
Why Jeff Bezos's Drone Is More Than a Joke - ppjim
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303722104579238312058025896#!
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derekp7
How about this: Instead of dispatching drones from a warehouse, how about
dispatching them from a delivery vehicle? So the Semi filled with orders
drives into a town (doesn't even have to park), and these drones fly back and
forth from it delivering packages -- it saves the driver the need to stop at
each address, yet it also allows deliveries further from the warehouse.

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gamegoblin
A drone carrier. Generally I'd make a joke about skynet, but the concept is
really awesome.

Another interesting drone concept I'd like to see explored: self driving
package truck that drives around to the locations, sends an SMS to the person
when it is near (I imagine would could have a decently complex system of
commands with SMS such as scheduling preferred time, location, or rescheduling
a failed delivery).

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whacker
This is so transparently a fluff piece for the startup referenced in the
latter falf of the article.

See pg's the submarine

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whacker
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
TrainedMonkey
Kudos to both of you (and to pg). I suspected something like that in action,
but not to be such a well oiled machine.

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OneOneOneOne
<EVIL> Just think, they could sell drone idle time and other captured video to
the NSA and other interested parties to help defray delivery cost.

Can't sell ads... sell surveillance! </EVIL>

~~~
TrainedMonkey
Or they will just be required by law to do that.

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hosh
I keep seeing this sentiment everywhere. I don't know why people thinks this
is a joke, that it is: "illegal," "implausible" and "kind of silly". Yes,
Bezos did this to help boost up sales and set up PR to help the lobbying, but
that isn't the _only_ thing about it. Why are people so stuck up on the
silliness of the idea? Have people stopped being able to exercise their
imagination and executing on it? Just because you can't conceive yourself
pulling it off does not mean someone else cannot...

Not only do I think Bezos has the imagination and will to pull this off, I
_know_ this is being implemented in places outside of the US. It's already
happening. Right now. And if it is happening, right now, is it implausible? Is
it silly?

By the way, I make a distinction between something we _can_ do and something
we _should_ do. I am not sure this is something that is good for the world
even though I don't think this is a silly idea. I see another facepalm moment
coming up when the folks who have been saying this won't happen start
screaming angrily that this shouldn't be happening.

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baddox
People tend to underestimate how fast technological progress can happen, even
in the field they specialize in, and even if they're consciously aware of this
bias. This is why we see everything from skepticism to outright claims of
impossibility about commercial delivery drones, even within the RC model
aircraft hobby. These guys have seen electric model flight go from being
essentially impossible in the 1990s to dominating the hobby shortly thereafter
(thanks mostly to the rise of lithium polymer batteries). Then, mostly in the
last 5 years, they've seen model multirotors (quadcopters, hexacopters, etc.)
go from being an idea, to being a reality for more hardcore hackers [0], to
being easy to assemble from parts with very little electronics knowledge [1],
to being off-the-shelf toys for 40 bucks [2] (thanks mostly to the open source
community and the rise of cheap smartphone sensors like gyros and GPS). It's
hard to believe that even most of the multirotor community thinks that
commercial drone delivery is a scifi fantasy, given how far multirotors have
advanced in 5 years. Personally, my mind would be blown if this _isn 't_
extremely commonplace in another 5 years.

[0] [http://rcexplorer.se/projects/2010/03/the-
tricopter-v1-and-v...](http://rcexplorer.se/projects/2010/03/the-
tricopter-v1-and-v1-5/) Notice that stabilization is accomplished "manually"
with 3 gyroscopes.

[1] Thanks mostly to integrated multirotor flight controllers, which contain
sensors and a CPU to perform stabilization, like
[http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__19534__HobbyKing_...](http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__19534__HobbyKing_Multi_Rotor_Control_Board_V2_1_Atmega168PA_.html).

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Syma-Channel-2-4G-Quad-
Copter/dp/B0096...](http://www.amazon.com/Syma-Channel-2-4G-Quad-
Copter/dp/B0096SJU3U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1386279027&sr=8-2&keywords=syma+x1)

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001sky
_People tend to underestimate how fast technological progress can happen_

Counter-example: Internet Bubble 1.0

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baddox
That wasn't necessarily an underestimation of how fast technological progress
can happen. It was more of an economic misestimation.

~~~
001sky
I don't think so, just look at the mobile sector.

As of 1999, 3G was supposed forecast go live in 2001. But iPhone whent live in
2007 with 2.5G ! Also, in the US 3G sucked and you needed 3.5g to really get
usable performance (ie, data) in the field.

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thecolorblue
Is it just me or should, "unveiling of the project on '60 Minutes' Sunday
carried three important public-relations payloads for the firm.", be followed
by a list of three items?

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laxatives
It is. The next three sentences begin, "First", "Next", and "And".

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pazimzadeh
Related: discussion of Zookal's plans to deliver college textbooks via drone.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6550765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6550765)

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Zoomla
The only way this seems plausible is with nuclear powered engine(s)

