Only one item can be delivered at a time. It can’t weigh more than 5 pounds. It can’t be too big. It can’t be something breakable, since the drone drops it from 12 feet. The drones can’t fly when it is too hot or too windy or too rainy.
You need to be home to put out the landing target and to make sure that a porch pirate doesn’t make off with your item or that it doesn’t roll into the street (which happened once to Lord and Silverman). But your car can’t be in the driveway. Letting the drone land in the backyard would avoid some of these problems, but not if there are trees.
Amazon has also warned customers that drone delivery is unavailable during periods of high demand for drone delivery.
Meanwhile in Rwanda:
There have been 13,000 deliveries to date and it has been estimated Zipline drones distribute 65% of blood outside of the capital city, Kigali.
https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/zipline-ghana-medical-supplies-drones/?cf-view
Just because Amazon is doing a terrible job of it, doesn’t mean it’s a job that can’t be done.
Zipline is doing some freaking amazing things!
Yeah. Personal deliveries to your home may never be a practical thing. But, Zipline shows that there is a niche for drone deliveries that’s pretty amazing.
Another more successful operation in Rwanda and Ghana is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipline_(drone_delivery_company) delivering 1.8kg over 300km and dropped by parachute.
That works for special use cases in rural environments. They use drones for mail delivery on some German islands, for instance. As a mainstream delivery option in urban environments this is just laughably impractical and that has been very obvious from day one.
Noise is absolutely a concern for flying things. The reasons we don’t yet have flying cars is not because they’re too expensive, but because they’re too loud. And this is specifically why the FAA won’t let me commute to work in an ultralight.
The police want Bladerunner spinners so bad they can taste it. And the reason they can’t have them — or more helicopters — is the noise.
The reasons we don’t yet have flying cars is not because they’re too expensive, but because they’re too loud
I’m sure being too loud is an issue, but it’s not the issue. That’s like saying the reason we don’t all have castles is due to municipal zoning laws. Sure, that would make having a castle harder, but it’s not the issue.
Yes, “flying cars” are loud, but that’s a minor issue compared to the other ones. They’re expensive to operate. They’re dangerous both to their passengers and to people on the ground. They’re extremely expensive. The infrastructure isn’t available. They’d require training to operate, etc.
If you could wave a magic wand and make all those other problems disappear, the noise issue would still be a blocker. But, the noise issue isn’t the biggest current blocker.
That’s not the only reason why flying cars haven’t arrived. Getting a license to fly is about the price of a new car. Bad weather is no flying. Air Traffic Control can’t handle thousands of commuters. Flying cars are pretty big so parking is going to be even more of an issue.
The amount of energy required to keep something in the air instead of using the ground is also astronomically bigger
Not really. Many planes can get about 20 miles per gallon traveling at about 180 miles per hour. That’s slightly more than a family car, but not astronomically more.
The big differences are that there’s effectively no “traffic” in the air, so once you dial in a cruise speed you stay at that speed for the entire flight. In a car you can get stuck in stop-and-go traffic. There’s also the lack of “rolling resistance” in the air. Even if you’re going a steady speed on a highway your tires are a source of drag. On the other hand, taxing and taking off can burn gallons of fuel, so unless you’re going for a fairly long flight that’s a significant part of the fuel burn. Also, planes go in a straight line, whereas cars have to follow highways. But, the total fuel cost of the trip really includes the trip to/from the airports.
But, fundamentally, the fuel economy of cars and airplanes is pretty similar.
The average person can barely drive without murdering someone. Flying is even more complex than that, the noise is just a small problem compqred to that.
We have flying cars, they are called airplanes or more specifically civil utility aircraft. You know, like the Cessna 172.
Flying vehicles aren’t more mainstream because of the cost. A new plane can cost over half a million dollars while a used plane can easily be over a hundred thousand dollars. And that’s just the cost of the plane.
The other reason is because the rules are more strict and are actually enforced. If a pilot flew their plane like the average person drives their car they would be sitting in jail await trail for attempt murder.
We have flying cars, they are called airplanes
I think you’re missing the cars part of flying cars.
Like, the dream isn’t to drive your car to the airport and get into an airplane. The “car” part of flying cars is about having one in your driveway.
A new plane can cost over half a million dollars while a used plane can easily be over a hundred thousand dollars
You can get a used Cessna for under $60k:
But, the issue isn’t the up-front cost. Because a plane isn’t a flying car, you have to store it somewhere, and that isn’t cheap. Even just tying it down outdoors can be more than $150/month. Then there are the operating costs, which are much higher than cars: insurance, annual inspections, fuel, maintenance, etc.
The Webster dictionary defines a car as a vehicle that moves on wheels which airplanes definitely are.
If you’re having to resort to the dictionary definition, you know you’re flailing.
The idea behind a flying car is that everyone could have one in their driveway (not the rare people who live in fly-in communities) and that they can use a combination of driving and flying to get places. That’s what all the flying-car companies are working towards, that’s what people dream of having. Having to live right next to an airport, or having to drive their car to the airport to get their plane isn’t the “flying car” dream.
I feel this could actually work fairly well in smaller rural/suburban communities
Maybe if they used bigger craft with larger payload capacity and longer range
And maybe that craft could have wheels instead of rotors to mitigate the rain/wind problems… i think we might be on to something here!
It will be good for things like medications, small electronics, and basic kitchen supplies.
It’s obvious that autonomous drones are more difficult to create than they seem… I think delivery robots that go on the ground are much safer and more feasible. They can carry heavier packages, they are less dangerous and can travel at less dangerous speeds.
… and they can get robbed or kicked, their sensors sprayed shut… and repair costs a fortune. I don’t think delivery without a human makes much sense, maybe except for a drone that delivers to the Australian outback or a small island at the German coast.
They want desperately to cut delivery cost by taking out the human they have to pay for it to do the work. To do so they spent billions they could have used to pay these people a decent wage and hire more of them. It is dumb.
Don’t those same issues apply to humans though? You can beat up or kill a human delivery driver and take everything in the truck just as easily as you could with a hypothetical robot.
I am from Germany, our crime rate is very, very low. I doubt that many people here would think beating up or even killing a person is “as easy” as doing it to a funny looking delivery robot. Depending where you are from, that might be different though. If you live in a place where people actually see no difference between both and do one as easily as the other, then please stay safe!
There are ways to prevent that, like alarms, notifying the police. These robots will absolutely have ways to be tracked at all times, cameras and all. You could also only use them for low value packages, so the effort is less worth it.
And use less energy since they don’t have to fight gravity
And it will keep on being a joke until, suddenly, one day it’s not.
The joke are the people that believe drone delivery won’t be a thing.
can’t fly when too hot
What the fuck?! My cheap ass, $10 AirHog drone that is entirely plastic and foam can fly in 115F temps (as hot as it’s ever been here). What the shit kind of crappy components do Amazon’s delivery drones use?!
