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Amazon Patents Floating Airship Warehouse For Its Delivery Drones (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: We've known about Amazon's drone delivery ambitions since 2013. But patent filings from Amazon, circulated today by CB Insights' Zoe Leavitt, reveal more details about how the e-commerce titan could make drone deliveries work at scale, namely through "airborne fulfillment centers." Yes, that's a warehouse in a zeppelin. The airborne fulfillment centers, or AFCs, would be stocked with a certain amount of inventory and positioned near a location where Amazon predicts demand for certain items will soon spike. Drones, including temperature-controlled models ideally suited for food delivery, could be stocked at the AFCs and sent down to make a precise, safe scheduled or on-demand delivery. An example cited in the filing was around a sporting event. If there's a big championship game down below, Amazon AFC's above could be loaded with snacks and souvenirs sports fans crave. The AFCs could be flown close to a stadium to deliver audio or outdoor display advertising near the main event, as well, the filing suggested. The patent reflects a complex network of systems to facilitate delivery by air. Besides the airborne fulfillment centers and affiliated drones, the company has envisioned larger shuttles that could carry people, supplies and drones to the AFCs or back to the ground. Using a larger shuttle to bring drones up to the AFC would allow Amazon to reserve their drones' power for making deliveries only. Of course, all these elements would be connected to inventory management systems, and other software and remote computing resources managed by people in the air or on the ground. The filing also reveals that the shuttles and drones, as they fly deliveries around, could function in a mesh network, relaying data to each other about weather, wind speed and routing, for example, or beaming e-book content down to readers on the ground. Amazon also recently patented a system to defend its drones against hackers, jammers and bows and arrows.
Flight restrictions around sporting events? Is it even legal to have an outdoor NFL game without a flyover?
Or a lot of helium.
Whoever wrote this patent example obviously knows nothing about FAA security and flight restrictions around sporting events and other assemblies. Not gonna happen.
Exactly what makes it so disruptive and lucrative. Probably will float one over the Whitehouse too with a giant "You can't TRUMP these discounts!!!" (With an obvious 15% going to his majesty of course).
oh the humanity
(That's all I wanted to say.)
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Traditionally at Slashdot, we don't read the article.
We do, however, read the headline, which generally gives a grossly exaggerated and politically skewed summary of the topic.
Or a lot of helium.
Maybe if they hired the right managers all that hot air could be put to actual use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Blimps (or Zeppelins, if you really want to make them rigid instead) suffer from the combination of two problems: They're huge and fragile. Which is not as much a problem as long as there is no good reason to force it to come down, That's why those ad blimps you see at sporting events are flying up there. What's to gain by making it crash?
It's a WHOLE different matter if that blimp is filled to the brim with merchandise that I might like or flying over a target that I might not like.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Something else for my boom stick to shoot at.
Floating in the air takes a lot of energy.
You fail at physics.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
1450.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Actually launching and retrieving flying vehiclies from massive airships is nothing new. the US Akron and US Macon were blimp aircraft carriers carring multiple planes able to both launch and retrieve.
http://www.airships.net/us-nav...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.history.com/topics/...
the russians even built planes that other planes could launch from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
and Darpa still wants these:
http://www.popsci.com/article/...
and both the russians and Lockeed developed concept aircraft based on nuclear powered super planes with runways built into them:
https://forums.spacebattles.co...
russina surface effects nuclear powered sea skimmer concept:
http://englishrussia.com/2015/...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Black Sunday 77 remake plot
When did we start patenting imaginary ideas without proof they work?
It has been standard practice since the mid-1980s.
The patent system has been converted into a system for large corporations to erect entry barriers and hobbles for competitors. They can afford to create a portfolio of merit-less patents to use as legal weapons against competitors and defenses against other large corporations with similar merit-less patent portfolios.
Invention, innovation, advancing the public good through demonstrations of superior art, have almost nothing to do with it anymore, except accidentally. But the corporations are very happy, and that's what count these days.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Actually the Hydrogen Blimps used in the World War were notoriously difficult to shoot down. The planes that eventually pulled it off were using explosive / incendiary rounds to pull it off. Regular bullets just wizz right through leaving holes. Nevermind the fact that firing your gun in the air in a populated area (this kind of distribution only really is effective in a city.) is probably going to get you in trouble. Nowadys they don't use hydrogen in Blimps. The Hindenberg mostly went up in a fireball because the shell was made of flamable material, not so much the gas.
The drones might be shootable but the problem there is they'll have cameras that will likely spot you and it's not like you randomly shoot at aircraft right?
Well, I think its pretty cool, but I also think they shouldn't be able to patent an idea they can't yet build.
These things will be death traps! Has everybody forgotten about the Hindenburg?!?!
The Hindenberg used hydrogen. Hydrogen is highly flammable. Helium is not.
I can't believe I even have to post this. I guess Poe's Law made me do it.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Actually, this is the problematic part:
An example cited in the filing was around a sporting event. If there’s a big championship game down below, Amazon AFC’s above could be loaded with snacks and souvenirs sports fans crave.
Do you really think the stadium owners will allow someone else to cut in on the revenue of the food and souvenirs they sell? They'd be asking for such a big cut that Amazon would barely make any money.
Besides which, the first time a drone drops out of the sky, there's real trouble. Out in the wider world, if a drone malfunctions and falls, there's only a small chance it will actually hit someone. Inside a stadium, the odds go way up.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Someone explain why, if you know about a large public event in advance, why you would want a blimp to serve as home base when a truck can carry more weight, more cheaply, more easily serviceable, and without specialized people to look after it?
Ideally suited for food delivery? Most food I know that people eat at sporting events is heated, requires heavy equipment to prepare/serve, etc. I don't get it.
Well, I think its pretty cool, but I also think they shouldn't be able to patent an idea they can't yet build.
They shouldn't be able to patent ideas at all, only specific implementations.
A new propeller design that can be used on a drone: Patentable.
Using that drone to deliver Chinese food: Not patentable.
We are doomed to repeat the same mistakes of previous generations, it seems. The Hindenburg, the best of German engineering, needed special mooring masts, could not survive and had to evade rough weather, and overall had a horrible safety record, around a thousand times worse than modern planes.
we need a troll trace for patent trolls!
I was thinking the same thing. There is NFW that they are going to allow that shit.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
There was an audio drama episode of Doctor Who from Big Finish titled The Warehouse, episode 202 of the monthly series, that dealt with something similar except the warehouse was in orbit. Big Finish creates audio dramas featuring the Doctors before the latest return to TV and gets the actors to reprise their roles. I'm enjoying them much more than what Steven Moffat has been putting out over the last couple of seasons.
Wile E. Coyote really does work for Amazon.
Amazon could position their zepellins near areas affected by natural disasters, where they could supply the needy with clean water, blankets, clothes, food
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Besides which, the first time a drone drops out of the sky, there's real trouble. Out in the wider world, if a drone malfunctions and falls, there's only a small chance it will actually hit someone. Inside a stadium, the odds go way up.
God as my witness, I thought these turkey drones could fly!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
wonder if this will have the patented arrow defense as well.
Not really needed.... you could shoot at WW1 zeppelins all day as the hydrogen wasn't kept at high pressures. They just had a guy wandering around with a bucket of epoxy to patch holes. It wasn't until the incendiary bullets that they had any major issues.
What sealed the fate of the Hindenburg was the following:
- damp mooring lines (from rain) that could conduct electricity between the ship and the ground
- a thunderstorm that increased the strength of ambient electric fields
- a tear in the ship's outer skin that exposed the metal frame and caused a leak of hydrogen to the outside
All of this caused a discharge between the mooring lines and the metal frame in the vicinity of a leak. Kaboom.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Hydrogen in a rigid airship is kept in bladders, a tear in the outer covering wouldn't cause a massive leak. A blimp is a different story where the craft is kept rigid by pressurized gas. A zeppelin is NOT a blimp. Different animal even if they look similar from the outside.
So painting the rigid exterior (that's not air tight, FYI) in rocket fuel had no impact on the flammability? I'm curious why you would leave that off your list
moox. for a new generation.
The Hindenberg used hydrogen. Hydrogen is highly flammable. Helium is not.
Pretty much all the helium airships crashed as well. Maybe not crashed and burned, but well and truly crashed. And some of the hydrogen airships survived until decommissioned. Fire is far from the only enemy of airships.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of, if the wanted to set up mobile warehouses they could very very easily do it with maybe custom 40ft ISO shipping containers. Lets use their example of a sporting event, there are already mobile trailers setup outside of stadiums at every game selling shirts, you could sell alot of shirts out of a 40ft iso box. They could also make their own custom 53ft trailers, they can be setup like mini stores, with steps one side or more, and even an area could be made as a stock room. The systems are already in place to move them, and plus they could be restocked much more quickly and easily than a freaking blimp, once they are empty just move them back to the ware house and load them up.
Whether life is coming to resemble Buck Rogers ...
If there's a big championship game down below, Amazon AFC's above could be loaded with snacks and souvenirs sports fans crave.
or Snow Crash
Amazon also recently patented a system to defend its drones against hackers, jammers and bows and arrows
Amazon? .. I thought this was Trump's new business plan.
Tell them about it - http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacg...
The only thing I can think where this would be a thing would be when Apple comes out with the next super-dooper phone. I know guys that HAVE to have it the moment it comes out. Their old phone is already sold to someone else.
Other than that, I don't see this as a viable business. Weather can doom it as well. Hope I don't have to fly around these things.