Drone delivery service

http://www.indiegogo.com/project-blue-sky

by Jagannath • 14 years ago

68 42 14 years ago

indiegogo.com

duncan• 14 years ago

but will it also deliver tacos?!

Hilyin• 14 years ago

3D printed taco in the shape of you.

lucian303• 14 years ago

Can it be printed using human meat? Seems like the only way to do such a thing right.

arialogistics8• 14 years ago

It won't only deliver tacos, but medicine, retrovirals to remote areas of the planet, 3D printed replacement parts for agricultural use, etc.

www.aria-logistics.com

sargun• 14 years ago

I hope they're going to open up the delivery technology, either to allow someone to commoditize it, and make it available to consumers (for taco delivery), or other noble causes, like rescue, etc..

Additionally, I'm somewhat curious as to what their plan is on Oakland.

jsiarto• 14 years ago

I would guess that they are going to use a commercial or open-source autopilot like Ardupilot. The GPS tech on these are pretty good for hobby/recreation but I highly doubt they are writing their own GPS/autopilots for this. Frankly, I just don't think the accuracy/reliability is there yet for these RC helicopters to effectively deliver goods. (Speaking from experience and my own multi-copters)

EDIT: For those curious:

http://www.dji-innovations.com/

https://store.diydrones.com/APM_2_5_Kit_p/br-ardupilotmega-0...

technotony• 14 years ago

This is precisely what the plan is, check out matternet.us a sister project

arialogistics8• 14 years ago

Matternet was a concept developed by a multidisciplinary team of 18 people at Singularity Univiersity in August 2011.

Since October 2011, two groups formed: Matternet, Inc and ARIA .

ARIA formed because we want to stay true to the original summer concept of building an OPEN SOURCE NETWORK were the DIY movement can find applications to be developed within it.

In the original Fast Company article when I was interviewed, I specified to Ariel that while ARIA is fully open-source, Matternet was proprietary (this is the last we knew when the two groups formed).

Because the CEO of Matternet Inc contacted Ariel to have the story changed, it no longer reads "proprietary technology" but "undisclosed".

ARIA has been open source from the start.

ajays• 14 years ago

I can see drone delivery to be quite useful in far-flung communities (Alaska, Australian Outback, Africa, etc.), to deliver critical stuff (medicines, critical components, etc.). Assuming the drone doesn't use a ton of fuel, it could literally be a life-saver.

Very excited to learn about this project, and hoping it literally takes off.

arialogistics8• 14 years ago

ajays,

thanks for your message. At ARIA we have been working hard at this for the past year. You can learn more at: www.aria-logistics.com

arialogistics8• 14 years ago

ajays,

Here is a video we put together a year ago while at Singularity University when Matternet was a concept and before there were two groups.

https://vimeo.com/28247681

joeguilmette• 14 years ago

This doesn't appear to be at all related to TacoCopters which was set up by Star Simpson and Scott Torborg.

neurotech1• 14 years ago

"No, Tacocopter is nothing more than a product concept created by Star Simpson, an MIT grad who stumbled into the limelight in 2007 after being arrested for wearing a hoax explosive device comprised of a circuit board and green LEDs." - wired.com (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/03/qa-with-tacocopter/)

dotBen• 14 years ago

Perhaps it's just a poor video for an otherwise awesome project, but it just comes across as a load of disconnected ideas.

What's the 3D dome for? How does the drone delivery work? It has a social-good and humanitarian angle - awesome, but I don't see how printing 3D statues and a dome fit into that...

etc

I guess the video just left me wanting more explanation.

acgourley• 14 years ago

These kinds of projects usually suffer from having too many cooks in the kitchen and no good way to keep focus - it's hard to tell volunteers "no"

Still, parts of it could be really cool. I hope they pull it off.

jff• 14 years ago

It's Burning Man--the whole point is to have a bunch of disconnected ideas and claim that they'll save the planet.

skue• 14 years ago

Sure, and if they had called themselves artists no one would have questioned this. Where they go wrong is when they throw the term "humanitarian" around to describe something that is anything but.

BryanB55• 14 years ago

exactly what I thought. At the end of the video I was just left thinking WTF? What is the point of this and what exactly is it?

arialogistics8• 14 years ago

BryanB55

this video might help: https://vimeo.com/28247681

arialogistics8• 14 years ago

Y Combinator

My name is Arturo Pelayo, I am co-founder of ARIA (Autonomous Roadless Intelligent Array, on the web here: www.Aria-Logistics.com). I want to explain that we have been working with ReAllocate in this project since June (http://aria-logistics.com/reallocate-collaboration/).

ARIA is an open source autonomous logistics infrastructure that leapfrogs traditional road infrastructure and unlocks economic opportunity.

While the IndieGoGo video might appear to be disconnected, there is a flow to all of them because we have been building them for over a year both ARIA on its own by using open source UAVs and ReAllocate by trying to solve 'the last mile' problem by building in-country capacity using retrofitted shipping containers.

Back in June, both ARIA and ReAllocate saw an alignment as ReAllocate wanted to do a drone project for Burning Man. Between both groups, we drafted an open call through Chris Anderson's DIY Drones Community and ARIA also began the process of creating awareness of this collaboration on the website.

ARIA also sought out media coverage through contacts at Wired, Fast Company and other publications. Fast Company published an article about it over a week ago and you can read it here:

http://fastcoexist.com/1680223/a-real-internet-of-things-for...

You will see that the Fast Company article above focuses on ARIA as a company that began last Summer when four of ARIA's cofounders met at Singularity University for the 11-week Graduate Studies Program. During that time worked on 'Matternet': a network of autonomous vehicles that could be used to deliver high-value goods to remote regions of the world with no roads.

The Graduate Studies Program focuses on teaching technologies that are changing very quickly, are dropping in cost, are following Moore's Law and that are being integrated into the mainstream (these are called 'exponential technologies').

The comments so far in Y Combinator refer to a lot of "disconnected ideas". 3D printing is expensive at the moment but we believe it will become so cheap in the next decade that it will become obliquitous to the point that farmers in remote areas of the planet could request from their cellphones replacement parts for a broken tractor just by taking a picture of the broken part and an Artificial Intelligence component would analyze the image, determine what is broken and send to a 3D printer in a shipping container a request for it to be printed, billed to the customer and sent to their dynamic GPS location on their cellphone (sound familiar??) -- this is where the analog was realized and we joined efforts to build the project together.

Shipping containers are being considered also by ARIA since last year when the concept was first conceived as they are very easily found worldwide and are extremely cheap. There are over 600 million containers being used each year for the global transport of raw materials and products across the planet, ARIA saw shipping containers as the building block of a standardized structure that could be used as a ground station to host vehicles and recharge batteries. Because these containers would be located in areas of no roads, they would have to use renewable energy sources to charge batteries that power the UAVs that fly in a 10Km radius.

The network of shipping containers thus becomes also a distributed micro-grid that is smart and that can route packages from one station to another. Think of it as The Pony Express 2.0 .

As you can see, there are many ideas being put together and we are working hard at this at ARIA.

bambax• 14 years ago

> The comments so far in Y Combinator...

You're confusing Y Combinator with Hacker News; they're related but different.

The video is poor because it's inconsistent; it starts by saying that Reallocate aims to "solve specific humanitarian issues" and then explains that the first project is to build statues of people attending Burning Man and delivering them via what appears to be AR Drones from Parrot.

Really? That's the most pressing humanitarian issue they could come up with?

There's nothing wrong with building 3D sculptures of people at Burning Man; but it's bizarre to call this a humanitarian endeavor -- even if "in the next decade" this technology may be used to order parts for "broken tractors".

Also, the speaker in the video talks too fast and drops her voice at the end of sentences, making her speech hard to hear / difficult to engage with.

michaelt• 14 years ago

  using open source UAVs and ReAllocate by trying to 
  solve 'the last mile' problem [...] a network of 
  autonomous vehicles that could be used to deliver 
  high-value goods [...] technologies that are
  changing very quickly, are dropping in cost, are
  following Moore's Law and that are being integrated
  into the mainstream (these are called 'exponential
  technologies').

Interesting. I've heard one of the limiting factors in quadrotor drone technology is battery energy density. You want long range so you add more batteries, then the drone is too heavy to take off. And battery technology doesn't double in performance every 18 months. Would you say this is accurate?

Can a quadrotor drone can outperform a local on a bicycle? Or do you have an alternative technology in mind? What kind of payload and flight range do you think you'll achieve?

eco• 14 years ago

Surely they mean Burning Man 2013. Burning Man starts 6 days after this fundraiser ends and I don't seem much here to show they have anything even close to a working version.

nickmolnar2• 14 years ago

Nope, this is all coming together in the next two weeks. Those Reallocators are madmen, and know how to get things done.

narrator• 14 years ago

>Your only responsibility is to return the transponder and tell us your story for our documentary.

You can't give your GPS transponder back to the drone?

Qworg• 14 years ago

Sadly, this is too filled with over the top platitudes to even be realistic.

Drones, IMAX domes, and 3D printers have nothing to do with building sustainable businesses or Burning Man.

If anything, this is funding an art project so that the artists can go to Burning Man for free. =/

gee_totes2• 14 years ago

Hate to be a negative nelly here, but what really turned me off about this project is how narcissistic it seemed. Offering folks at burning man autonomous robots that will deliver miniature statues of themselves seems the furthest thing from something that could actually help the world.

And then to top it off the whole thing is being made into a TV show? Count me out.

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

> Offering folks at burning man autonomous robots that will deliver miniature statues of themselves seems the furthest thing from something that could actually help the world.

That's not the end goal. If you can deliver a tchotchke to someone, you can also deliver a bottle of pills, documents, cellphone batteries, a Raspberry Pi, or small craft items. Remember that lots of places in the 3rd world don't have roads. Lots of places aren't even very passable by foot in parts of the year. Having any kind of infrastructure at all is a win and will enable better healthcare and more economic activity.

What better way to test such a service than to send trivialities to 1st and 0th worlders? No one's going to die if they don't get their statue, and they might even donate to the cause anyhow. Someone might die without their pills, or their business might take a big hit without a part or a battery. Better to practice on the Burners than on people who actually need it.

gee_totes2• 14 years ago

Thanks for the response, it really got me thinking. I was about to tear down your critique bit by bit -- you think healthcare is all about delivering pills? -- what do you know about roads in the 3rd world -- etc, etc -- but then I realized something vis a vis the 3rd world road analogy.

Why aren't the positioning the autonomous drone delivery network as something that is more useful for the first world? I think running drone networks to deliver medicine and small good is merely a stopgap measure to building roads. And once roads are built, I feel that real economic growth can finally commence.

<aside>In fact, having this drone delivery network in the 3rd world may retard the development of roads; roads will only be needed to transport big things, and people can get by with continuous delivery of small things via autonomous drones, thus it will take longer for roads to be built because there will be less demand.</aside>

If this dialectic between roads and these drones exists the 3rd world (or rather, our idealized 3rd world with no roads), what about the first? Couldn't these drones be used to reduce the number of delivery trucks, as small, light items would simply be delivered by drone? Think of the reduction in carbon emissions and the reduced cost of road maintenance that would be the result of shrinking fleets of delivery trucks.

The above scenario, I feel, would make for a better pitch video. Showing me how this network can be scaled to improve the environment (and roads) around me is going to make me much more likely to open my wallet than telling me a story about some imaginary farmer with a broken tractor part that can be printed up with a 3D printer.

thechut2• 14 years ago

How are addressing the fact that autonomous drones are not yet zoned for commercial use? As far as I know accepting money for delivery of these 3D printed statues constitutes non-recreational use, Burning man or not.

I'm genuinely curious, does this not apply? Do you have some kind of special exemption?

waterlesscloud• 14 years ago

I suspect this won't even make the top 10 of "regulations ignored at Burning Man".

rms2• 14 years ago

Top 10 but not top 5?

thechut2• 14 years ago

Very valid point, just curious about what there plans are.

rms2• 14 years ago

This project might be notable precisely because they are pushing the limits of what's allowed and what isn't.

Drone delivery service

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