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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.
(That's all I wanted to say.)
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Or a lot of helium.
Maybe if they hired the right managers all that hot air could be put to actual use.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.