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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.
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?
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.
Before you bother with flight at all, note that there is an immediate efficiency to be gained, by building driver-less motorcycle trikes for food delivery. Less weight, better fuel efficiency than a car. And we haven't even gotten self-driving cars to work 100% of the time yet...
The entire desire for airborne commercial/residential drone delivery is terribly misguided IMO. It is very hazardous from a liability standpoint.
It is somewhat like saying "since helicopters are easy to build now, we should get rid of all the cars and just use helicopters instead".
Helicopters are wonderful things, but only if you 1) have a very high priority task that can bear a high cost, or 2) if you are really really rich and like burning money.
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.
Yea but--even if they got an advance warning--a lot of people would be watching the end of their favorite tv show instead, taking a dump, talking on the phone or whatever and not show up at the curb.
And anyway (where I live, midwest US) DHL drivers sometimes do this, if they have your phone number and are delivering a package that is signature required. They call or text you a few minutes ahead of their arrival.
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.