covers the medical bills, burial, liability, etc. when that kid dies? These are real risks that will not be able to be mitigated to a level that the grieving parent will be able to consider reasonable. How about if it kills mom instead of the kid and the seven kids are now left without a mom? Or, your husband just got mauled by the drone that was taken over by a high power radio controller like the DOD has been playing with to hijack drones that have come into their areas?
Too many real questions that are not being addressed at a sincere level to allow this insanity to happen. Even if it means they will make ton of money. We sometimes decide that our comfort, safety and well being outweigh profit.
Drones have batteries; over charging the batteries might result in a fire failure mode. Starting a fire is the most likely why I can think of to cause multiple deaths via a delivery drone without adding on purpose caused deaths. Tim S.
Have the drones take off and cruise automatically. When the drone is on top of the location and GPS accuracy no longer becomes accurate (within 20 yards of the destination or so) shift control to a manual pilot who will perform the delivery and drop the box off in some place that makes sense, then maneuver the drone back into the air where the AI will again take over.
You could have two sets of pilots, those for completing deliveries and another group of people who take over when malfunctions occur (someone shoots your drone, it collides with something, etc). Each human would be able to oversee 100 or more drones depending on what percentage of a flight needs to be manually guided -- I think the final 1% is reasonable.
In the short term I expect they will charge the same amount for drone delivery as for same-day delivery by human drivers, with perhaps a short term offering of free or reduced rate shipping to get people to try it. In the long term it will depend on how the costs shake out; if it turns out to be costlier than dispatching drivers they will charge extra for right-now delivery, if it's cheaper they will use drones for all the same-day deliveries that are within the weight limit.