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Uber Planning Fleet of Food Delivery Drones 'As Soon As 2021' (engadget.com)
At this year's Uber Elevate Summit in May, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi discussed the possibility of a drone-based food delivery service. Now, it looks like a job posting has hinted that the company is looking to launch the service in 2021. Engadget reports: According to the Wall Street Journal, Uber is looking to hire someone with "flight standards and training" experience, who can "enable safe, legal, efficient and scalable flight operations." If the info is legit, It looks like Uber is looking to keep development of the program under wraps as the job posting is no longer listed on its website. According to the Wall Street Journal's report, the drone-based delivery service has been dubbed "UberExpress," and will exist under the umbrella of Uber Eats. The job description reportedly described a desire for an applicant that can "help make delivery drones functional as soon as next year and commercially operational in multiple markets by 2021."
Now we can get even fatter with even less effort!
for World Peace!
I hope Uber is still around by 2021.
Among flying things we used to shoot birds for food. Now we will also get drones.
Seriously, stop being so damn lazy. As someone who typically walls to one of the neighborhood grocery stores, I'm amazed at how lazy people are. Is it too hard to get your lazy ass in your car and drive to the store? Oh, that's right, it might force you to actually get up and do something rather than be consumed by menial bullshit like social media on your phones. If climate change doesn't kill us off, our own lazy ass behavior will cause us to become way too fucking fat. Stop being so goddammed lazy.
KPA
Speaking truth to power on Slashdot since 1999
This isn't looking good for anyone thinking they can drive or ride for Uber in the long term. Clearly Uber wants to replace those pesky humans with robots, for taxi service, food delivery service, and I'm sure other delivery services too.
So much for Uber's claims to provide employment and earning opportunities for a wide range of people.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
The next generation wandering around like zombies with their heads fully back, big funnels in their mouths, waiting for their next food drop from the drones.
It takes a fairly big, powerful drone to carry a couple of large pizzas. Spinning propellors on big powerful drones can cause nasty injuries. Safe places to land are limited (how does it actually 'make the delivery' - it can't ring a doorbell!). Navigating an urban area in 3D is hard (avoiding vehicles, overhead cables, etc). The full-scale aviation industry dislikes drones (for somewhat reasonable reasons). The general public irrationally fears drones (privacy reasons). The government fears drones (terrorism risk). Paranoid gun nuts will shoot at them. Others will steal them. Right now, drone deliveries are nothing more than a marketing gimmick, or at best, a very-long-term research project.
Silicon Valley vs laws of physics, act two.
Can somebody teach that guy secondary school physics?
They should equip it with one of those baseball style compressed CO2 cannons that can shoot hot dogs. Then they could launch dogs, brats, maybe taquitos directly into my mouth. If they up the PSI it might be able to shoot through a window even and save me some time.
Hope the drones aren't fixed-wing, otherwise it'll taste like airplane food.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
the cost of petroleum based packaging & delivery far exceeds that of the 'food' being sent out? cease fire stand down.. in the moms we trust.. like star gazing & hand waving, growing our own stuff is making a big comeback? thanks again
Will it have a guaranteed minimum content of microplastics? Yummy!
On a more serious note: I won't touch either Uber nor Airbnb nor any of those monsters with a ten foot pole until they've been beat into being decent corporate citizens. Currently they're parasites and would deserve DDT (which alas, is forbidden).
Nice job
Just like Amazon is going to be delivering packages with drones any time now.
Just like their self-driving cars.
These guys did a study and even dropped from 5.5 meters reaching a terminal velocity of 10 m/s (22 mph) a DJI Phantom could cause AIS 3+ (severe) neck injury if it fell on someone's head. My buddy has one of those and the biggest scare he had was in mid flight when the controller reported a battery problem. He was at 120m (~400 ft) which is the max unrestricted height, fortunately it was only a loose cable and was able to land safely but... had that been a total power loss it'd be 1.2 kg falling out of the sky from 400 ft, which is roughly worst case. At that point it'd be near terminal velocity which would be around 35 m/s (78 mph) (go to 15:00) for a drone of that size and a lethal weapon with enough power to crack an adult skull open.
Drones are, compared to say cars actually quite rare. They only have flight times measured in minutes, so run time is even less. And most are operated by sensible guys trying to avoid flying directly over people. Even when they're operated by idiots like above, they're quite reliable. But the Phantom is rated for 200g payload. Even if you just want to deliver a pizza you're going to need a much bigger drone with a lot more impact force and heavier drones drop more like a rock too. For a commercial operation in a hub-and-spoke model over populated areas... it's the "flying cars" idea in miniature. My bet is it'll last until Uber kills someone. And this time it won't be someone jaywalking in the dark, it'll just be whoever it happens to come crashing down on. Drones are cool. Drones and people are a really bad mix.
If Waymo get their self-driving car going I imagine we'll find many better alternatives to the "driveway problem", to the degree there actually is one. Maybe it could drop of micro-delivery bots that take stuff from the curb to your door or to a delivery box, if it's more like Amazon than pizza. I mean it's not like a drone leaving something on your lawn is optimal either. I mean if you'll have a drone dropping it from the sky it means it can't have no cover if it's raining, for example. Personally I think most problems would be most easily solved by a coat and slip-on shoes to go out, grab the delivery and be back inside in a minute. It's rarely that horrible outside...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Oh great, just what civilization needed: Uber drones dropping burritos from the sky!
If nothing else, it will give Peter Thiel a new way to lament the state of technological progress: "We wanted flying cars, instead we got parachute pizzas"
Mod parent up!
"Drones and people are a really bad mix."
I hope they make drones illegal in our area.
Now that Amazon makes all of its deliveries by drone - oh, wait. At least in the old days vapor was accompanied by fake hardware demos. Nothing like solving the Bay Area's first-world problems with convoluted, expensive hyperbole. Modern tech is a bad joke.
What is it with all of these tech companies with unicorns farting rainbows?
the AMA will put a stop to that
A wheel based mobile pizza oven makes more sense.
Make pizza, insert in oven and it is done by the time the oven makes it to your house.
Don't even need the complexity of pizza making machinery. It can be done in a conventional kitchen before it is sent out.
Quietly I don't trust Uber to do this. They have repeatedly made outright wrong or morally questionable decisions that make their customers and vendors less safe.
I don't trust them to build and safely operate flying food-dispensing lawnmowers. No.
All these companies see is dollars! I see visual sky pollution, noise pollution, a swarm of flying drone parasites near the drone ports and death from above. So what happens when these things fail while in flight? How do they safely pull over to the curb and wait for help? Oh, that's right, they can't. They just fall on you and kill you or severely injure you. It is called gravity and system failure combined into a beautiful dessert called pain.
Why are you not actively fighting these flying pains in the ass?
Now instead of just running over jaywalking women carrying bicycles in the dark, it looks like Uber will start bombing us with food! Let the mayhem begin.