UPS Develops 'Rolling Warehouse' System In Which Drones Are Launched From Atop Trucks (bloomberg.com)

mi writes: A Bloomberg article describes a test conducted by UPS on Monday, "launching an unmanned aerial vehicle from the roof of a UPS truck about a quarter-mile to a blueberry farm outside Tampa, Florida. The drone dropped off a package at a home on the property, and returned to the truck, which had moved about 2,000 feet." The company is looking to design a "rolling warehouse" system in which a drone is "deployed from the roof of a UPS truck and flies at an altitude of 200 feet to the destination." It returns after dropping off the package while the truck is already on its way to the next stop.

Comments

Prior Art on Slashdot

[mi]

The company is looking to design a "rolling warehouse" system in which a drone is "deployed from the roof of a UPS truck and flies at an altitude of 200 feet to the destination." It returns after dropping off the package while the truck is already on its way to the next stop.

We discussed just such a system here on Slashdot about 4 years ago... If anything, that discussion should allow other players to implement their own without fear of stepping on UPS' patent(s).

Reliability

[pete6677]

If UPS drones operate anything like their human drivers, they'll just drop packages in random locations, mark them "delivered", and nobody ever sees them again.

Bug report

[PopeRatzo]

This was buried at the very end of the story:

During a second, unofficial demonstration of the HorseFly for UPS on Monday, some sort of interference – possibly from the broadcast reporters’ cameras - caused an issue with the drone’s compass. The drone aborted its launch, tried to land on top of the UPS truck, fell to the side and was nearly crushed by the still-closing lid of the vehicle.

“We’ve never seen it before,” said Burns, of the glitch.

Idiocy

[RubberDogBone]

Many cities and towns have had ZERO regard for the wiring nightmare hanging over their streets. Not to mention trees and other hazards. UPS is a bunch of damn fools if they think they can simply put drones on trucks and go for it.

What do the drivers think? I read the UPS driver forums and they already had a lot of legitimate griefs and a lot of them felt overworked and pressured, so now they have to do drones, too? This is going to go over like a lead balloon in a gravity well.

Besides which, there are drone no-fly zones all over the place. The town where I live is completely off limits as we are too close to a major airport. But that's OK because there are tons of badly groomed trees and some of the worst telecom pole wiring I have ever seen. Phone, CATV, power, fiber, and above those lines are 100ft high voltage lines with at least three tiers. Even if there wasn't a flight ban here, you'd have to be a complete moron to try to fly a drone among all these wires and the trees. Forget the kite-eating tree. It has nothing on the ones around here. They don't just eat drones, they also thrown limbs at you. Seriously. They eject limbs from time to time.