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Autonomous Robots Begin Testing For New Delivery Service
An anonymous reader writes: "In the future, your food or package could be delivered by a coordinated fleet of self-driving vehicles," writes CBS Marketwatch, reporting on an "autonomous delivery startup" called Dispatch that's already begun pilot programs on two college campuses in California. A small droid-like vehicle "self-navigates the sidewalks at a pedestrian pace and uses cameras and LiDAR, a technology that measures distance using pulses of light, to avoid obstacles," according to site, noting that each robot in the fleet retains its data "and gets smarter with each trip." The company has already received $2 million in seed capital, and "What we're doing is we're using modern AI techniques to help the robot understand the world around it and react accordingly," one of the founders explains. "Once you imagine this it's hard to really imagine a future without it."
It will be hilarious watching the first few generations of these getting their parcels robbed.
They always seem to test these things in desert-dry, pool-table flat environments, where automated delivery seems least urgent or necessary. The bike and pedestrian paths are there, after all, to see that students get a little exercise on campus.
How does it do with piles of snow and ice on the sidewalk? Hmmm?
It will be hilarious watching idiots trying to break into a secure internal compartment in order to make off with a plate of noodles, or a $19.95 payment for same on the return trip to the vehicle.
Do you really think no one would consider security?
Please.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Such an approach is built around a medieval model of a city. This vehicle 95% carries its own weight.
What is needed, however, is the implementation of the Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies, or ET3: http://www.et3.com/ . This technology is ecological, safe, scalable, and fast.
The main obstacle is the littleness of the current political and technical leadership, which is stuck firmly in the past centuries.
Autonomous drone AI is just that - drone AI. Maze-solving and go-playing, routing-finding algorithms are a far cry and entirely different domain from intelligent human thought and rationalization.
I'm not too sure of sidewalk delivery but octocopters will be a thing. They are resilient to motor failures even while carrying a lot of weight.
What occurs to me now that it's likely the first drone delivery will be from close by trucks that can not only deliver the package but do recovery of packages and drone rescue should problems occur. Probably launching from the roof of the truck. It's also an ideal way of delivering first class mail.
I wonder about how we will deal with rain. Self retracting roof for the landing pad?
What about placement? On the ground or in the air? Maybe a dumbwaiter type thing to the roof? Or put the landing pad on the roof and then retrieve everything by a personal drone?
One thing that would be good is that eventually delivery can be done at night when your home. Or by any other programmable schedule.
I want to sit in a park, at work, at home, or wherever. I want to order something like a burger, a donair (look it up) or a coffee. I then want to step outside and have it arrive a very short while later. Once I can do this, then I can't see not having this service all the time.
I could see this operating at many levels. I am biking, it is a hot day, get fluids delivered. All the way to, I am camping, in pretty much the middle of nowhere and get a missing item delivered, or just some icecream.
This would ideally also extend to some sort of courier service. My kid forgets their homework; for a very reasonable fee, it gets delivered.
If the delivery can be something larger like an entire order of groceries, then all the better. But packages under 1kg would still make my life a whole lot better.
But there's a reason that we domesticated horses, built carriages, trains, bicycles, automobiles and trucks: we want stuff faster than walking speed.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
This seems to be very similar to what http://www.starship.xyz is doing
to realize that the quickest way around campus is knocking people over instead of going around them? It will only have to do it a few times before people hear about it and then steer clear of the robot.
If it continues to get smarter, it may decide that intimidating students into carrying its packages is the fastest way to get the job done.
A more political interpretation of this is that they're trying to replace student labor with robots. I think the students should file a law suit - delivering packages around campus should be a work-study position. I guess the guys in charge have a vested interest in keeping students on the hook for their student loans as long as possible...
Each robot could be programmed as if each neighborhood was contained like a campus. That way the individual robot could have far more data about the one campus it serves instead of trying to process data for an entire town or city. So one robot could carry goods from the point of origin to the start point for the "campus", pass the packages to the neighborhood robot and return, leaving the neighborhood robot to finalize the delivery. The "campus" robot could have a local charging station and shelter for the slow periods.
The UPS version will use a builtin T-shirt cannon to blast packages against your front door and then run. The Postal Service version will need a sound sensor that will allow the device to run away in abject fear if it detects a Yorkie inside your house.
Thanks to Amazon and shit like this, soon there won't be any reason at all for fat asses to even leave their house! Yaay! What a wonderful world that'll be. A bunch of suicidal fat asses clicking and swiping in their individual houses/apartments their entire lives! No stores. No schools. It'll be a fat-ass utopia!
I don't respond to AC's.
Hitchbot didn't even contain anything valuable, and still was vandalized quickly once travelling on US soil: http://www.people.com/article/... And the vandalism being taped on video didn't mean anyone bothered to catch the bad guy.
I'm not too sure of sidewalk delivery but octocopters will be a thing. They are resilient to motor failures even while carrying a lot of weight.
No they wont. Sidewalk delivery is safe, energy efficient, and a drone can not easily lift a few hundred kg and still be allowed to fly over peoples heads.
I won't be happy until I can say "Siri, have Amazon drone me a beer" and have a cold one delivered within seconds through the mysteriously already opened window right next to me.
Maybe a taser