
Google Wing Launching US Drone Deliveries with FedEx, Walgreens - prostoalex
https://qz.com/1712200/google-wing-launching-us-drone-deliveries-with-fedex-walgreens/
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Robotbeat
Seeing the specs of Google Wing (backed by much more capital), I'm yet more
impressed with Zipline drone.

Wing has about 10km round-trip (unclear if that's radius or total distance
traveled), while Zipline has about 80km radius or 160km round-trip range. Wing
has a speed of about 60mph (then slows to a hover for extending the package)
while Zipline travels at 80mph.

And not just serving a small city of 20,000 but Rwanda, a nation of 12 million
(and now much of Ghana, population of 28 million, and soon the state of
Maharashtra in India with a population of over 100 million).

I really think the catapult and parachute approach is significantly more
effective than the hover-and-deploy one is. There are some marginal advantages
to hovering, but the drawbacks in range, efficiency, time, and annoyance to
the neighbors outweigh them.

The advantages to hovering may be relevant in dense cities, but these are
exactly the places which would not want lots of drones flying around
everywhere (certainly not hovering like that).

Still, much safer than delivery vans and I hope Wing is successful.

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mrfusion
Wouldn’t packages end up on your roof with a catapult and parachute approach?

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asteli
You can pull certain tricks with ballistic delivery methods. A depressed
trajectory (flatter profile, lower apogee) would give you the option of coming
in through a window, with an additional benefit in that it would be harder to
intercept the payload.

You would also need to limit this strategy to payloads that can withstand
shock loads of multiple hundreds of G (soups and hard cheese, maybe even bread
adequately packaged. may need a different method for floral deliveries).

Proof of concept shouldn't be too difficult, most of the tech already exists
(Raytheon and Northop-Grumman have had a handle on it for decades). DHS might
not be too amused, however.

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King-Aaron
> would give you the option of coming in through a window

You're thinking too small. I want my uber eats delivery to land directly on
the plate in my cupboard before I even set it on the table. Please provide
appropriate ballistic modelling for this thankyou

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skocznymroczny
I'd pay for additional convenience of food flying directly into my mouth.

~~~
antisemiotic
Move fast, break teeth.

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yalogin
Every drone is going to record everything using multiple cameras and send them
to their backend. That is quiet disconcerting. There are no legally set paths
for the drones so they are free to go everywhere and see everything. Amazon
and Google are probably salivating more at the prospects of getting these
videos than the actual delivery itself. I am concerned about startups in the
bay and even more so about companies from China and elsewhere that create
these drones. At least with Google and Amazon we can cry foul and pressure
them into not doing somethings. With the rest of the ecosystem its a free for
all.

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tantalor
You are aware aerial photography is legal and common?

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yomly
Right but what happens when you have coverage that is refreshed every hour or
even less? You then have another surveillance network, one which is very hard
to opt out of

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zawerf
I think we're way past that point already. Everyone with a phone already has
their location tracked at least by their phone company. You might've even
given it away to other companies willingly:
[https://www.google.com/maps/timeline](https://www.google.com/maps/timeline).

I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech. We
got better traffic jam maps. And maybe a handful of criminals who forgot to
leave their phone at home got caught.

I think this is one of those things that people growing up with the tech won't
think anything of it (mom wants to always know your location) but old geezers
will reminisce of a time where we still had to call a landline and talk a
friend's parents first to see if they are home.

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mehrdadn
> I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech.

Honestly the last time I saw a drone, the most annoying thing about it was its
noise. I can't imagine them buzzing around all the time simply because of
that.

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thaumasiotes
You get at least as much noise from living in a city.

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legohead
Have you heard a drone? even tiny ones are loud as shit. some guy in my
neighborhood flies his drone occasionally and it's super annoying. I can't
imagine how annoying these giant drones delivering packages will be.

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thaumasiotes
Have you heard a siren? They're intended to be loud.

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mehrdadn
> Have you heard a siren? They're intended to be loud.

They're also intended to do things like saving people's lives, not delivering
their Amazon orders.

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thaumasiotes
Ambulance and fire engine sirens; police not so much. But that really has no
bearing on how loud they are.

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dukoid
My one prediction for the future: drone delivery mini platforms next to
windows (with 2d "barcodes" printed on top) will be the most visible sign of
the 20s -- comparable to satellite dishes in the 90s

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bduerst
It's more likely you'll have centralized drone delivery hubs - i.e. one place
in your apartment building - rather than every window or patio having a
delivery spot.

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rkagerer
If drone delivery takes off, I'm curious how weather will impact the sector.
E.g. One week drones deliver 60% of goods in a city, but the next one rains
all week with wind and storms - suddenly demand for human deliverypeople
spikes.

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btreecat
Currently they will be sticking to daylight hours and calm enough weather.
Also due to the valley here, they will have to worry about days with low
clouds due to temperature inversions.

I see drones as one of the potential solutions to last mile delivery, co-
existing with other technologies.

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rkagerer
So they'll need a bunch of on-demand, part-time delivery partners willing to
take up the slack when drones can't fly? Sounds like they'll still need to
employ (if indirectly) enough humans to meet peak demand.

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paul7986
So in the pic it carries one package?

So the sky is going to be littered with drones delivering packages in ten to
20 years? Present day that seems ridiculous and unattractive!

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not_a_cop75
I'm sure they said the same things about planes and cars some 100 years ago.

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wrkronmiller
They may not have been wrong about cars. Probably not planes either for people
living near takeoff/landing flight paths...

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brobdingnagians
I lived under the flight paths near LAX for awhile. It was incessant and
obvious, all the time. Aircraft engines are hard to ignore and they would
rattle the windows (which were sound resistant). One of my goals in life is to
never live somewhere like that again. It isn't bad until you live under a
major one, then you realize it can be a constantly present annoyance.

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gnicholas
> _Walgreens said in a release that 78% of the US population lives within 5
> miles of one of its stores_

Perhaps, but I imagine a decent chunk of these folks are in places like NYC,
which probably won't see drone delivery from retail Walgreens stores. I wonder
what percent of the population lives within 5 miles of a suburban Walgreens,
which might conceivably be able to offer drone-based delivery.

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wavefunction
I hate the idea of polluting the open air with the noise and visual pollution
of drones, though I guess we're killing off the birds so we need something to
replace them so why not a drone delivering an impulse purchase of chapstick.

How utterly depressing.

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swiley
Multiroters seem like such an inefficient way to do this, why is everyone
doing that rather than a fixed wing aircraft? I know in the mid 20th century
some mail was delivered this way using manually piloted aircraft and very
little ground crew (none had to be active when the package was picked up or
dropped off.)

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Pyxl101
The drone needs to land to deliver the package. Most consumers don't have
airstrips in their front yard.

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nroach
according to the link the Wing drone doesn't land. It hovers and lowers the
package by winch.

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yskchu
The system is pretty neat - here's a video of it in action in Canberra
(Australia) earlier this year:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKErmCN78S8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKErmCN78S8)

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cmroanirgo
"Google-affiliated drone delivery service found to be exceeding noise limits"

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/canberra-delivery-
dro...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/canberra-delivery-drone-noise-
levels-revealed/11503262)

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hellothree23
heh heh 'pilot program'

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KerryJones
as an investor I bet Wing will "soar"

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kart23
This service is really gonna take off.

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m1nes
Mmm... probably cancelled in two years.

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dasKrokodil
Is anyone selling an anti-drone drone yet?

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mLuby
Why aren't they using ducted fans? I thought they're more efficient than naked
props and they certainly look more safe.

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btreecat
Ducted fans pointed downward are not particularly good for forward flight.

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thelazydogsback
The connotations of "drone" are not great. (The next word in the bi-gram would
be "strike"...) Maybe we can go back to "UAV" or pick another term for non-
militarized, commercial delivery.

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outworlder
> The connotations of "drone" are not great. (The next word in the bi-gram
> would be "strike"...) Maybe we can go back to "UAV" or pick another term for
> non-militarized, commercial delivery.

You have your connotations backwards. You'll see no consumer drones marketed
as UAVs, but plenty of military drones are called that.

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thelazydogsback
Yeah, I can see that. Too bad because "drone" also has the connotation of
"dumb" or "slave", which is the opposite of what you want an autonomous
vehicle to be that's sharing your airspace. (It makes more sense in the
remotely-piloted case, as in the military versions.) But words take on their
own lives, and I guess there are now "drones".

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Robotbeat
Drones must fly below 400 feet and thus are not sharing the airspace with
crewed vehicles (which fly above 500 feet).

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penagwin
Depends:

> Maximum altitude of 400 feet above ground level (AGL) or, if higher than 400
> feet AGL, remain within 400 feet of a structure.

You can also apply for a waiver.

