
Inside Google’s Drone-Delivery Program - jackgavigan
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/inside-googles-secret-drone-delivery-program/379306/?single_page=true
======
ryankshaw
Both when I read this and when I heard amazon's announcement, I, like most
people I see here, thought about the "get whatever I order off the internet to
my doorstep, asap" use case--and I think that's still a ways off (because of
the 0.01% edge cases, the regulation, etc).

But the use case that this article touched on, which to me was a "ah ha! we
could do that today" is the case where the sending and receiving parties are
more fixed (not just any random person's door), where they could actually
build a drone-pad (like a heli-pad, but much more basic), where you could
program in all of the specific obstacles on the route (exactly where, if there
are electrical lines, what flight pattern to take, etc), and where you could
train both the sender and receiver, and cord off the landing area (so you'd
never run into the random guy or dog tries to grab the drone problem)

examples:

* delivery of medical supplies/medicine to a facility in a very remote area where it would not make sense to stock the items there permanently.

* very expensive restaurant at a ski resort in the middle of Colorado that gets a drone delivery of fresh seafood from a CA pier every day (an existing business transaction they do anyway that could be done faster, more efficiently than a human operated aircraft)

* the delivery of anything else to a ski resort (you have very wealthy people wanting things in a very remote location)

* something on top of a cruise ship, for medical items or whatever other thing a passenger really needed while at sea.

* something at the Ebola treatment areas right now in Africa.

~~~
takatin
Or reinvent the trusty old mailbox as a drop zone for drones. Google can't
realistically handle all the edge cases so crowdsource the edge case
resolution to the owner of each house. They can decide where they want to put
their drop zone containers. The design of the drop zone container can be
optimized to stand out on CV algos which the drone can then use to home in for
delivery. This also works in multi-story apartments where there's a common
drop zone for the entire apartment and it's left to the residents to sort it
to the appropriate owners.

I wonder if it's possible to design a drop chute instead of a drop zone
container so that the drone never needs to do the winch thing; the drone drops
the package into the chute at it's current hover height and takes off while
the chute takes care of slowing the package down to the ground.

In any case, this is an exciting area ripe for experimentation and bold ideas.

~~~
bengali3
> the drone drops the package into the chute at it's current hover height and
> takes off while the chute takes care of slowing the package down to the
> ground.

Skip hover, we don't need 10cm accuracy yet.

What's the cheapest way I can deliver one or multiple payloads from a fixed
wing aircraft at 5000 feet to a 100x100 ft 'package' zone with 99.9% accuracy?
(in any weather condition).

we grow quickly by letting people with big backyards sign up to be the
delivery zone, then manage the last miles on their own.

------
jpatokal
The key differentiator to Amazon (and most any other delivery drone system
I've seen) is that this is a tailsitter: it takes off vertically, and can
hover in place for deliveries, but it flies horizontally.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-
sitter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter)

This means it's _much_ faster and more efficient in flight than your standard
quadcopter design.

Also, Google's full official promotional video, the BBC clip seems to be taken
from this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRTNvWcx9Oo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRTNvWcx9Oo)

~~~
qq66
The military unmanned delivery aircraft are all tail sitters (500 pound
payloads). I hope Google's drafting behind all the existing R&D there. The
military stuff out there is crazy - hummingbird-size ornithopters, 2 ounce
helicopters that can fly for 30 minutes with an encrypted HD video uplink,
etc.,

~~~
foobarqux
Why are tail sitters better than a tilt rotor?

~~~
Fragment
The only reason for tilt-rotors is when you need to keep the main body of the
aircraft level.

The only problem with tail-sitters is the pilot (and possibly the payload).

~~~
lutusp
> The only reason for tilt-rotors is when you need to keep the main body of
> the aircraft level.

Actually, a tilt-rotor can be manipulated to make the aircraft go where you
want it to. The same idea explains how helicopters make their way across the
landscape.

------
jonjenk
Former Amazonian here. If anyone wants to understand the key difference
between Amazon and Google culture there's a great quote in the article.

 _" In all the testing, Roy had never seen one of his drones deliver a
package. He was always at the takeoff point, watching debugging information
scroll up the screen, and anxiously waiting to see what would happen. “Sergey
[Brin] has been bugging me, asking, ‘What is it like? Is it actually a nice
experience to get this?’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, I don’t know. I’m looking at the
screen,’” Roy told me."_

Google and Amazon are both great companies. But at Amazon the drone program
would start with a description of what the customer experience is when they
receive a drone delivery and you'd work backwards to the technology solution.
At Google the technology precedes the customer experience.

~~~
sopooneo
Doesn't it have to be a bit of both? Because if you start strictly with the
experience you might back into impossible technology.

~~~
jonjenk
I don't think so. I can almost hear Jeff's voice...

"Don't make your problem the customer's problem!"

There are often many technical solutions to create a particular customer
experience. Jeff never accepts false dichotomies. If the particular technical
solution being considered fails to produce a delightful customer experience
then you better start thinking about other solutions. Many of the projects on
which I worked turned out much better when Jeff challenged us break out of our
little technical boxes and consider alternate solutions that preserved the
customer experience.

I can sense that my answer will be frustrating to some who don't like being
told that they aren't thinking big enough / creatively enough / bold enough /
outside the box enough. Believe me, I felt that way too when working on Jeff
projects. I left his office in frustration many times only to realize several
hours or days later that I would have been better served by focusing on
creative problem solving instead of trying to convince Jeff that X was not
possible.

I have immense respect for Jeff. I also have increased respect for Sergy
because he appears to be asking the right types of questions at Google.

~~~
minwcnt5
> at Amazon the drone program would start with .. the customer experience ...
> and you'd work backwards to the technology solution. At Google the
> technology precedes the customer experience.

Speaking of false dichotomies.

------
waterlesscloud
Previous discussion of Amazon's drone plans.

Initial announcement
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6830547](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6830547)

Don't believe the hype
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6833223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6833223)

Delivery drones are nonesense
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7005702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7005702)

Is Amazon drone delivery real?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834561](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6834561)

------
femto
I'm not sure that Australia has "progressive" rules about the use of drones by
design. More likely it's just that the government hasn't yet got around to
putting rules in place. Mind you, the more high-level drone research we have
going on here, the more examples there will be to counter attempts to impose
crazy rules.

Also worth noting is that Australia has a "UAV Outback Challenge" [1], where
UAVs compete to carry out a simulated rescue of a tourist lost in the outback.
This September the challenge is in Kingaroy, Queensland. (Maybe that's why
Google is testing up that way??) Of further interest, there's at least one
open source team competing in the UAV challenge [2].

[1]
[http://www.uavoutbackchallenge.com.au/](http://www.uavoutbackchallenge.com.au/)

[2] [http://www.canberrauav.com/](http://www.canberrauav.com/)

\------

Edit: A bit more detail in the local news: [http://www.smh.com.au/digital-
life/digital-life-news/google-...](http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-
life-news/google-drones-tested-in-queensland-20140829-109jvb.html)

~~~
zik
Australia does have better rules than the US - it is possible (although not
easy) to operate a drone company in Australia. In the US it's still legally
problematic.

~~~
asynchronous13
In the US its still legally impossible. Only public entities like police or
universities can get legal permission to fly an unmanned aircraft.
(BP/Aeovironment got the only approval that's been issued to private
companies)

------
ChuckMcM
While I find this technologically interesting, I wonder if a drone bucket
brigade might not be a better use for a technology that can pick up 10 lbs at
point A and drop it over point B. A five thousand such drones, even at $10,000
each or $50M could keep 3,000 gallons of water[1] per (speed/distance) seconds
dropping continuously on a wildfire.

[1] That being somewhat more than a
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane)
skycrane can deliver, and with better failover characteristics.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm sometimes wondering, couldn't we repurpose rockets for that? You could
make some cheap water dropping short-range ballistic missiles, each carrying
200+ kg of cold water.

Or, to push this idea further, maybe we could repurpose artillery and just
shoot water buckets from long range? I wonder if this or the missiles would
have lower fuel cost than Skycrane or drone operations.

~~~
XorNot
Rockets are inefficient atmospheric vehicles. You use rockets to get to space
because you need to get _out_ of the atmosphere as quickly as possible.

You also use them for single-use things (missiles) because the value in making
a thing blow up at a distance is a lot higher (a $5 million dollar tank, for
example) then the rocket itself.

But they're _terrible_ for when you're into purely shifting mass. Air-
breathing propulsion with aerofoils is absurdly better. It's why hypersonic
flight and things like the Skylon are a big deal.

------
rdlecler1
Agriculture is probably a better petri dish for all this technology. Farms are
already dangerous, you need to cover large swaths of land, and it's unlikely
that you're going to hit anything, or anyone if it falls from the sky.

That said, I could imagine a world where a FedEx drone is permitted to provide
last meter service from the roof of a truck, taking the package from the
street to the doorstep. Additionally, widespread use of drones may reshape
where core resources are stored and allocated. In Manhattan for instance,
maybe lightweight warehouses are placed on rooftops for quick deliver of
common products within a few minutes of ordering.

~~~
bigiain
Hmmm, who needs FedEx?

I'm now imagining a shipping container that get floated from China to $city
stacked up top on a regular container ship, then without even unloading it
from the ship, the roof slides back and the walls collapse, and a flock of
disposable single-use drones launches out - delivering random manufactured
crap directly to the purchaser bypassing the expensive first-world logistics
chain...

~~~
harshreality
Customs and domestic security _nightmare_. Random manufactured crap could
range from things that the government doesn't like (drugs) to things that
might be dangerous (enriched uranium) to things that are very bad (like
weaponized anthrax or the fictional Fusarium spirale[1]).

[1] [http://mycorant.com/book-review-spiral-by-paul-
mceuen/](http://mycorant.com/book-review-spiral-by-paul-mceuen/)

~~~
shiven
Your last part sounds like one of Bruce Schneier's Movie Plot Terrorist
Threats. Mainly in the sense that weaponized biologics (threat-du-jour: Ebola;
Anthrax) could already be dispersed by consumer crap coming from anywhere in
the world, eg. a sticky tape containing Anthrax spores sneaked into the CPU
cooling-fan assembly plant and stuck inside the vent so that every time your
CPU fan runs it spews out spores. For Ebola, you just mix a few drops of the
bodily fluids of a patient who died of Ebola into one of those fancy tetra-
pack coconut juice boxes using a few syringes and have instant Armageddon. All
of these are purely fictional scenarios, of course, but hey the three letter
government agencies need to scare the shit out of the public to get increases
in their funding now don't they!?!

------
suprgeek
The logical next step would be to predictively send these drones up with the
most likely packages that the customers could possibly order.

The mobile app would then tell you here are 50 drones with a 10 mile radius -
& here is the list of items that are on them - so forget same-day delivery how
about same-hour delivery?

~~~
dannyr
This is basically what meal-delivery services are doing in San Francisco. They
stock up on meals in delivery cars and anticipate where the demand would be
and drive there.

~~~
prawn
I don't know why someone isn't driving a route in a van rigged to have curry
and rice permanently cooking/warm. Different dish each night. Cheaper for
advanced orders. App that tracks location of the van and handles transactions.

If Tuesday was chicken curry night and the cost reflected avoiding the
variance and random delivery costs that drive up prices for other food
services, I'd buy every week.

Driver plus someone to hand over the food or leave it at the door.

~~~
davmre
This is pretty much exactly what SpoonRocket does: spoonrocket.com.

~~~
prawn
What do dishes typically cost? (I'm not anywhere near where they operate.)

~~~
cbhl
$8 or so.

------
selectout
Great to see efforts like this not primarily focused on just delivering books
or groceries but being put to the use for AID and resources that otherwise
wouldn't be able to get there in a practical manner.

I'm curious what kind of running time these have though and distance they can
travel. Would be great if they could just have 2-3 go for a dozen roundtrips
each in circumstances like Katrina.

~~~
eck
> not primarily focused on just delivering books or groceries but being put to
> the use for AID

That is just their plan for getting regulatory approval: if you are against
UAVs, you are against delivering life-saving medicine to disaster victims.

~~~
stevenbedrick
Couldn't it be both?

~~~
TulliusCicero
Yes, there's clearly nothing stopping them from carrying a wide variety of
cargo. I'm sure the drones will end up delivering both life-critical and
completely frivolous packages.

------
Wingman4l7
What struck me about this design is that the drone is a lot less susceptible
to end-user interference / damage / theft -- the drone hovers way out of reach
and drops the package from a quickly-retracted line.

------
drcode
Interesting that they use an hoverable airplane design instead of a
quadrocopter... I wonder if this is in part because a failed engine en-route
is less likely to cause a human injury, since an airplane is able to glide to
the ground.

~~~
asynchronous13
The biggest advantages of a fixed wing over a quadrotor are endurance and
range. A fixed wing can carry more payload with less energy. The ability to
glide if the engine goes out is a bonus, but probably not the driving reason
to select it as a platform.

------
ngoldbaum
This reminds me even more than Amazon's program of vernor vinge's prediction
of rock deliveries from fedex in his short story "Fast Times at Fairmont
High." There's something about a package being _lowered onto my doorstep_ by a
VTOL drone...

------
abad79
I think Google intentions to deliver a Drone program, are much bigger and will
try to create a great value proposition for buyers to use their eCommerce
solutions and payments. This way you will more eager to choose Google and not
Amazon.

------
foobarqux
Anyone have a bio of Dave Voss, the new project leader? I couldn't find one.

~~~
magicalist
The video linked above had him as David Vos. Here's one starting spot:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena_Technologies](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athena_Technologies)

------
damian2000
Could something like this eventually replace the postman? I'm thinking of
something on top of your roof that could be an aerial target for the device to
drop stuff onto.

~~~
icebraining
Maybe for single-family dwellings, but I wouldn't want my neighbors peeking
(or outright stealing) my letters and packages.

My mailbox is not exactly a vault, but it's enough of a deterrent to stop
privacy violations and petty theft.

------
orasis
One question: How loud is it? The quad rotors that I have been around are
disturbingly loud.

------
maw
"A zipping comes across the sky."

Good allusion, and I didn't even like that damn book!

------
trhway
ultimate delivery vehicle :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kDay...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kDay5OWDPn4)

------
31reasons
Robots , Drones and AI. Sounds familiar!

------
dang
We changed the url from
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28964260](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28964260)
because the Atlantic article seems to be the most substantive of the ones
submitted on this topic.

------
crucifiction
When is Google going to start innovating again instead of just copying other
big tech companies? They are the new Microsoft it seems like, cash cow being
spent on also-rans.

~~~
enneff
This was in development long before Amazon announced their drones 9 months
ago.

------
spiritplumber
Good for them? I did this in 2010 using a G1 phone as a controller.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi4jZKqZ8v8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi4jZKqZ8v8)

Delivery was of a salami sandwich (we later cleared it out with the police).

I even gave Ryan Hickman at Google the software and hardware specs, when he
was trying to fix up the Cellbots project in 2011. We were at maker faire
2011, which was funny because their android 'bot didn't work and ours did...
Never heard much since, though.

Sorry for bragging, but it's a pet peeve I got. Anyway, the source and
schematics are at
[http://obex.parallax.com/object/116](http://obex.parallax.com/object/116) the
Android side software can be had if you email me at mkb@robots-everywhere.com

We still use this to do autonomous deliveries!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urs68vf7ZFY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urs68vf7ZFY)

~~~
enneff
> Good for them? I did this in 2010 using a G1 phone as a controller.

By an extremely liberal interpretation of "this", perhaps.

What's your pet peeve? That you did something vaguely similar a few years ago?
Someone did it before you, too.

~~~
enneff
Chronic29, who is hellbanned, replied "The pet peeve is that Google does not
deserve this attention."

I'd like to know who else has built and successfully trialled tail-sitting
autonomous flying vehicles. This stuff is awesome!

~~~
robotresearcher
First demo of autonomous hover of a fixed wing UAV was by Paul Oh et al of
Drexel in 2006.

[http://dasl.mem.drexel.edu/alumni/bGreen/www.pages.drexel.ed...](http://dasl.mem.drexel.edu/alumni/bGreen/www.pages.drexel.edu/_weg22/fwHovering/fixedWingHovering.html)

[https://www.microstrain.com/sites/default/files/Autonomous%2...](https://www.microstrain.com/sites/default/files/Autonomous%20Hovering%20of%20a%20Fixed-
Wing%20Micro%20Air%20Vehicle.pdf)

~~~
asynchronous13
Are you sure that was the first? When I was at Georgia Tech we were doing that
in 2005 :-) there's some videos online

[http://uav.ae.gatech.edu/wiki/uavrf/movies](http://uav.ae.gatech.edu/wiki/uavrf/movies)

Look for GTEdge transition to or from hover in the video descriptions. (We
probably weren't the first either...)

~~~
robotresearcher
Fair enough! Oh's paper claims priority :)

Could be publication delay or a mistake. Same era, so the time had come for
that work.

