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Amazon Might Be Planning To Use Driverless Cars for Delivery (fortune.com)
Amazon could be eyeing driverless car technology as a way to get items to people's doors faster, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. From an article: It seems nearly every tech and auto giant are now evaluating autonomous vehicle technology. Google-owner Alphabet recently spun out its self-driving car unit, Waymo, into its own subsidiary. Apple was just granted a license in California to test autonomous vehicles. Ford and General Motors are also doubling down on creating autonomous vehicles. Amazon's ambitions, however, may not be to actually build these cars. Instead, the e-commerce giant has a team of around a dozen employees thinking of ways to potentially use the nascent technology to expand its own retail and logistics operations. Operating fleets of driverless trucks to ship items bought from its marketplace could help lower costs for the company.
It is okay if Amazon's cars are driverless . . .
. . . as long as they are also self-driving.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
and all of the out of work trucks well just hold up the auto drive cars to get food and other stuff that they need.
There's the question of how the car/truck is going to stop being targeted for theft. I am sure that these cars would be programmed to stop when people are standing in their way -- which would be a perfect way to steal delivery goods. Just have a group of people surround the car/truck at a stop light, and then you pretty much own a bunch of new toys from Amazon. I'll believe it when I see it, I guess.
Once you have fully operational self-driving cars, robots will roam up and down the hallways of apartment complexes to deliver packages. Like the food dispenser robots in Judge Dredd (Stallone).
So, Amazon will use driverless cars to deliver goods. How do you suppose those goods get from the car, to the 3rd floor apartment, or in onto the porch of the house, or if there are special instructions, through the gate and onto the step at the back door? A drone based in the vehicle? I think you're going to have to have someone involved there to get the package to where it needs to go.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Anyone who owns a delivery or livery fleet is looking at the possibility long term. I suspect regulations and edge cases will delay this to at least 2030 but eventually this will come. In Amazon's case I'm sure it will also involve a mini robot that will take the package from the truck to the door. Probably several of them at once so it can circle back and pick up some.
I expect those same mini robot's to arrive much sooner, as they can be used in the warehouse and are being used right now. Expect the vast number of people employed in their warehouses to drop 90% (or at least the number of employees per package to drop that amount - the way amazon keeps growing year to year the new warehouses will offset that. Forget about WalMart, amazon is the small *and* large town job destroyer.)
How long until the average person realizes that it's robots taking the jobs not the Mexicans/immigrants. And then the problem becomes what can we build a wall around to stop them?
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
Or, here in New England, the side door. (The front door is only for brides and undertakers)
That was my concern too. Drop them around the mailbox like the fscking catalog people do? Guess where I will not be ordering from, then.
Exactly what I was wondering. - A little robot - Slingshot device (my favorite) - Automated call to customer (yo, come pick your shit up from the truck outside) and have item(s) in a cage to prevent theft of other customers items in delivery truck
Judging from the amount of money thrown at the problem and results shown so far the driverless cars will be on the roads quite soon, pending local legislation etc, but this decade or early next decade looks very realistic. Will anyone scrap the existing fleets overnight? Obviously not, it will take more than a few years to switch over, nobody could even manufacture that many driverless cars/trucks in a short time, but it will still be a very big change happening relatively fast if the cost benefit plays out as expected.
and how are they getting into my house and out of the box and into my hands without me having to get off the sofa? This driverless thing will never work, obviously.
Don't worry, upgraded version 2.0 of the driver-less truck will drive right up to your sofa...
The margin seems to serve the purpose of holding the utterly important widget that tells you your name, user id and karma.
I find that highly useful because I ocasionally forget my name, I would have *no idea* where to look up my userid if I ever needed it, and my karma? It's changing so quickly between "Excellent" and "Excellent" that I'm having a hard time keeping track of it.
THANK YOU, /., for the new, user experience improving, margin.
If I might add, a narrower comment section feels more app-grade. Thanks for that, too.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have an app to app. With a margin.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
The driver hours (and possibly lower insurance costs) mean that it can be economic to just scrap a working vehicle. However, another reasonable option for the more expensive vehicles would be a retrofit kit.
With a drone of course. The notion of having amazon fly a drone from the their DC to your house is ridiculous, but parking a small truck in your neighborhood and having a half dozen drones take flight from it is way more efficient.
What?!? You're saying it's an intended feature!
I thought it was a bug. Seriously! Not joking.
So somebody thought this would be a good idea?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
why would they scrap perfectly viable trucks/cars? it's going to be a matter of adding some software attached to a few motors to control the throttle/steering of an existing vehicle. (The software is the hard part to figure out, while being very cheap to reproduce once sorted out.)
The first time they run into my electronic gate on the property, there will be trouble.
Than their current delivery people. Leaving my package by the road? YOu lazy moron in a rusted out minivan, walk that thing to the door and press the doorbell button.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.