Even if the Feds Let Them Fly, Amazon's Delivery Drones Are Still Nonsense

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/12/amazon-drone/

by georgecmu • 13 years ago

38 52 13 years ago

etanazir2• 13 years ago

Trucks deliver bulk from distribution hubs to small 'drone stations' and the last mile (almost literally) would be by drone. Maybe even from a mobile drone station, i.e. big truck with drone manager and driver who stay in the truck unless there is a problem.

DigitalJack• 13 years ago

I was initially thinking this would be a mobile launch. Must be a later phase.

I could see something like this working for Pizza Hut though.

adolph• 13 years ago

Human augmentation rather than replacement is key (at least in the early stages). Imagine a delivery truck with a set of drones on top. As the human drives (for now) and delivers, the human also racks up packages that the drones can deliver. In between deliveries the drones charge from the truck and when the truck heads back to base the drones who don't need maintenance tasks fly to the next incoming truck.

UPS in my neighborhood has done something similar in Christmases past--they have trucks bringing in bulk and bicycle delivery doing house by house. I didn't notice it this year; I don't know if it was a failed experiment or if I just missed seeing them.

War is Boring has an interesting post about using unmanned aircraft as a weapon-truck wing-man instead of an independent operator: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/64b87d155545

etanazir2• 13 years ago

If the taxes in France are too high Amazon might consider launching the latest bestseller from a submarine located offshore. http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/06/us/submarine-drone-launch/

comrade_ogilvy2• 13 years ago

I think a variation of your idea is a winner. The top of the delivery truck can have lots of instrumentation to determine whether the final approach is safe, and help guide the landing. The human does the last 50 feet of delivery.

A computer can know exactly where the trucks are and when they will be in the vicinity. The delivery time can be fairly accurately estimated on the spot.

In an urban environment, bikes could do the last mile, with the robots delivered to pre-designated drop off points. A predetermined location would be easy on the computer.

But I think your idea works better in a suburban zone. The trucks exist and are constantly driving around. It is a question of how to re-prioritize the work on the fly.

TheCoelacanth• 13 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they didn't propose doing same-day delivery for all items that they sell. They proposed doing it for their most commonly sold items. So instead of needing huge warehouse holding all of their items in urban centers, they can keep those farther out and only put smaller warehouses holding a smaller selection of their most commonly sold items in the urban centers.

JonnieCache• 13 years ago

That sixty minutes thing will surely be remembered as the best value for money in PR for 100 years.

guiambros• 13 years ago

That's exactly it. And more: it stole the headlines in the exact weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. How clever is that?

What's even more impressive: they hand-picked a story that is so good that even months after the pseudo-hoax went public, you still have hundreds (thousands?) of really smart folks on HN and other forums discussing the feasibility of the idea, the economics, or if an hex-copter wouldn't be better than a quad...

And just think about the wave of CS students applying for a job at Amazon, "because I want to work on cool projects". Certainly more cost effective than driverless cars.

Amazon Prime Air is already a success. They don't need to fly anything.

headShrinker2• 13 years ago

This article strikes me as a bit naive and overly cynical at the same time. I research, build and fly "drones". There is no question the technology now "hobby grade" will make the jump to industrial within maybe 2 years. What is really lacking to them is areospace efficiency, and computer science. All the most popular software and hardware to date was mostly written or built by tinkerers and RC aficionados, not computer science and areospace industry leading professionals.

You can get an article circulated by badmouthing the hottest tech news, but in this case, it's just a bad misleading article with little basis in truth.

Also the government just opened 6 commercial testing zones, and the FAA just laxed some of the regulations regarding commercial UAV experimentation and flight. Note that these moves happened at lightening speed for the government. Just weeks ago it was illegal for a company to fly with out FAA clearance and a pilots license. This is going to happen. I believe Amazon or Google are the most well positioned to make it happen.

Not only is Amazon talking about introducing drones, it's also entertaining the idea of making UPS or FedEx strictly Business2Business enterprise, as Amazon would be handling the final leg of delivery ultimately to the customers door. I haven't heard anyone mention anything about this. Personally, as bicyclist living in NYC, I can't wait until those disgusting aggressively driven diesel delivery trucks are moved to the strap yard, replaced by the distant buzz of a battery operated drone army.

Also to correct the inaccuracy presented in the article. The drones will be the final leg of the package journey, not the mid term. They will fly maybe 10 miles max, with a top speed of maybe 60 mph max within a city, not, 120 miles from city to city. It will start in one city like Amazon Fresh, and then 2 or 3 more years after that. Not every city all at once like the article insinuates then points out would be impossible. One city with in 5 years still makes Amazons plan a success and it makes this article completely wrong.

michaelt• 13 years ago

  I research, build and fly "drones".

Great, maybe you can bring some information to the discussion.

For the type of drone you are best informed about, what is the maximum round trip flying range, assuming you adjusted the weight of batteries to maximise flying range and there was no wind and no worries about radio range or line of sight?

What about if you were carrying a 1 lbs / 0.5 kg payload in the outbound direction?

What would the round trip time and average flight speed be?

What would the retail cost of such a drone be, if I wanted to order a kit today?

skorgu3• 13 years ago

I'm not the parent poster and I don't know how representative of the current state of the art but here's a quadcopter going 12km (~7 miles) one way with an unspecified 'hd camera' payload [0]. They claim 88 minute hover endurance.

I don't know if ~tripling that performance is in the realm of non-breakthrough engineering improvements but it seems at least order-of-magnitude close.

[0] http://www.uasvision.com/2013/06/25/unmanned-microdrone-cros...

beambot• 13 years ago

I'll add a few questions:

- Can you ensure safe failure modes for your in-flight drones?

- Who assumes liability when your drones crash?

- What is the blade tip speed during operation? What precautions do you take when flying in populated areas?

lightbritefight• 13 years ago

There was TED talk[1] a few months ago about some guys using the exact same tech to build a "matternet" in africa and south america to combat washed out roads. Their estimate was that to move a 2kg load over 10km would cost roughly $.24. This includes fuel, initial purchase price of the drone (3k or so) and wear and tear.

In their system, they use elevated platforms where the drones could drop off packages/change batteries. If feasible, this solves the distance problem. They estimated that to cover a 140km square area, it would cost 900k, require 50 towers and 150 drones.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/andreas_raptopoulos_no_roads_there_...

headShrinker2• 13 years ago

These are pretty specific questions and would vary depending on the model and config. So my answer will be purely hypothetical. I have built and flown quadcopters the most. My most efficient configuration with high quality motors was very fast at about 50mph and could sustain that speed for 8-12 minutes depending on battery size, making the maximum distance 10 miles. Currently that is extremely far for a quad copter to fly. It could hover for about 18 minutes. The quad weights in at 3 lbs so adding another pound would drastically reduce its range. Cost to build this cheaply; Motors $200, long range tx/rx $350, flight controller w/ gps $70, ESCs $60, frame materials $60, battery $50, remote controller $50, wiring $10, props $60. This drone could be built for around $1k. It should be noted that while quads are more efficient they are also the most limited by payload. Ramping to a hex octo or deca would increase payload and potential battery size, and potentially flight time/distance, however efficiency tends to tick down.

pjbrunet3• 13 years ago

Interesting comment (upvoted) but...

"I can't wait until those disgusting aggressively driven diesel delivery trucks are moved to the strap yard, replaced by the distant buzz of a battery operated drone army."

Distant buzz? Are you sure about that? Drones sound like insects, yuck.

RandallBrown3• 13 years ago

Whenever I see one of these articles, I can't believe how narrow the author's view of the world is that they can't imagine these drones actually working.

Imagine if they put a small warehouse in a big city, filled with their most commonly sold items in that city. (For now we'll pretend the warehouse/dronepad is on the roof of their Seattle headquarters, right in the center of Seattle)

I can SEE Amazon's buildings from my apartment right now. It's probably a mile or two as the crow (or drone) flies. That seems well within the range of what Bezos talked about for Prime Air. I also have a rooftop deck on my building that only residents can access. It's pretty big and would be a perfect place for a drone landing pad.

There are probably a hundred similar apartment buildings all within a 10 mile radius of Amazon. They would all be able to easily handle drone deliveries from this small, centralized, micro-warehouse.

Can commercial drones handle straight line flying with building sized object avoidance over a space of a couple miles? I think so.

Will they "in a few years" just like Bezos said? Absolutely.

Just because it won't work in rural south dakota or the suburbs of Detroit Michigan, doesn't mean that it won't work somewhere.

Like the author said, Amazon trialed fresh for FIVE years before taking it out of Seattle. What's to say they won't do the same thing with Prime Air?

(Just in case anyone is wondering, I don't work for Amazon)

aetherson• 13 years ago

Small warehouses in big cities still cost a lot of money. Land is expensive in big cities, and even small warehouses are pretty large.

Warehouses -- even small ones -- also need to be able to take goods IN. They need truck-accessible streets, loading docks, and they need staff who store, and then pick/pack/ship your goods. Small warehouses that handle high-turnover goods need even more staff, since they need to constantly replenish themselves (since they're small, and can't just take a hundred thousand units in once a month, and since we're stipulating that the goods are high-turnover and leave the warehouse quickly).

It's expensive. Amazon has wonderful warehousing and distribution, which only goes to show that they aren't actually naïve about how expensive it is. Which goes to show that the drone delivery thing was a publicity stunt.

Too small a warehouse, and you don't deliver the customer satisfaction that is presumably the point of a drone delivery, because a trivial number of goods actually get delivered to customers. (Especially since we're talking very small goods in the first place).

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

Small warehouses in big cities still cost a lot of money. Land is expensive in big cities, and even small warehouses are pretty large.

They don't have to be downtown.

Regardless, you're thinking about this the wrong way. As a service that must serve everyone and deliver everything instead of as an opportunistic service, which is a smarter way to approach the problem from a business perspective.

Amazon already has warehouses, fulfillment centers, in several major metro areas.

Let me state that again, because it's hugely important. Amazon already has warehouses in some cities. They have to have their FCs somewhere, and the places where they are, like Seattle, already have a comparative advantage when it comes to fulfillment of commonly stocked items.

This changes the problem dramatically. It transforms it from: buy high priced land in major cities, build FCs there, set up drone operations; to: set up drone operations in a few cities where you already have large, well stocked warehouses, and then pilot the program opportunistically in those cities. Then expand the program to other cities depending on how successful and profitable the pilot program turns out to be.

This is business 101, you leverage what you've already got to mitigate risk and reduce development and acquisition costs.

Spooky232• 13 years ago

We have these things called "highways" that let us do this.

Seriously though, every retailer has figured out this problem. Drive around in Brooklyn, Queens and the Newark area and you'll see hundreds (if not thousands) of working warehouses. Hell, the New Jersey turnpike feels like a corridor in the middle of a giant warehouse.

In my city, a fruit and vegetable distribution place setup a small warehouse for restaurant deliveries about 5 blocks from the central business district. It added a little cost, but now he can deliver a case of fruit to a restaurant in like 20 minutes vs. 90.

kenrikm• 13 years ago

I would like to point out that all retail stores really are "small warehouses" with registers to handle purchases.

1) It's not that expensive to send a Semi filled with goods several times a day to a small warehouse, again that's the norm.. not the exception in retail.

2) Packages are already being delivered from "small warehouses" with all Amazon orders - every city has UPS/Fedex/USPS distribution warehouses that split the big trucks into smaller trucks that then drive to you. Amazon is trying to use the drones to replace the delivery drivers.

Compromise that's doable with today's tech - Amazon could utilize a network of Amazon Lockers in outdoor public places and have the drones deliver the packages to an opening in the top of the locker which the locker then takes and loads into the right slot. The customers can then pickup the packages at their leisure like any other Amazon Locker. The drones would not need to deliver to every location, just the preset lockers which would be in areas with safe and easy access for the drones.

RandallBrown3• 13 years ago

Land is expensive. In Seattle, they already own a ton of land downtown. Not an issue there.

In other cities I doubt it would be too hard to find some buildings that would let them put a shipping container on the roof stocked with some essentials for a reasonable fee.

Stocking stores is a solved problem in big cities. I don't expect a drone warehouse to carry more than a typical drugstore. They could even partner with local stores for order fulfillment.

Remember, this doesn't have to scale out to all places and all items immediately. This could just start off as a way for tech hipsters in Seattle to order condoms on demand. If it becomes successful, they'll build it out as they need to.

pjbrunet3• 13 years ago

Regarding rural areas, maybe Amazon has two advantages:

1. Last time gas prices went up, many of these rural folks were stranded without food because they couldn't afford the gas to get into town, especially fixed-income older people.

2. There's not as much competition out there. If the local Walmart shuts down because they can't compete with Amazon, the drones might start to look more appealing.

djKianoosh2• 13 years ago

Do kids still play with BB guns ( http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/family/index.jsp?categoryI... ) anymore? just wondering...

RandallBrown3• 13 years ago

Yeah they do, but I've never seen any shooting at the UPS driver.

deftnerd• 13 years ago

This problem doesn't have to be solves with warehouses. Drones are a solution to the last mile problem. Simply make delivery trucks into mobile drone launching platforms and then Amazon or UPS can drive into a neighborhood and drones will deliver all the packages light enough and the driver will deliver all the heavy ones.

lem72• 13 years ago

I get the same feeling, especially because I know someone working on this and has a small working model already.

Here are a few ideas that could make this work easily. Self driving vans via google plus drones in the back that fly out when they pass the delivery location with the package delivers it and returns to the truck. That is a great starting point and then when drones become better, longer lasting, you start sending them from UPS delivery locations at airports.

This is like that Article about how Amazon is a dumb idea from the 90's. So narrow minded.

hkarthik• 13 years ago

I'll bet in a short time, we'll see usage of drones inside the warehouses to sort out packages and load them onto trucks for long hauls more efficiently (and with less labor cost) than what's currently being done by humans.

ctdonath• 13 years ago

Some people underestimate the value of serving "I need X now, take my money already!" Small warehouses stocking high-value-density high-urgency items (memory cards, camera batteries, etc) delivered fast at high price would, direct profit aside, generate stark raging goodwill and intense consumer loyalty.

jaynos• 13 years ago

Isn't it still cheaper and easier to dispatch a bike messenger from that small warehouse instead of a drone?

comrade_ogilvy2• 13 years ago

The practical answer is probably to blend the technologies. In an urban environment, the bikes do the last mile. Very small drop off points with tiny specialized helipads would accept a stream of fast deliveries from the more distant real warehouses. Since the routes would be established, the computer technology demands would be modest.

Get the package to the drop off point in 30-60 minutes by quad-copter. Get the package from there by bike in 30-60 minutes. There would be uncertainty based on the availability of human messengers, but routes and delivery times can be estimated/calculated by computer. "Estimated delivery in 79 minutes. Click yes?"

ericd2• 13 years ago

Yeah, I've paid $20 for a USB cable I needed now, and similar markups for camera memory, etc. I don't think the value of taking over the last of my in-person purchases can really be overstated for Amazon. It effectively means the end of comparison shopping, and frees them from competing mostly on price, as long as they don't abuse it.

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

Nonsense? Hardly. One thing people tend to struggle with when new technology comes around is that it has a different set of tradeoffs and advantages/disadvantages than the current dominant technology. But that doesn't make it inferior or impractical, just different.

Consider horses vs. automobiles, for example. Horses conveniently can be bred, so owning a horse can potentially give you more value than just having a means of transport or labor. Horses can also be trained for a variety of tasks, they can get better at their job over time. Horses are also excellent at traveling along uneven ground. They can travel along city streets or country roads and dirt paths or through forests and open fields or even through mountain passes. In comparison, cars, especially early cars like the model T, are inferior to horses in a great many ways. But it turns out that the few key advantages of automobiles are more than sufficient to make up for the down sides, which is why automobiles won out.

Similarly, if you imagine that drones must be a 100% drop in replacement for FedEx/UPS you'll rapidly come to the idea that the whole endeavor must be nonsense. But if instead drones only provide a complementary service then they can still be a feasible addition to delivery options. Even if drones only delivered high priced orders (say, more than $1k) to businesses with special drone landing spots it would still likely be a profitable and successful venture. Being able to have something delivered the same day in mere hours is a game changer in a lot of ways.

Imagine how much that would put Amazon even more into the existing business space of, say, home depot, as a simple example. If a home builder could order a replacement circular saw to be delivered to the work site in an hour without having to send someone out to a store that's a big deal. And there are countless examples of where the value of having some durable good delivered as soon as possible is immense, and would more than justify exorbitant drone delivery fees.

Spooky232• 13 years ago

Great post.

Your Home Depot reference made me think of the 24x7 propane dispensers that are in front of many Home Depots. Enter your credit card, put your old tank in the cage, take a fresh tank and you've got propane. It costs more, but adds convenience.

Amazon could easily partner with smaller-box retailers like CVS, Walgreen's, supermarkets or convenience stores to make store branches drone delivery points. If I need a Macbook Air or a circular saw now, I pay $25 and a 5 minute drive/walk to the drugstore for pickup vs. driving to the mall or waiting two days.

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

Amazon already has something similar for non-drone deliveries called Amazon Locker, which is actually pretty useful. But you make a good point. Drone deliveries are just one way to cut down on delivery latency. The continued existence of brick and mortar stores is a good example of the value of low latency delivery, often at a high premium. If you can spend the money that would have been spent on storefront rent, attendant wages, and distributed inventory instead on drone systems then maybe in some cases it's a worthwhile tradeoff.

snorkel• 13 years ago

This is just like the Segway rollout hype all over again. Segways turned out to be real (self balancing and all, except they turned out to have two wheels instead of one wheel) but are very niche. I'd bet drone delivery will also exist eventually, but it will also be very niche.

pjbrunet3• 13 years ago

As much as I don't want to hear drones buzzing around (would be horrible IMO) what if Walmart starts to shut stores because the cost of doing business is too high and they can't compete with Amazon? What if say the minimum wage rises to $15, cost of gas rises astronomically, too many lawsuits, unions, whatever. Robots don't sue. Remember all the businesses that were destroyed because of Walmart's lower prices. If Amazon can deliver lower prices by drone, grandmas everywhere might demand drone delivery for cheaper hearing aid batteries. If Amazon can take out Walmart, maybe drone delivery is not that far off. I hope it doesn't happen but like I heard one analyst say (regarding drones) on Bloomberg radio: "It's not if, but when."

us0r• 13 years ago

Even if it is nonsense you can't buy this kind of press. It is a success either way.

chaostheory• 13 years ago

"everything that can be invented has been invented.", Charles H. Duell US Patent Office Commissioner 1899

Based on history, it's always unwise to say that something futuristic can't be done.

asfapifb• 13 years ago

What if instead of building warehouses, you offer to outfit most local stores with helipads / charging stations and POS data interchange so that orders from amazon can be fulfilled via local stores that then load and launch drones?

TrainedMonkey• 13 years ago

Author pointed out three problems with drones:

1. Battery life is insufficient. This one is true, batteries are not there yet.

2. Warehouses are far from target areas. This one is true as well, in order to make drones work warehouses/dispatch centers should be fairly close by. One solution would be to utilize hyperloop kind of system to quickly deliver drones to where they need to go.

3. Problem with delivering. This one is super simple. Make drone subscription costs high and deliver to customer a drop off pad. Make a clause in prime air agreement that you must find enough open space on private land for drop off pad to serve as drone beacon and unload zone. Drop off pad can have RFID/other location beacons that would let drone know exactly where it is.

TL:DR author is right, while this can be built right now - it is simply not economical, and likely will not become economical in near future due to point #2 above.

DonGateley• 13 years ago

Of course it will happen. The fed needs the technology for its ongoing insurrection suppression preparation (DEA, ATF, NSA, etc.) and would have to come out of the closet to develop and deploy a network of sufficient size to be effective at its task. Amazon is the perfect front.

Even if the Feds Let Them Fly, Amazon's Delivery Drones Are Still Nonsense

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