
Stanford lab envisions delivery drones that save energy by taking the bus - amaajemyfren
https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/03/stanford-lab-envisions-delivery-drones-that-save-energy-by-taking-the-bus/
======
jcims
A commercial delivery drone carrying a six pound package landing on top of a
bus between tall buildings is going to make a ridiculous discordant growl. Six
of them coming and going within a quarter mile at any given time are going to
sound like an auto-tuned pack of hounds from hell.

(This of course is ignoring what happens if something fucks up and suddenly it
has 1/8th of a second to decide to fly out of it or brake those giant swinging
carbon fiber blades before they encounter human flesh. It's like a trolley
problem on a trolley.).

No way. (IMHO of course)

(e.g

Video of a Matrice 600 with a payload of ~8lbs
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jayVMmvLxOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jayVMmvLxOA)

Even better, 25 lbs from 60' up lol
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jULQrdUTngM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jULQrdUTngM)

)

~~~
joekrill
Is anyone working on solving the noise problem with drones? Is it even really
solvable in any realistic way? What would it take to have a "silent" drone?

~~~
adamsea
Our drones need a blimp mode : ) :)

~~~
asdff
Kids with airsoft guns will have a field day

~~~
dmurray
Blimps aren't normally brought down by a few bullet holes. The pressure inside
is close to atmospheric pressure, so helium leaks out very slowly.

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CommieBobDole
Perhaps we could load all the packages into some sort of specialized "package
bus", and the driver could drive it around town all day on an optimized route
and carry the packages to the customer's door himself.

Joking aside, that does raise the idea of using a delivery truck as sort of a
carrier for rechargable drones; truck drives around, packages are
automatically distributed to a pool of drones who handle the last hundred
yards of delivery and return to the truck to reload/recharge.

~~~
Nasrudith
I thought that was one of Amazon's proposed delivery drone schemes before it
got a sad but sensibly justifiable veto over concerns of the air space being
filled with a high volume of drones whom would constitute a real falling
hazard from the base failure rate and an attractive nuisance by being small
non-human "faceless" targets with goods.

Technically anybody right now could just shoot a poor Amazon delivery drivers
with a shotgun now to rob them but it would be murder as opposed to
destruction of property. Very few would do so vs snaring or shooting a drone.
It is one hell of a bizzare systemic perverse incentive - putting a human body
to be at risk reduces the robbery incentive and frequency. Reminds me of one
account of Italian medieval cities of merchants plastering their walls with
the Virgin Mary so people wouldn't dare to blasphemously piss on her image.

~~~
Threeve303
> It is one hell of a bizzare systemic perverse incentive

Not to worry... Drones are corporate property and corporations are people,
therefore destroying the drone is murder. Don't agree? Take it up with these
heavily armed protection drones we built for the delivery drones.

~~~
jstarfish
We already escalate the privilege of police dogs, so this isn't farfetched.
Shooting a dog is punished the same as shooting its handler.

~~~
anewdirection
And yet, the handler stops biting me when I stop resisting.

I love dogs, but think their time in LE are fading. Both as an affront to the
rights of the people and of the dogs. The 'beast of burden' ethic is quickly
becoming outdated.

------
abuk11
Why does the leisure class get funding for this nonsense? An y new "invention"
either seems to spy on people or annoy the hell out of them.

 _Drones are a visual nuisance and produce noise._ Do you want to disturb bus
riders and residential areas.

The Silicon Valley episode where a Stanford lab produced a robotic deer that
is completely useless but caused a road accident is reality.

I hope people will react like Erlich Bachman when these drones become a thing.

~~~
dmos62
Do delivery cars, scooters, trucks not produce noise? Is this a complaint
about delivery drones or delivery? Tracking technology will always be at our
fingertips. I don't think you'd want a world where that wasn't true. It's
governmental regulation that's the answer to large scale abuse.

~~~
de_watcher
Non-electric scooters should be banned. Or especially the dirt bikes in the
city.

~~~
rootusrootus
I tend to agree. Those little two-cycle scooters howling down the road at like
110dB are just terrible. Way beyond any reasonable definition of acceptable.

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pjmorris
I've been joking for awhile now that UPS/FedEx trucks could become 'aircraft
carriers', carrying a set of drones along with the packages, using the drones
for the 'last mile' of delivery.

~~~
foobarian
That's how the Protoss Postal Service does it!

Joking aside when Amazon's drone program first made news I thought they were
going to make a deal with USPS to use the gazillion post office offices as
drone bases. Guess it never went anywhere.

~~~
rtkwe
USPS is legally blocked from offering any services besides postal services,
one of the reasons they're doing so bad among many, and this seems vaguely
delivery but outside the bounds.

~~~
nodrones123
That’s not true at all. USPS offers notary services, passport services, money
orders, and many other services besides.

The reason USPS is having financial troubles is because conservative
extremists in the American government have put huge financial burdens on them
like fully funding their medical plan 10 years in advance in a blatant attempt
at bankrupting one of the few Federal agencies specifically enumerated in the
Constitution so they can then sell this services to FedEx and UPS and make
huge gains for shareholders.

~~~
muststopmyths
It's actually a requirement to fund 75 years of retirement costs in 10 years
($75 billion).

And it was passed with broad bipartisan support. I wish people would stop
repeating the canard about "conservative extremists" with respect to this law.

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/15/postal-
se...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/15/postal-service-
bailout-congress/)

~~~
karpierz
> But the 2006 law also shifted the burden of paying for worker and retiree
> benefits entirely to the Postal Service. That came at the insistence of the
> Bush administration, Davis said.

Davis being the congressman who introduced the bill.

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dmos62
Imagine a world in which we don't need individual cars, because public
transport is sufficient; passengers and cargo are pooled into compartments;
compartments pooled and unpooled mid-trip as needed to maximize total
efficiency; where traffic runs underground and on a rail where that makes
sense; where stations can be very large or very small based on traffic; where
the economics of laying out the tunnels is such that it makes sense to build
small stations; where car roads are a rarity; where safety is not relient on
human judgment, skill or reaction time; where transportation is not dependent
on fossil fuels. Aah, those things are pleasant to imagine.

~~~
gonzo41
Or, Imagine where we toll everyone daily who get's on a highway in a car, and
instead provide sheltered lanes for bicycles. And those bikes are simple
sturdy steel bikes with wire cage panniers and can hold a ton. And in this
utopian world a lot of health related issues are reduced because of the
incidental exercise that people get on commuting around.

~~~
ajuc
That world is called Europe :) Taxation is indirect, gasoline is taxed.

~~~
gindely
Which is great for all those people who fill up on electricity. Mostly rich
people.

~~~
gambiting
I mean, it is cheaper but it's not that cheap. There was recently a post here
showing very clearly that for example in Germany electricity is so expensive
that a good diesel car beats it in terms of cost easily. Even here in the UK
if I were to charge at public points it would again be cheaper to just drive a
diesel. It only becomes cheaper when I charge at home with a good tariff.

Besides, seeing as our roads are exclusively maintained from fuel taxes, I
cannot see this going on forever - the government will have to find a way to
tax the electricity going into electric cars somehow.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I imagine an odometer reading would do the trick. Like a gas meter, but on
electric cars.

~~~
gambiting
I mean the car I have(volvo phev) currently has a deal where Volvo pays me
back for the 1st year of electricity used by the car, they do it by having the
car automatically upload the number of kWh used to Volvo servers, then they
will pay me back based on the number of kWh I've used during that year.

I don't see why something similar couldn't be done for taxes - the car keeps
track of kWh used and you just pay tax based on how much you used. Obviously,
that runs into certain immediate problems - like, what if you drive abroad?
Normally you'd simply buy fuel while abroad, so therefore contribute to taxes
there - but with this system this wouldn't work anymore.

~~~
dmos62
Maybe a GPS and pay-per-km-driven scheme would be more tamper proof. You can
spoof a GPS as well, but it can be double-checked automatically by state
traffic cams.

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sdan
A drone utilizing current infrastructure like cars or busses would make sense
(last-mile delivery would be slower, but you could go long distances).

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jansan
Just imaging, every car has a landing platform on the roof. A centralized
traffic system knows the destination of each car. Drones can just jump cars,
and if there is no car going in the right direction, lift off and finish the
rest of route themselves.

~~~
saluki
The first stepping stone is probably drones based on UPS and FedEx trucks
helping by making small package deliveries while the driver is dropping off
packages in each neighborhood.

This was from a few years ago. [https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/21/ups-tests-
show-delivery-dr...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/21/ups-tests-show-
delivery-drones-still-need-work/)

~~~
chasd00
just using drones do deliver from the truck to the door without the driver
having to get out would probably double delivery capacity.

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jpm_sd
I'm still holding out hope for ballistic delivery from UP/Ex launchers, as
envisioned by Vernor Vinge in Rainbow's End. A solid fling and a guided
parachute might actually work. Major airspace sharing concerns, of course.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
>as envisioned by Vernor Vinge in Rainbow's End. A solid fling and a guided
parachute might actually work. Major airspace sharing concerns, of course.

No need to go that high at least initially or even use parachutes. Just mount
your system that lobs packages on a truck. It just drives a route and some
software lobs everything where/when needed. Use a special sticker that's
reflective in a particular spectrum for the truck to target and give the
stickers out for free. Have the truck scan for the stickers, record gps
coordinates (so you know which addresses are deliverable with your new system)
and scan for obstacles so you can compute potential firing angle (too low and
you're in the shrubs, too high and you're in the power lines or tree branches)
as it drives around. Once you know the potential firing arcs for a supported
address you can calculate what packages can be delivered without going too
high/low or over/under shooting. Even if the truck has to stop to shoot it's
still a labor saving improvement over traditional delivery and the sound of a
low pressure pneumatic cannon isn't any louder than a truck door. You could
use existing warehouse infrastructure to make sure that packages that are not
of the right density (or are market in your system as too fragile)to safely
toss don't wind up getting tossed.

You're basically just using software and data input to replace the judgement
of the paper boy (hard) and some powered rollers and actuators to replace his
arm hard (easy).

Disclaimer: I spend 3min thinking about this, this is by no means a serious
pitch.

~~~
pythonaut_16
So basically a giant t-shirt cannon for compatible deliveries.

I can definitely agree with the theory behind it. Pair autonomous systems with
delivery trucks and let them deliver easy packages (light weight, non-fragile)
and let them deliver from the truck to harder addresses (long driveway, up a
flight up steps in a breezeway) or deliver ahead.

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nodrones123
This is a terrible idea. Taxpayers pay for the fuel in that bus, the
maintenance of that bus, and the roads it rides on. We’re not funding that so
Jeff Bezos can add another hundred million to his pocket tax free. This is
bullshit. If delivery companies want to profit off the public transportation
system, they should be paying into said system. Especially if their new plan
to deliver their goods is designed to undermine and circumvent the US Postal
Service, another taxpayer funded delivery system.

~~~
xwdv
Bike couriers already can jump on buses with their packages to save on time
and energy. Not a new concept.

~~~
mayama
Bike couriers will be paying when they hop on bus. Drone operators also have
to consider how to pay, of course after evaluating if this approach is legal
in the first place.

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cwkoss
I don't understand why the default assumption is that delivery drones need to
fly. It seems like you could have a bus-ful of small wheeled drones that could
achieve many of the benefits with much fewer safety concerns.

Would need to make a package lockbox similar to a mailbox that is accessible
by the dronecars, but I think in this day and age of frequent package theft,
many would go along with it.

~~~
notatoad
>Would need to make a package lockbox similar to a mailbox that is accessible
by the dronecars

at this point, you can almost get rid of the whole last-mile problem that
you're trying to solve with the drones, and the delivery truck can just drop
off pre-filled lockboxes roadside.

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aylmao
I do wonder if drone delivery will take off (heh). A lot has been said about
the disadvantages, but one also has to also wonder about the advantages.

There's a point at which things are "good enough", and small improvements
aren't really worth the costs. How much time would using drones for the last
couple kilometers save? A few hours? Local delivery trucks tend to make rounds
every day, so it really does seem like the maximum amount of time drone
delivery could save is one day.

Will the cost of operating this (not only monetary, but also organizational,
and in terms of noise pollution, drone repair, the occasional package/drone
lost, etc) be worth the whole one day faster delivery to customers?

This, especially considering drones can't deliver everything, so trucks would
have to keep operating. Truck's are large— economically what makes sense is to
have them full of packages and with a whole-day schedule. Would drone usage
offset enough deliveries to cut a few truck routes? Would they be enough to
make it all worth?

A lot of questions in the air (heh).

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Traubenfuchs
A new age of humans and machines having to share public infrastructure.
Animatrix, here we come!

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lowdose
There is a youtube video at the start of the article with a presentation of
the system. A simulation is shown on the map of SF.

[https://youtu.be/2U8jI-n9Ulk](https://youtu.be/2U8jI-n9Ulk)

~~~
pastage
This is more about route finding than anything else. One hour of CPU time to
calculate routes for 5000 packages and 30 distribution centers. That's pretty
good.

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JoeAltmaier
Or, run special carts up and down main drags for drones to hitch rides (and
perhaps charge while riding?). Instead of combining them with human transport,
to the detriment of both humans and drones.

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cerved
Here's the actual paper:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11840.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11840.pdf)

Here's the code:
[https://github.com/sisl/MultiAgentAllocationTransit.jl](https://github.com/sisl/MultiAgentAllocationTransit.jl)

Much more interesting that some sensationalist "Wow, AI drones are taking the
bus" piece

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samkater
When I saw the title, I thought this was brilliant! But I thought they meant a
"drone" more like these:
[https://www.starship.xyz/](https://www.starship.xyz/). (Turns out google
responds better to searching for robots when looking those up). A ground robot
would alleviate a lot of the concerns about noise and other problems with
urban air travel.

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WheelsAtLarge
Ok,this is sort of brilliant in it's simplicity and ability to use existing
resources. A while back i read an article that theorized that there would be
cars all over carrying drones and cars would do most of the transportation
while the drones did the last mile or so. Here is a practical example.

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schaefer
so, I'm a rock climber, and I'd never go into the mountains without a helmet.
because falling objects to the head _kill_.

What are people even thinking, mixing spaces for humans with our fragile
little egg heads and corporate swarms of falling death blocks?

hmm...

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pdimitar
Any such solution, while environmentally-friendly and laudible, must take into
account possible attack by humans on the way (including in the bus).

~~~
notatoad
but remember that "taking into account" does not necessarily mean "make
impossible".

yes, humans can attack drones. but humans can also attack postal carriers, or
steal packages off porches. neither of those facts seem to be disqualifiers
for continuing with the current system. Some level of theft will always
happen, and the cost of that theft needs to be factored into the overall cost
of the system. if that cost is too high, it can make the system untenable, but
eliminating the possibility of theft is not a realistic goal for any delivery
system.

~~~
pdimitar
> _if that cost is too high, it can make the system untenable_

That's what I mean. If postal service workers and their trucks get abducted /
stolen once every 10-20 deliveries then that would make the postal delivery
system untenable as well. :D

It's a little bit apples to oranges here. While in the classic systems you can
only get the good stolen, here we're talking stealing the good _and_ the
delivery system with it.

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ChuckMcM
And periodically the bus will swish its trolley pole and all the drones will
lift off in a cloud and buzz around and then resettle.

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op03
Cool idea. Maybe Uber et al can also take part in this - rent out roof space
on their fleet heading in same direction as the drone...

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curiousgal
What a stupid idea.

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NicoJuicy
This is actually quite genius

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ravenstine
Why stop at buses? Why not have drones land on self-driving cars that
integrate with Bluetooth?

Never mind the noise; we'll design the cars such they output the inverse
frequencies being output by the drones, canceling out their sound.

Even better, the drones can be designed to look like pies.

