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Cringely Predicts: Professional Drivers With Drone Landing Platforms (cringely.com)
In what may be his final year of technology predictions, columnist Robert X. Cringely argues aerial delivery drones "are definitely coming just as fast as regulators will allow them, but I don't think they'll be implemented in the way people expect."
As soon as autonomous systems can be shown to be as safe or safer than human pilots, they'll take over most drone piloting duties... Here's the problem with Pizza-to-the-Home: where does the drone land at your house that won't risk hitting a child, pet or vehicle and also won't risk losing the delivery to theft or damage? We can't economically mandate a drone landing tower for every house that's above obstacles and with a guaranteed clear approach.... But we CAN mandate such a landing platform on top of every pizza delivery vehicle.
Using GPS, the drone and car can find each other with the drone landing only when the car is stopped and the approach is clear... [F]or that driver each delivery will take five minutes or less. Pizza is delivered faster and hotter and the driver, instead of making 2-3 deliveries per hour, can make 10-12. This is what we'll shortly see proposed for drone delivery, not just for pizza but for everything else...
Now here's where Internet-style disintermediation comes into play. Such a drone delivery network still costs money to build but that money will be instantly available if the class of goods that can be delivered expands beyond food to anything weighing under, say, 10 pounds. This means prescription drugs and even Amazon Prime or walmart.com packages can arrive on the same car, delivered to that car by multiple drones and drone networks. All it requires is WAAS GPS and a standardized car rooftop landing platform, which I am sure we will shortly see.
Using GPS, the drone and car can find each other with the drone landing only when the car is stopped and the approach is clear... [F]or that driver each delivery will take five minutes or less. Pizza is delivered faster and hotter and the driver, instead of making 2-3 deliveries per hour, can make 10-12. This is what we'll shortly see proposed for drone delivery, not just for pizza but for everything else...
Now here's where Internet-style disintermediation comes into play. Such a drone delivery network still costs money to build but that money will be instantly available if the class of goods that can be delivered expands beyond food to anything weighing under, say, 10 pounds. This means prescription drugs and even Amazon Prime or walmart.com packages can arrive on the same car, delivered to that car by multiple drones and drone networks. All it requires is WAAS GPS and a standardized car rooftop landing platform, which I am sure we will shortly see.
You bring that drone into my neighborhood, buzzing like a loud bee, I'm going to use it for target practice. See how well it flies after it's been hit by ... ... and soon enough there will be a market for drone jamming equipment that interferes with the C&C/cameras.
Drone delivery fee is not a tip. Please tip your drone operator!
So let me get this straight: a drone is going to fly my pizza from the pizzeria to the roof of the pizzeria's delivery vehicle, and then an actual human is going to walk it the 30 feet to my front door? That sounds ridiculous.
How about, when the drone is 2-minutes away from landing on the delivery vehicle, the pizzeria calls me, and I walk out to the vehicle and get the pizza on my own? That way we don't have the added cost of a 'delivery person.'
UPS/FedEX should work like this too. Do Residential deliveries at night, and instead of someone walking the package to my porch, the UPS truck just calls me as it rolls up to my place, and I walk outside and get my own mail.
What we'll have, instead, is a neighborhood drop, perhaps facilitated by a neighbor who needs the extra money. This eliminates the driver completely, puts more work on the consumer (as usual), or gets some money for the neighbor who goes the last hundred yards for the delivery.
as space nutters
Has anything printed under the "Robert X. Cringley" nom de plume ever been correct?
The target will be a QR code. You will agree on the rough location of the target during the process. The process of downloading and printing the target will also include agreeing that you're responsible for putting it someplace sensible.
If the drone gets there and it doesn't look like a good place to drop a pizza, you will have to go somewhere else to get your pizza.
Nowhere in this process will there be a driver, except to pick up failed drones. That person can be the assistant manager.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Pizza is delivered faster and hotter" - sure. It is on a drone, flying outside in freezing temperatures. It is no longer in a nice warm vehicle. Sure, they will put one of those insulator things around it. But it will not be warmer than it would have been in that same insulator in a warm vehicle. That's just incorrect. The whole idea is stupid though. Who is going to put up with the noise pollution from all these damn drones?
More likely the pizza oven will be in that vehicle, with a robochef working in the back.
But the density of pizza deliveries is the limiting factor. At any given time there are not likely to be more than 1 pizza per square mile (as different people will order at different times) so what takes the greatest amount of time is getting the delivery van to the correct location. Whether to deliver the pizza directly or simply to receive it from the drone.
The scheme fails.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Here's the issue, vehicles are owned by the drivers themselves, not the pizza place. Don't expect drivers to install a huge-ass drone platform on their car and provide their own drone or for pizza places to suddenly invest in vehicles and/or drones.
There is no driving incentive to reduce delivery time or do away with driver tipping (that's less money for the driver, so yo have to pay them more), so it's not happening. The only way this makes sense is if they can reduce the number of pizza places needed to serve an area but this is countered by the fact that traffic limits the area that can be served.
These guys ("Robert X. Cringely") know nothing about running a pizza business.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Get in the car and go there yourself.
i think he's right about pttn vs pttp. invasion of property is the biggest issue with drones and this solves it though I doubt it will ever be used for pizza. Amazon, sure.
Lately, I've been thinking about experimenting with mounting a 22LR gun on a powerful drone for the purpose of taking out other drones. I like the idea of pirate drones ambushing establishment drones...
*sploosh*
The weight of even just one large pizza likely falls in the range of 1-2lbs. And yeah, multiple pizzas in an order are common. So the drone would need something on the order of 5lbs lift capacity. So at minimum, several thousand dollars for a somewhat heavy-lift drone. Plus any deliver-specific hardware for spotting landing zone, automatically depositing the cargo, etc. Likely a $10,000+ bird.
This precludes direct delivery to consumers (who wants drunk frat boys stepping on your expensive hardware, or worse). Even delivery to a secondary car-based delivery risks hitting things on the way. Thinking the cost of the hardware needs to drop by almost an order of magnitude, with improved intelligence before this becomes commonly available and economically viable. But I bet it's coming. Maybe in 10 years or so.
I'm OK with anything that gets vehicles off the roads.
I live in a medium sized city. There is absolutely no way I (or presumably most people) would enjoy seeing drones carrying packages overhead all day.
When did Pizza Delivery people get classified as "Professional Drivers"? How long do you have to be delivering pizzas to be considered "professional"? I drive to work every day to my job - does that make me a professional driver, too?
Its your phone wires, power cables, broadband suspended from poles all impossible to see with a flying camera or lidar, be certain the first accident killing power or phone to a community because douchebag hit a power cable with his employers flying toy will be the last flight for that operator and his employer after the army of utility company lawyers get finished.
unless you plan on re-locating cables to the ground (the most expensive solution) the whole idea is fundamentally flawed, so much liability so little defence.
The scenario with the pizza delivery won't work, but there is no need to land a drone anyway. Just attach the goods in a basket and attach the basket to the drone. The basket can be lowered to the ground and the goods released. A bit of fishing twine, a few sensors, and a few release switches. More pressing questions are probably surrounding weather. If the ground is wet, snowy, etc. Or the package can't be left on a doorstep due to rampant theft in a neighborhood.
Delivery pizza sucks anyway.
if the vehicle is remotely piloted, then the "pilot" can very easily check to see if your beloved pet is in the way using the camera feed.
also too, a landing pad high up clear of obstructions is not necessary. a very plan target, in white or other solid color, so that on object would stand out. Even an automated check system, will probably work. AI can give you a definite "no", but a person is required for a "yes".
Drones are coming, that's for sure.
So is incredible unemployment. The 2nd gilded age is here, and it's got climate change as a backstop. This is not going to end well.
Absolute statements are never true
Larger communities/MDUs will provide a drone drop-off location (they may already accept packages from USPS, el al). It will just be another available community amenity. A Community Drone Landing Area (CDLA).
This plan makes a lot of sense. We will also see standardized charging stations to extend the range of drones to allow drone delivery in a wider radius from the warehouse. Likely there will be a network of charging stations on top of utility poles, which are the ideal location because:
1. They are above all electric wires
2. But also very close to the electric grid and wired internet access.
3. It's free/wasted space that the owner of the utility pole can monetize via leasing
4. Utility poles are literally everywhere.
A network of charging stations with known GPS locations and all controlled by an automated access schedule allows a drone operator to optimize drone design by building drones with the smallest possible battery size. Lighter batteries = more payload = PROFIT! In a fully automated system, when a package is ordered, the software would calculate the drone route, automatically making reservations at charging stations along the way and finally arriving at a local truck near your house and then being driven the last mile to your door. UPS, Fedex., etc, would all have trucks in the area and would automatically bid to be the one who delivers your package with real-time dynamic pricing.
NONE of this is EVER going to happen. We have passed peak everything. I don't have a crystal ball, but bookmark this and check back in twenty years - that is if the power is still on.
Wait for it, wait for it...
Cringeworthy.
Showing myself out now.
is the drone will have smarts to navigate to your smartphone. And you will have to stand outside for delivery.
If you're not there enough times or the drone is stolen, you get cut off. Simple as that.
I'll just make the pizza, thanks...
"As soon as autonomous systems can be shown to be as safe or safer than human pilots.."
That'll happen any day now, fo sho!
And if someone's job description is to drive that makes them a professional driver, you cunt.
It will just be a matter of time before flaws are found. Bye bye packages, especially medicine.
-subie
This may happen in an xtremely limited capacity but definitely not en masse like some people are suggesting.
And I also predict autonomous cars will not happen en masse before the year 2050
Robert X. Cringely. *facepalm* How is this clueless, know-nothing douchebag still getting attention from anyone?
And he's not even the original Robert X. Cringely, although he somehow managed to wrangle some sort of legal agreement allowing him to claim that he is.
And what about using the customer's car rooftop as landing station?
Pizzas are yummy but often not healthy. Bad diet kills. Com on salad tossers time to save humanity.
So how in F do these drones fly legally?
Here in the Land-of-Oz a certain department (CASA) mandates where you can fly your favorite muti-rotor-copter.
There's even an App for it. Trust me, it's bloody restrictive as to where one can take off as "they" fret over real helicopters getting struck.
Got a helipad within 5 klicks? Forget it. Flying over private property - no way! Just as a couple of examples.
...From everyone else's perspective, there's a constant stream of annoying drones flying overhead (and occasionally crashing into their neighborhood) destroying their ability to peacefully enjoy their backyards. I guess that's an externality that just doesn't need to be considered.
Possibly offsetting the externality of annoying drones is the general benefit of fewer delivery miles driven per pizza in the parlor area, less air pollution per pizza, etc.
As the observation was made to me: If the car is not parked on a flat surface, how is the drone going to land on the car?
I can think of plenty of places where city streets are on hills. Plus throw in weather (rain, sleet, snow, freezing rain) and a drone landing on a car that is parked on a slope is a drone that is crashed in the street and run over by a car and then everyone has lawsuits and insurance payouts.
This need to go back to the drawing boards with a bit more reality attached.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
Because if you want a drone landing platform on a car to be insured, I will bet dollars to donuts that all of that will have to be UL certified. And that means some sort of permanent installation on the car so the installation doesn't get torn off the car through wind resistance, weather or other problems.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
This operation will have to be insured. This will be the stumbling block. Until it can be insured and shown to be reliable and not a threat to health and welfare when be operated or moved, it will not be operated. Think of it this wa: how many things have you seen go flying off of a car at high speed?
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
There are a lot of people experimenting in this space. Unsurprisingly this problem has been considered with far better solutions than this suggestion.
The Alphabet Project Wing system for example doesn't land. It remains at a safe distance above the ground and lowers the load.
This avoids any direct interaction between members of the public and the fragile dangerous drone.
The risk of theft is significantly mitigated by being able to schedule delivery times to correspond to when you are at home. No need to leave a product outside for half the day, you know and can collect it the minute it arrives.
So rather than having my pizza delivered by the pizza delivery guy in his car, pizza delivery guy will drive his car to my house and wait for drone to appear out of the sky with pizza.
They will use machine learning AI to figure out where to pre-position the landing sites (pizza delivery guys). Pizzas will be 3-D printed and accounted for using blockchain. .....
Why land at all? It could hover in front of a window (e.g. outside the 20th floor in a highrise) and you grab the goods off of it.
Free pizza, drugs, stuff!
People are focusing on the economics of this for a pizza place, and that's the wrong way to go.
A ton of delivery cost is "last mile" (not literally, basically from the facility to the door). This is talking about dividing that into two pieces - "to the door" from a mobile landing platform so basically the last 30-100 feet and "to the platform" which is most of that so-called last mile. The Platform As A Service driver or vehicle doesn't have to cover all that range back to the facility - just the quarter mile to the next delivery in the area.
Viability for this is going to depend on density of deliveries, but you actually see a variation of it with UPS for holiday deliveries when they switch to having a driver with a truck full of packages plus 1-2 runners who actually take things to the doors. If you think of that UPS truck as a platform constantly being refilled by drones, you have what he's getting at.
fencepost
just a little off