

Amazon Promises Package Delivery By Drone: Is It for Real? - eguizzo
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/amazon-prime-air-package-drone-delivery#.UpyzcJGfpL0.hackernews

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lambda
So, I get that so far this is just an Amazon publicity stunt and there isn't
actually anything here to talk about.

But give them some credit. Most of these problems are solvable. You can build
a drone with bumpers around the propellers and screens above and below, to
solve the "sticking finger in the propellers" problem.

You can deal with the vast majority of the navigation problem by just getting
enough altitude. Above a certain altitude, you don't suddenly see new unknown
buildings springing up out of nowhere, and don't need to worry about
navigating around power lines or anything of the sort. Just do the takeoff in
a controlled area, rise up to an altitude high enough to avoid anything but a
few pre-programmed skyscrapers and radio towers, and fly to your destination
at that altitude.

And you can solve the landing problem by having someone sit in a control room
and take over for the landing and takeoff from customer locations. Paying
someone for two minutes worth of landing and takeoff is much cheaper than
paying them for the full 30 minute delivery time, along with the expense of a
full sized vehicle and insurance that goes along with it.

Everyone seems to worry about the liability aspect, asking "what happens when
one of these falls on someone". But we already deal with liability issues with
cars all the time. Heck, we deal with the issue with planes as well; planes do
sometimes fall out of the sky and kill people, but you don't hear people
saying that delivery by plane will never work. That's just built into the cost
of delivery. Drones are much lighter, don't have tanks of gasoline, and flying
in the air gives you much more open space than driving on roads. And you could
probably add a failsafe that deploys a parachute if the drone loses power or
otherwise start to fall.

The big problem is flight time. Batteries just don't have the energy density
to support long flight times; you can build ultra-light drones that get an
hour of flight time with a lot of care, but if you're building something
that's actually going to carry packages, deal with wind, and so on, 30 minutes
is probably the upper limit. That means that you won't be able do trips of
more than about 15 minutes each way. Now, since you can go in a straight line,
without traffic, that gets you further than a 15 minute car/bike delivery, but
it'll still be limited to people who are fairly close to a distribution
center.

~~~
jonmrodriguez
Are there other types of drones other than traditional quadcopters, for
example variable-pitch quadcopters [1], that can get more airspeed and thus
cover more distance in 15 min?

What about using airplane-style drones (like traditional RC planes) + a
parachute to land the package? And this way you could use nitro gas fuel to
get better energy density (since you can use one big gas engine instead of
having to use four tiny motors)

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy5Ky50eGJs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy5Ky50eGJs)

~~~
marvin
I have quite strong opinions about this. The only way to ensure efficient,
high-load drone flight is to develop a hybrid design which uses wings to
generate lift during cruise. The efficiency lost to the rotors is massive.

So I think eventually we will see tilt-rotor designs, where wings take over
once the drone is airborne but the rotor disk is pitched horizontal for
takeoff and landing. This massively increases energy efficiency, and makes it
possible to go a lot faster.

The reason this hasn't been done with larger airplanes (the only prominent
example, V-22 Osprey, demonstrates the difficulty), is that combustion engines
makes the design prohibitively complex. But with electric motors, it should be
very doable.

~~~
xtagon
There is an RC model called the Quad Shot that sounds similar to what you're
describing. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK_-
yTrwNtU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK_-yTrwNtU)

~~~
marvin
Wow, that's with a greater degree of mechanical simplicity than I thought
possible. But this is exactly what I was talking about. Now if you can somehow
reduce propeller drag at high horizontal speeds and also accomodate a payload
and/or a larger battery and also handle adverse wind conditions, you'd have
something really nice.

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waterlesscloud
"Aerial maps usually aren't updated frequently enough to show obstacles"

I wonder where a company that constantly had a fleet of drones in the air
could get up to date aerial maps...

~~~
sremani
What if the delivery drones have a mapping mode - so they do the mapping
during the deliveries and even according to Bezos these are limited to 10
miles range from their warehouses which would be much more easier to map than
swathes of cities. There is a possibility for this to succeed as well as fail,
but at this point this one is more than wishful thinking - the technology at
the basic level is already there.

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geetee
Remember when Google brought us street view? How absurd of an ideas was
photographing every street? Now we take it for granted. Is it so unbelievable
that Amazon could push the boundaries the skeptics keep bringing up?

~~~
diydsp
Err, they're different kinds of boundaries.

Photographing every street requires few new techniques. Mostly people didn't
expect it could happen quickly or cost-effectively, or didn't expect it would
be worthwhile. Arguably, it's still a neat-o factor rather than a core value.

Drone delivery requires a significant number of new techniques.

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untog
This is clearly a Cyber Monday promotional stunt. It amazes me that people are
taking it so seriously.

~~~
rlt3
Are you trying to say that it's not real and that it's a publicity stunt for
cyber monday?

Or are you saying that unmanned flying machines which deliver products in
under 30 minutes is not noteworthy enough for people to take seriously?

~~~
untog
I'm saying that there is no reason for to be as noteworthy as it is right now.
As Bezos himself says,

“this is early, this is still years away.”[1]

Yes, 30 minute drone delivery would be big news. That Amazon is in the very
early stages of an R&D project to look at the feasibility of it is not. In any
case, I am staking an early bet that you'll have your Amazon products
delivered by a self driving van before you'll have a drone do it - especially
if you live anywhere outside of a major metropolitan area.

[1] [http://techland.time.com/2013/12/01/amazon-bezos-
drones/#ixz...](http://techland.time.com/2013/12/01/amazon-bezos-
drones/#ixzz2mL6wIk8n)

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willyt
This is really just an Amazon PR stunt at this stage, but are there
interesting solutions to the list of problems posed though?

Navigation: Well I suppose you could do this with an app that makes you stand
in a spot where you think the drone could land, take a panorama photo which a
human checks and approves. The app would also make you wait for a good enough
gps fix before it 'green lights' your account for drone deliveries.

Obstacle avoidance: Maybe in 5 years time the processing power will be less
energy intensive? You can't rely on maps entirely, but maybe laser scanned
neighbourhoods and low resolution radar or sonar which aborts the delivery if
inconsistencies are detected?

Safety: Maybe it drops down a virtual 3m 'tube' from obstruction free public
airspace into the spot you send in from your app to get your landing site
approved. The app would make you pick a space to land in that was suitable and
you lay out a target pad. If the target pad visual looks wrong, e,g. black and
white squares obscured because kid left a bike on it, then delivery is
aborted. Maybe catastrophic loss of power or large downwards deceleration
causes an airbag to deploy.

Legality: Some kind of peer to peer air traffic control standard is needed.
Like a swarm of starlings.

Cost: Must be cheaper than a delivery driver, right? Not sure if its cheaper
than a self driving car though.

~~~
superuser2
It doesn't need to be cheaper than a delivery driver. The service would still
be an enormous benefit to Amazon even if it operated at a loss because they'd
be getting tons of business that would otherwise go to brick-and-mortar
stores.

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jfasi
Keep in mind, the public relations aspect of this product is as much in
development as the technology itself.

Is this a PR stunt? Yes and no. On one hand it's a PR stunt in that it teases
people with pie-in-the-sky products that don't exist yet.

On the other hand, this is a completely new product built on completely new
technology that most people don't have any experience with. Releasing this
sort of stuff is delicate because people need to be acclimated to the
existence of the technology before they can be comfortable with it. This
release is the very first step in that process. As the project matures, I
predict they will lead the launch with a great deal of public-relations-type
announcements like this.

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jaynos
A fleet of bike messengers or a truck would be much cheaper.

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Duhck
I get that drone delivery is feasible, and in a few years COULD happen, but
seriously, does this solve a problem?

If I need something like toilet paper, paper towels, nails, screws,
lightbulbs, etc.. I am surrounded by places I can buy these items at in less
than 30 minutes.

I admire the interest in pushing this technology forward, but I don't see the
problem this really solves...

~~~
mbillie1
Laziness! Imagine ordering toilet paper without leaving the toilet! Hopefully
Amazon will take the logical next step and have the drone drop my product with
a smaller, indoor robot which can open my door via Lockitron and bring it
directly TO me. Then branch out to fast food.

In seriousness, it has some utility. While I can buy toilet paper, paper
towels, etc very close, it could be (for me where I live at least)
considerably more difficult to find a hot new electronic item, a specific
movie on Blu Ray, an unusual tool, paint in a certain shade, etc.

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sgarlatm
Initially this will probably carry a significant premium over normal delivery.
However, as someone who lives in a city, I can definitely see there being
times when I would be willing to pay the premium. Taking a cab ride to and
from somewhere can easily cost $15-$30, so it could actually be cheaper to
have the item delivered by a drone if time is of the essence.

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richardlblair
I don't know why you need to explicitly state "Skeptical", it's kind of
implied being that I haven't seen an optimistic response yet.

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QuantumGood
I'm looking forward to each year's "Cyber Monday" newsflash, now that Amazon
has figured out a good way to use publicity to get traffic.

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jeffmess
My dog is gonna bite the crap out of that drone when it lands in my yard.

