Brainstorming ideas about Amazon Air (drone delivery)

[Meta4]

Just tell a little electric quad to fly to "X" on a map and return home and it will do so all by itself. NO HUMAN PILOT NEEDED.

So where is X that Amazon would send their drone to? How does Amazon know where to deliver an item?
You can give a truck driver an address and he'll find the property, and it's mailbox or front door but how can Amazon, some distance away determine which X to send their delivery to? The drone operator would need a precise location - down to the metre - not just an address.
Having an address is one thing but that doesn't tell them where the customer can get to or where the drone could practically fly to. Does Amazon know you live down a long driveway well off the road? And in dense urban areas where the building frontage goes right to the sidewalk - where is X going to be? Imagine delivering to somewhere in Manhattan. What could possibly go wrong apart from loss of GPS in the canyons?

How about apartment dwellers? If the customer lives in a complex of 50 town houses. Where do you deliver to?
If they live on the 4th floor? How do you make sure the high value package goes to the resident of appt 46 and not one of his neighbours?

How would you make the delivery? Land and risk interactions like being run over in the driveway, sniffed by a dog, collision with a kid on a bike, being stolen etc.
Or hover safely out of reach and drop - maybe somewhere the customer would never find their package?

And russianfront - last week you were fixated on the danger of Phantoms over populated areas. Would you be happy to have commercial drone deliveries over your city?

 

[Narrator]

We already have phone towers everywhere... what next, drone towers?

 

[PhantomFanatic]

What eludes me is the low flight times for these drones that can carry, say 30lbs. Let's say the flight time is 15 minutes. Does anyone know the flight speed? Anyway, the drones have to return, so that cuts way down on the flight distance, but it would be unloaded on the return flight.

I don't agree with you that initial rollout of Amazon Air will be carrying heavy items up to 30 lbs. That would require a really BIG and powerful drone, probably a nitro-powered beast of some kind. It would frighten small children when it passed overhead from the noise and sheer size of such a flying monster.

The "60 Minutes" special about Amazon that aired in 2013 stated that the majority of Amazon shipments weigh less than 5 lbs, so this is very workable for future drone delivery. Most electric octacopters on the market right now could probably manage a 20 min. roundtrip carrying a payload of up to 5 lbs, maybe with an extra battery. Plus, there is no reason they couldnt use nitro-powered drones which have more lifting capability.

There is virtually no feasible way for Amazon Air to work unless there are a few distribution centers in every large city. A big city like Atlanta would probably need 5 or 6 Amazon warehouses spread out evenly to give an electric drone a short roundtrip flight to reach 90% of customers within 15 miles of downtown Atlanta.

Lots of logistical details to be worked out, but Ole Jeff is already losing sleep thinking about this idea. He'll make it happen, bet on that.

Maybe I was a tad high on the weight there. It all depends on the products. Large screen TVs, microwave ovens, surround sound systems, etc., will surely have to be delivered the 'old' way. Not all are real heavy, but some are bulky.

Jeff plans to sell groceries too. Perhaps there is where drones will come in. But, a gallon of milk is rather heavy. I have to admit, that I hadn't considered other propulsion methods other than battery powered. I feel certain that he and his staff have many of the things worked out, that we can't imagine.

I totally agree with your last sentence!

 

[Fyod]

Technologies this far advanced almost never come from the private sector, rather the military because of their virtually unlimited budget.
Also, the military will not allow something to be more advanced than their technology so that a delivery drone cannot become a weapon in the wrong hands.

Coming up with something isn't the hard part. Making it safe and virtually harmless to people and property, while being financially viable, that's what'll be the deciding factor.
If ONE of these delivery drones injured a mom that is at home with a toddler and ordering stuff from amazon cuz she's bored, the whole project would be over.
If a kid throws a stick at one and it plummets down and hits the kid, noone is going to be asking why the kid threw a stick at it.

Ragarding battery power - the best high capacity LiFePo batteries today are rated for about 600 charge cycles. Phantom batteries seem to be in the 100 cycle range at best.
If you planned to do 20 flights per day, you'd need say 3 batteries per drone due to charge time and their lifespan would be a couple months.
What are people willing to pay to not have to step outside and have something delivered the same day? Are you willing to pay $10 delivery on a $15 pizza?

 

[J.James]

on one of my first flights with my phantom2 vision plus the neighbor thought it was
an amazon delivery. she had ventured up the road on foot to see where that "drone"
was, as she saw it coming down on my property at the end of my flight
(she saw it fly around over my property during the flight too and was taking
a bunch of pictures)
she thought for sure it was Amazon delivering a package... and when i told her the news
that i had my own quad she was "amazed"... LOL

lol when I first got my phantom and was flying up at on of my friends parents property. His mom who runs a big cake making supply house and does a lot of amazon sales. As she was getting home and out of her car she hollered over to us and asked if I was practicing to start making amazon delivery's for her. lol lol

Tho I dont even see how its really going to be possible even if the faa allowed them to do it. They still would have to have distribution points close to the areas they are going to servis. and are still going to have to get the goods to the place some way before it could even go on a drone to its drop off point and there is no real good way to fly packages efficiently if its going to be one package at a time. Then have to fly all the way back to pick up the next package and all the way back to the next customer. and there is no way they could do it in any place were its tight and still no way to get it right to your door. With out leaving it say out on the lawn or some thing like that. and also how would they know if some place is safe to land before they send it out or what if some one was not home? At my house they could only put it on the roof and would not be able to get it in my back yard or any closer to my front yard with out dropping it in the road or the side walk. And I dont care what it is any package sitting not on my steps but in the middle of the side walk is going to get ripped off by the first person that walks past it and thinks finders keepers.

Then there are also people with diabolical minds like me who with in the first few minutes of first hearing about There ideal to want to explore using drones. The first things I started to wonder about was how soon before I can order some thing from amazon and get to score my self a nice new high tech drone. As soon as the lil bugger gets close enough for me to grab on to its landing gear and wrestle it out of the air. Heck I would do it just to do it because I highly despise amazon and there use of non Americans who refuse to even bother to try and speak English in any way were its understandable any time you ever need to call them about a problem in the hopes that the customer just gives up even trying to understand a single word they say. Amazon is like the borg and I would love to see them take as big of a hit as possible and Id imagine taking out a few drones would cost them a nice pretty penny. and even causing one to have a nice "accident" in to my house would cost them a good chuck of money after they get sued for crashing it threw my window or threw my roof. lol I just know the bills for my therapy I'm going to have to have after having night mares of an amazon drone crashing threw my window and trying to kill me. Is going to cost a lot not to mention the pain and suffering I could conger up from the fear of it happening again is going to bring. ;-)

 

[Fyod]

Yea, but as soon as one of their delivery drones causes a fiasco, the hobby is dead for all of us.
It would make much more sense to have small autonomous electric delivery vans.

 

[Meta4]

 

[Buckaye]

Hahaha :lol:

 

[HailStorm]

Just tell a little electric quad to fly to "X" on a map and return home and it will do so all by itself. NO HUMAN PILOT NEEDED.

So where is X that Amazon would send their drone to? How does Amazon know where to deliver an item?
You can give a truck driver an address and he'll find the property, and it's mailbox or front door but how can Amazon, some distance away determine which X to send their delivery to? The drone operator would need a precise location - down to the metre - not just an address.
HaHow about apartment dwellers? If the customer lives in a complex of 50 town houses. Where do you deliver to?
If they live on the 4th floor? How do you make sure the high value package goes to the resident of appt 46 and not one of his neighbours? ving an address is one thing but that doesn't tell them where the customer can get to or where the drone could practically fly to. Does Amazon know you live down a long driveway well off the road? And in dense urban areas where the building frontage goes right to the sidewalk - where is X going to be? Imagine delivering to somewhere in Manhattan. What could possibly go wrong apart from loss of GPS in the canyons?

In a few minutes I can look up an address on Google maps, drop down into Street View and have a great FPV view that would allow me to determine whether I can fly my Drone up your drive way, or if you are on the 36th floor of a downtown high rise.
Then I can email you back and explain that you do not qualify for our one hour drone delivery. I imagine Amazon's technology is far more advanced than my Fresh Homemade Tamale Delivery service. ;-)

 

[Fyod]

Good luck with that. Street view is often 2 or 3 years old.

 

[Meta4]

Good luck with that. Street view is often 2 or 3 years old.

Yes .. and a lot of properties just aren't visible from the street so are invisible on Google Streetview

 

[Khudson7]

Wow this thread has certainly turned up a number of different opinions on the subject. Some believe drone delivery will be possible as new technology develops sooner rather than later, a number are naysayers quickly pointing out all the problems involved to the point of writing it off as a publicity stunt by Amazon, and yes, and at least one outright hater of everything Amazon stands for. At first, I did not think this thread would be interesting but it sure has drawn me in.

Does anyone here have the definitive answers to solve all the many problems pointed out here...of course not. I would dare say that Jeff Bezos probably does not have a clue about how it is going to get done. But what he does have...is the wherewithal and vision to make it happen. Further I believe he realizes that about 75% of the technology to make it happen IS already out there, just need the right people to pull it together into a viable system to meet his vision. He is in a position to surround himself with the right IT professionals, electronic engineers, legal and whomever else needed to make it happen.

Sense and avoidance sensors, programming, redundant safety systems to handle things that can go wrong, etc. to me, it does not even sound far fetched to imagine cell phone towers with some additional equipment, transmitting and trackng radio signals to a drone or hundreds of drones, replacing a pilot and conventional radio maneuvering it to it's destination and back all handled by computers. Or developing an air traffic control system for drones similar to present day air traffic systems that is in place now. There is a YouTube video out there showing a dozen drones in formation doing a number of complicated maneuvers all controlled by computers, no pilots, something I would have never thought possible before I saw it.

Someone at Google had a vision of driverless cars. Steve Jobs had a vision of personal computers in every home as common as a toaster. I bet neither had any idea of how it was going to happen. But just like Jeff, they were in a position to pull the correct professionals together to work out the details and that bull dog mentality to push it through.

Do I think all of the problems mentioned here, will be successfully overcome? Probably not. And it will probably come together in smaller pieces and in limited areas at first, sort of like smart cars are getting smarter, and smart phones are getting...well you get my point.

But to dismiss it as a publicity stunt or throw up you hands saying never going to happen in the near future because there are too many problems with it, I would argue much of the technology is already there and just needs someone with the wherewithal to pull it all together into drone technology. If anyone could do it, my bet would be on Bezos. His reputation for getting things done is at stake here now, as well. So in my mind, it is not a matter of if it will happen or not... But when.

 

[Scottintexas]

My wife and I use the hell out of Amazon. Deliveries are timely as it is. No need for a drone to land in my driveway.

Sorry, but had to laugh at that statement

What did you and your wife do before Amazon? I bet you were happy then too...

I bet in 5 years, you will be saying "My wife and I use the hell out of Amazon Drone delivery...and these deliveries are timely as it is...NO need for beam-me -up technologies to deliver my packages." :lol:

'
Now that it is put in that light I see the humor. Indeed, shopping has come a long way and so will delivery. I guess what I intended to convey is that there is a limit to expectation. At least at my age. I ordered a GPS tracker and can't believe it isn't here yet even though it has been two whole days! I don't suppose you all are young enough to remember Wyle E. Coyote ordering something from ACME and having it delivered immediately. I guess he and Amazon were on the same page!

 

[Khudson7]

My wife and I use the hell out of Amazon. Deliveries are timely as it is. No need for a drone to land in my driveway.

Sorry, but had to laugh at that statement

What did you and your wife do before Amazon? I bet you were happy then too...

I bet in 5 years, you will be saying "My wife and I use the hell out of Amazon Drone delivery...and these deliveries are timely as it is...NO need for beam-me -up technologies to deliver my packages." :lol:

'
Now that it is put in that light I see the humor. Indeed, shopping has come a long way and so will delivery. I guess what I intended to convey is that there is a limit to expectation. At least at my age. I ordered a GPS tracker and can't believe it isn't here yet even though it has been two whole days! I don't suppose you all are young enough to remember Wyle E. Coyote ordering something from ACME and having it delivered immediately. I guess he and Amazon were on the same page!

At your age?? I bet I have you beat in that dept. I am THAT older person I refer to in my tag line below

 

[houstonpilot]

Good luck with that. Street view is often 2 or 3 years old.

But services like skybox are bringing real-time satellite imagery into commerce. In fact, Google just acquired Skybox, meaning if you put up an outdoor 50 foot christmas tree on Tuesday morning, Amazon could use satellite imagery to avoid that christmas tree for a drone delivery later that same day.

 

[TimmyG94]

But to dismiss it as a publicity stunt or throw up you hands saying never going to happen in the near future because there are too many problems with it, I would argue much of the technology is already there and just needs someone with the wherewithal to pull it all together into drone technology. If anyone could do it, my bet would be on Bezos. His reputation for getting things done is at stake here now, as well. So in my mind, it is not a matter of if it will happen or not... But when.

Anyone who doubts the steely resolve of one Mr. Jeff Bezos will surely be proven wrong and made to look foolish!

Go read the book "The Everything Store" and it's plainly obvious that Jeff Bezos ALWAYS gets what he wants eventually. He wanted to become the world's biggest book seller, and he achieved it. He wanted to become the world's biggest seller of DVD's, and he achieved it. He wanted Amazon to become the #1 online retailer, and he achieved it. There is nothing this guy can't do!

So when Mr. Bezos goes on "60 Minutes" to announce that Amazon will be the first mass retailer to start using commercial drones to deliver items quickly, you can bet your *** (and your wife's ***) he's going to make it happen!


Besides, anyone who doubts the current capabilities of autonomous drones needs to watch this video:


[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2itwFJCgFQ[/youtube]

 

[Fyod]

^ I saw that video even before I got my Phantom. Everything they taught the drones to do is impressive, but still they have a safety net for the audience. You can't have a safety net above a city.

To sum up what my opinion on this topic is:
- I do agree that much of the needed technology is already available. Apart from batteries, there's not much holding the idea back.
- I do not think delivery will be the service that pioneers a widespread use of drones. Same day delivery can be done in many other financially sound ways.
- There are already electric personal helicopters for the price of a car. That does not mean we will all, or even a large percentage of us, be flying in them.
- The comparison to cars and today's car tech is misleading. The air is a whole different ballpark. The idea of a motorized vehicle is way over 100 years old and you'd think we'd have Jetson's cars by now, but we don't. All new car tech is made to make driving as easy as possible for people who are not willing to learn the laws of physics and basic measurement and estimation. For example parallel parking. Some safety too.
- You can bet that anything that can fall out of the sky will fall out of the sky.
- I do not know Amazon's CEO so I can't say if/when this will work. Even if it does, that doesn't mean it'll be financially viable and successful in the long run.

 

[syotr]

Still waiting on that jetpack they promised in the 60's.
Where the F$#@ is my jetpack?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1SCu9yiBlo

 

[TimmyG94]

I do not think delivery will be the service that pioneers a widespread use of drones. Same day delivery can be done in many other financially sound ways.

I keep hearing people in here claiming to know much more economical ways to mass deliver items using same day service compared to drones. Please explain these other methods?

Yeah, a bike courier in downtown Manhattan makes sense and is cheap compared to a big FedEx truck stuck in gridlock. But let's see a bike courier try operating in Minnesota during 0F weather? Ha ha, only in your dreams.

No matter how you spin it, putting small items (<5 lbs.) on a FedEx or UPS truck for same day delivery is more inefficient and costly compared to a drone. FedEx and UPS requires human drivers, and humans need decent wages, health insurance, 401K plans, and lunch/coffee breaks. Humans call off work when they are sick, had a baby, or hungover! A small electric drone works 24/7 and only needs about 50 cents worth of electricity to make a 20 minute roundtrip sortie to deliver a small item to a customer. You don't need to pay that drone a good wage, health & dental benefits, or a retirement fund.

Humans are very poor delivery machines in terms of overall cost and maintenance compared to a well-made drone!

 

[SteveMann]

Your ideas are great; however they are not really viable in the real world.

They said the same thing about automobiles at the turn of the 20th Century.