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Amazon Promised Drone Delivery In Five Years Five Years Ago (apnews.com)
On December 1, 2013, Amazon announced its plans to deliver packages by drone in just "four or five years" on a 60 Minutes episode with then-host Charlie Rose. As The Associated Press reports, it's officially been five years and drone deliveries seem to be nowhere in sight. "Bezos made billions of dollars by transforming the retail sector," reports The Associated Press. "But overcoming the regulatory hurdles and safety issues posed by drones appears to be a challenge even for the world's wealthiest man." From the report: The day may not be far off when drones will carry medicine to people in rural or remote areas, but the marketing hype around instant delivery of consumer goods looks more and more like just that -- hype. Drones have a short battery life, and privacy concerns can be a hindrance, too. Amazon says it is still pushing ahead with plans to use drones for quick deliveries, though the company is staying away from fixed timelines. "We are committed to making our goal of delivering packages by drones in 30 minutes or less a reality," says Amazon spokeswoman Kristen Kish. The Seattle-based online retail giant says it has drone development centers in the United States, Austria, France, Israel and the United Kingdom.
I want my refund!
We're also approaching the year when we were promised self-driving cars. 2018, or ~2017, or 2018. It's going to be a few years of failed predictions.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Rich people puchase legislation, they never had too many problems with regulation. However, they can't buy away the laws of physics, which is why they should be more careful before giving deadlines for vaporware projects that only exist in their minds.
I can get stuff to my door in two-hours (one hour if I pay extra). That is drone delivery. Similarly, Uber and Lyft already supply on-demand self-driving cars. I mean, sure they can use tech to get people out of the loop, but as a consumer, I don't really care. Do you?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
We've been doing that since 2010, the only people who cared was the local paper and the cops. Now it's old news and we've sorted it out with the cops so that we are allowed to operate How is this news?
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
"60 Minutes episode with then-host Charlie Rose. As The Associated Press reports, it's officially been five years and drone deliveries seem to be nowhere in sight. "
Charlie Rose is not in sight anywhere either.
When Amazon started speaking about drone delivery, the collective drone dev community was shaking their heads. The real drone community that is, and not the 'I'll say anything to get some sweat VC money' part of it.
Always X years away, for X years. Self driving and electric cars too
It just works differently. Every company announces 10 or 20 or 50 nifty sounding ideas from their R&D-labs. And eventually, one of them materializes. But at the time of the announcement, no one knew which of the 10 or 20 or 50 it will be. Otherwise you wouldn't need R&D, because you already knew how to make the ideas work.
in 5 years? Myself and most other realized it was publicity stunt at the time. They got enormous press coverage.
So you have to carry the bigger battery. Bigger drone.
Possible fix: Cloud-connected landing pads that double as charging stations. Amazon could give them away to Prime Members who'll set them up at their homes, and you'd earn Amazon credit each time a drone makes a pit stop.
To the naysayers who think short battery life can't be worked around, look at the cell phone industry. The technology required cell towers to be built all over the place (one tower per every 1 to 22 miles of coverage, depending on various factors), so that's what they did. I'm sure back when cellular technology was first starting out, some luddites were probably claiming "It'll never work, you'd need massively powerful transmitters, and even bigger batteries!"
The most likely cause of delay in Amazon implementing drone deliveries is not the batteries, but the aspect of safety. These things will fall from the sky when something goes wrong, and there's some truth to the idiom "crash and burn", at it applies to drones. How to minimize the risk of injury/death/property damage when a delivery drone fails (and gravity does its thing) is the real showstopper for this technology.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Amazon probably figured out that actual rollout of drones won't be profitable. Items under 5LB are generally low price, low margin. Electronics are an obvious exception but that'd be a small portion of the deliveries. Sure you pay more for drone delivery, but the R&D/rollout costs are high enough it'd take a long time to be profitable, even if it only delivered high-value merchandise like electronics.
The key question to Amazon is if someone who needs something ASAP will buy it via Amazon, or drive to a local store and buy it. Someone who can get to a store quickly is likely in the suburbs/city, so demand for drone delivery won't be so high there. In rural areas, population density versus drone range is so low that it won't be profitable to roll out in the country either.
In other words, actual widescale rollout won't be profitable except maybe for small towns full of electronics nerds (who need that replacement CPU fan/SSD immediately) that are far away from electronics stores. What with some tech companies moving from Silicon Valley to random rural areas, these might actually exist, but probably not enough to justify the R&D. And they'd be betting no Fry's/Best Buy opens nearby. They could target night owls that need a replacement before the retail store opens, but this has to be a small portion of purchases (and they're betting the Fry's doesn't go 24 hour).
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
The tech guys usually are not wrong they just believe time to mass market is shorter than it usually is. The first wave investors get burned the same way.
Example in 99 IBM predicted in a Super Bowl ad that checkout free grocery stores were literally right around the corner. Here we are in 2018 and Amazon (Notably not IBM) has finally delivered a few test stores.
Touch Screen Smart Phones. RIM/Microsoft/Handspring etc all tried it; with first gen stuff that really was not far behind iPhone 1 in terms of tech; just lacked polish. All are in the dust bin of history as far as those products go; Apple late to party road theirs to become the most valuable company on earth.
You could say similar things about other tech; MITS never really exactly cleaned up on the Altair but the S100 market was huge for a while. How many Altos did Xerox sell? Not many compared to the number of Macintosh machines that rolled out.
There is a tendency to bring tech out that falls just short of good enough for mass market. You tend to over look your babies flaws and you tend to justify the deficiencies. Its like most power doors on cars. Great idea super handy when you have big bag of groceries in your arms etc. The fist gen stuff in he late 70's 80's though was terrible - nobody had 37 seconds to stand there why their door opened. The people working on that stuff thought probably felt they'd solved the problems; until the market told them "not quite" not its a popular feature
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
That has nothing to do with Amazon using drones. Amazon doesn't use drones because it wouldn't work and is a stupid idea. The technology isn't there.
Actually, Amazon did used their own drones for delivery---Amazon Logistics. From many of the surveillance video footage I saw the final several yards was often air delivered when the AMZL drones chuck packages great distances from their cars.
Ah, the politician timescale ... sorta near but safely 9at the time) far away.
I notice that true AI, the dying off of us old Republicans, and my big premium savings from Obamacare are a little overdue as well.
Amazon's overhyped drone delivery service was shown on "60 Minutes" just before Christmas 2013. This was nothing more than Amazon promoting its brand and existing services to potential customers right before the biggest shopping holiday of the year. CBS's "60 Minutes" was complicit by giving Amazon that much free publicity and marketing. "60 Minutes" had lost a ton of credibility when their "rising star" young, pretty, blonde British female journalist got busted for airing a year-long investigation about Benghazi which had been based on complete lies and a single source whose story had already been debunked by the FBI. Letting Amazon use "60 Minutes" as an infomercial further discredited the name of what had been one of the most trusted news programs on TV.
So it turns out that Bezos can not predict the future. Maybe he's just human.
For those that actually believed we'd have drone delivery by now, just wait a few years. Its coming.
For those that knew better, there is still only a niche benefit atm, and individual copter style deliver is energy intenstive vs. rolling on wheels. Not even to mention other challenges. Plus, who wants drones flying all over the place?
For those that actually believed we'd have drone delivery by now, just wait a few years. Its coming. For those that knew better, there is still only a niche benefit atm, and individual copter style deliver is energy intenstive vs. rolling on wheels. Not even to mention other challenges. Plus, who wants drones flying all over the place?
I suppose if a person live in a treeless housing development in the middle of what used to be a farmer's field, it might make some sense. I'm trying to imagine drone delivery in my neighborhood. It's in a forest. Trees are pretty much everywhere except for the streets.
So Amazon's drones would have to fly at street level with the cars. At that point, you might as well just have a delivery truck,
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
actual widescale rollout won't be profitable except maybe for small towns full of electronics nerds (who need that replacement CPU fan/SSD immediately) that are far away from electronics stores.
I guess it depends on what exactly is meant by "electronics stores", especially after RadioShack died.
Possible fix: Cloud-connected landing pads that double as charging stations. Amazon could give them away to Prime Members who'll set them up at their homes, and you'd earn Amazon credit each time a drone makes a pit stop.
Nah... they'd add a side benifit for their users and charge their users for the privilege. Such as the locks and cameras at you home that lets Amazon drop packages in your house so they don't have to replace a stolen package.
Why can't they fly above the trees — only descending to the street level when reaching the target address?
A truck could be used the way air-carriers are used by the Navy — get to the general vicinity of the multiple delivery-destinations, park safely, and deploy drones for the "last mile" part. Multiple devices could be used, with the driver loading them up and replacing batteries as may be needed.
"Regulatory problems" is the key reason — current regulations prohibit operating drones outside of the operator's line of sight...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Regulatory problems aren't a reason. When the technology is ready and benefit is clear, the "regulatory problems" disappear. They are just an excuse. If all regulatory burden were lifted today we still wouldn't have anything more than niche application of drone delivery.
They are. As I said already, FAA bans drone-operation outside of the operator's line of sight. One may ask for a waiver, but 99% of such requests are rejected.
Driverless cars are both harder to program and inherently more dangerous, should the programming fail. Yet, robotic taxis are already in operation — in places, quoth the article: "chosen deliberately for its friendliness to driverless cars" — while the federally-regulated delivery drones remain firmly in the future.
Government is an impediment to progress, and this cases demonstrates it more clearly than most...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
legislation banning private ownership of guns if they want to be able to deliver packages with drones, otherwise too many "gun enthusiasts" will use them for target practice.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama aren't coming for your guns- Jeff Bezos is.... and even the NRA/gun lobby (same thing) doesn't have the resources to stop him.
The *main* problem with quadcopters larger than about 300-500m across isn't regulation, it's math.
I have some and I enjoy flying them. I'm not anti-quad, I'm just pro-reality. To put simply, as the size of a quadcopter increases, the lift from the props is squared as the weight of the craft is cubed.
In other words, as the copter gets bigger, it's gets heavier a lot faster than the props gain lift. It very quickly can't lift itself, much less a package. Tiny quadcopters for flying around indoors are easy to build. A quadcopter 100 meters across is physically impossible, can't be done. In between are varying degrees of difficult to impossible.
Helicopters are a different story. Helicopters can and do have blades much longer than the width of the fuselage. You could do delivery with helicopters.
Think "friendly neighborhood lets leave it on the porch", or: might be stolen if I leave it here, I'll come back tomorrow.
My car's GPS system already has this rating system in its maps. Come to think of it, mortgage companies already have this geo data as well.
Have gnu, will travel.
Flying cars and commuters with jet packs are blocking the drones' paths.
Table-ized A.I.
And a range-extender battery.
I'm going to invent a drone with current transformer charging built into claw-like feet. So when it's batteries get low, it can just seek out a power line, land on it and re-charge.
Have gnu, will travel.
and the consumers keep falling for it....
That would be investors. Consumers are protected by laws and regulations. VCs are free for the fleecing.
Have gnu, will travel.
Amazon promised drone delivery.
Verizon promised fiber to every home. ( They also promised not to break Tumblr )
Google promised the same thing.
Every new generation of politician promises to fix and clean up the system.
Clapper promised the NSA doesn't spy on US citizens.
Popular Mechanics promised us flying cars and jetpacks for all
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Life is full of unfulfilled promises. The sooner you understand that, the less disappointed you will be.
I don't believe, the topic of this thread is heli- vs. quadcopters. I don't think, Amazon've ever specified, which they technology they'll use — and if they did, that's not the relevant part anyway.
The topic, is the government's ban on unmanned flying apparata in general — except within line of sight of the remote operator.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yes, driving is so risky no one wants to use a car..... oh, wait.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Regulation exists, but regulations around this topic are changed every two years.
Everything I've ever seen had Amazon talking about using quadcopters. I've never seen anything at all ever suggesting they were even thinking about using helicopters. Have you?
The hype is about using quads. The physics say that's not likely to work all that well. Not that very light packages (envelopes) would be impossible, as long as there isn't a breeze, but it doesn't scale.
The primary reason their plan won't work is physics. Amazon hasn't laid off all their Senators, so they could have the next round of regulation work for them if the physics made it practical.
"But on the 'World's Most Outrageous' TV show I saw ..."
Yeah yesterday I saw a Dum Dum's lollipop that was ten pounds. Not everything that is possible to do as as a ridiculous publicity stunt is practical to do for commercial deployment.
I heard at a conference that the Lufthansa high rank official said that he has no doubt that in future cargo will be transported by airplanes without pilots. https://www.lufthansa-aerial-s... But for this a leadership is required.
I am not against a car per-se. But roads are a limited resource. Why to use a car to transport some papers from one office to another in a city? It creates too much traffic, jams, over-pollution, etc.
It can be done automatically by RPASs. All is needed a tiny helipad on a building roof and some leadership.
Older people know the hype because they actually understand the current limitations of technology, the speed of technological advancement, the cost to research and mass produce, the required cost for consumers, and then reasonable alternatives that already exist.
- Flying cars
- Jetpacks
- Helicopters for everyone
- Drone delivery
- Personal automated drone cameramen
- (Actual) Artificial Intelligence
- Level 4/5 Autonomous Vehicles
- 3D Printing EVERYTHING
- Funding an "EV for the people" from the profits raised by selling luxury vehicles
- Level 3/DC Fast charging everywhere
I always tell people to run all major communications, brands, and slogans through the theoretical "committee of 12-year old boys" to figure out how to anything can be turned on its head and made to look stupid. For tech, I advise asking a "committee of 40+ y/o engineers that don't live anywhere near Silicon Valley and don't follow anyone on Twitter".
Here are my rules for tech skepticism:
1. If someone says they have something that flies and it will carry people or precious cargo anddon't have a bunch of actual pilots and insurance onboard before getting their name out there, they're just looking for irrationally exuberant investor capital and will eventually change their product goal or just fold.
2. If someone says they're using "AI" but it's actually just algorithmic, they will hype and lie even more down the line.
3. If someone says they're going to mass-produce something via 3D printing and it will be cheaper/quicker/better than factory production, they're lying.
4. If someone says, "Once we get enough funding... we'll make an affordable version," they're lying (or are delusional). The thing about "funding" is that people who provide demand their money back plus profit. Once your business is built around that high-profit endeavor, your new stakeholders will do their damnedest to keep it that way. "Affordable" anything means less profit.
5. Level 3/DC Fast charging is INCREDIBLY expensive by comparison to level 1/level 2 charging. The idea of massively accessible electrical charging stations will not happen on cost alone. If battery-electric vehicles are to succeed, there needs to be massive funding for HOME charging (particularly in multi-family units) or a complete change to user-swappable battery rails.
Why can't they fly above the trees — only descending to the street level when reaching the target address?
You enter a forest at the edge of a forest. Google's images of our neighborhood are taken in the winter, because you don't see the houses, and not many streets either. This is a serious forest.
"Regulatory problems" is the key reason — current regulations prohibit operating drones outside of the operator's line of sight...
For certain. A drone coming through our development better have really good vision. Trees and branches up to around 100 feet.
I don't fly my drone here because the times that I did, it crashed. In order to navigate my neighborhood, the drone would have to duck and weave like a drunken sailor - unless at street level.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The ducking and weaving would still be much easier to program into an autonomous flying machine, than programming pedestrian-avoidance and traffic-sign observance into a surface vehicle.
And yet, we have robo-taxis already — where regulations are "friendly" — but do not have drone-deliveries...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
AMZN more than quadrupled since 2013, when the promise discussed in TFA was made. Investors buying the stocks back then based on this promise have no grounds for complaining today. But I doubt, there were many such, because the stock at a peak at the end of 2013, when the announcement was made, and dived in the Q1 2014.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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