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.

Comments

Pizzas aren't drugs

[petes_PoV]

The problem with this guy's guess is that pizza delivery is time-critical (while it's still warm - measured in minutes) whereas all the other stuff can take an hour, two or all day. It is very unlikely to matter. And since a ground based vehicle can carry a hundred times as much weight as a drone, it only needs to "fill up" once and then do its rounds.

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.

Re:No.

[FrankSchwab]

So let's explore this. The Pizza parlor invests in nine 1.5 meter square pieces of plywood painted with a high-contrast landing pattern, with suction cups and straps to tie them onto drivers cars. Let's call that $500. They invest in a dozen big drones capable of carrying, say, four extra-large meat lovers pizzas in an insulated pouch - Let's call that $25000, dwarfing the cost of the landing platforms.

Now, the Pizza parlor hires nine drivers for a Friday evening, straps platforms onto their cars, and sends each to a different area surrounding the parlor. An order comes in, the pizza comes out of the oven and gets popped into the heated box under a drone, the drone goes and finds the closest driver. The driver may be in front of the desired house at the moment, or may be at the previous house - the drone lands, driver moves pizzas to his front seat, and delivers them to the desired house and collects his tip. If the driver is in motion, he pulls into the nearest parking lot, waits for the drone to land, and collects the pizzas.
From the Customer's point of view, nothing changes in the current pizza-delivery model except their pizza arrives in 15 minutes instead of 45, and is likely hotter when it gets there. From the Driver's point of view, they deliver more pizzas per hour with fewer miles driven. From the Pizza Parlor's perspective, they've made a huge capital investment, but they're delivering 2-3x the pizzas they used to. 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.