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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!
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"
Silicon Valley vs laws of physics, act two.
Can somebody teach that guy secondary school physics?
The key question is if drone delivery is safer than putting a minimum-wage-paid teen in a car on public roadways to try to quickly deliver something to you in hopes of a larger tip. I think even Uber would have trouble being on the wrong end of that equation. Ringing a doorbell is no more necessary than using a buggy whip on the drone -- you get an alert on your smartphone app when it arrives. Avoiding obstacles is easy because it flies above them, then lands vertically onto a mat you place on the ground in an area with clear line of sight to the sky. If there's an overhang/power line/whatever straight above the mat, you're given a notification to move it. A better question is what the system is going to do about rain; presumably the delivered pizza boxes will get soaked if they're placed on the ground outside during/after rain.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Safe places to land are limited (how does it actually 'make the delivery' - it can't ring a doorbell!).
I have seen prototypes. The payload is on a tether. The drone hovers about 12 feet about the drop-point, and then reels out the tether to put the payload on the ground. The tether then detaches from the payload and reels back up.
Navigating an urban area in 3D is hard (avoiding vehicles, overhead cables, etc).
None of that is a problem. The drone takes off vertically, goes up 400 feet (far above almost all obstacles), flys to the destination, and then descends vertically right above the drop point. Any obstacles taller than 400 feet can be mapped as "no go" areas.