

Drone delivery service - Jagannath
http://www.indiegogo.com/project-blue-sky

======
dotBen
Perhaps it's just a poor video for an otherwise awesome project, but it just
comes across as a load of disconnected ideas.

What's the 3D dome for? How does the drone delivery work? It has a social-good
and humanitarian angle - awesome, but I don't see how printing 3D statues and
a dome fit into that...

etc

I guess the video just left me wanting more explanation.

~~~
arialogistics
Y Combinator

My name is Arturo Pelayo, I am co-founder of ARIA (Autonomous Roadless
Intelligent Array, on the web here: www.Aria-Logistics.com). I want to explain
that we have been working with ReAllocate in this project since June
(<http://aria-logistics.com/reallocate-collaboration/>).

ARIA is an open source autonomous logistics infrastructure that leapfrogs
traditional road infrastructure and unlocks economic opportunity.

While the IndieGoGo video might appear to be disconnected, there is a flow to
all of them because we have been building them for over a year both ARIA on
its own by using open source UAVs and ReAllocate by trying to solve 'the last
mile' problem by building in-country capacity using retrofitted shipping
containers.

Back in June, both ARIA and ReAllocate saw an alignment as ReAllocate wanted
to do a drone project for Burning Man. Between both groups, we drafted an open
call through Chris Anderson's DIY Drones Community and ARIA also began the
process of creating awareness of this collaboration on the website.

ARIA also sought out media coverage through contacts at Wired, Fast Company
and other publications. Fast Company published an article about it over a week
ago and you can read it here:

[http://fastcoexist.com/1680223/a-real-internet-of-things-
for...](http://fastcoexist.com/1680223/a-real-internet-of-things-for-the-
developing-world-and-burning-man)

You will see that the Fast Company article above focuses on ARIA as a company
that began last Summer when four of ARIA's cofounders met at Singularity
University for the 11-week Graduate Studies Program. During that time worked
on 'Matternet': a network of autonomous vehicles that could be used to deliver
high-value goods to remote regions of the world with no roads.

The Graduate Studies Program focuses on teaching technologies that are
changing very quickly, are dropping in cost, are following Moore's Law and
that are being integrated into the mainstream (these are called 'exponential
technologies').

The comments so far in Y Combinator refer to a lot of "disconnected ideas". 3D
printing is expensive at the moment but we believe it will become so cheap in
the next decade that it will become obliquitous to the point that farmers in
remote areas of the planet could request from their cellphones replacement
parts for a broken tractor just by taking a picture of the broken part and an
Artificial Intelligence component would analyze the image, determine what is
broken and send to a 3D printer in a shipping container a request for it to be
printed, billed to the customer and sent to their dynamic GPS location on
their cellphone (sound familiar??) -- this is where the analog was realized
and we joined efforts to build the project together.

Shipping containers are being considered also by ARIA since last year when the
concept was first conceived as they are very easily found worldwide and are
extremely cheap. There are over 600 million containers being used each year
for the global transport of raw materials and products across the planet, ARIA
saw shipping containers as the building block of a standardized structure that
could be used as a ground station to host vehicles and recharge batteries.
Because these containers would be located in areas of no roads, they would
have to use renewable energy sources to charge batteries that power the UAVs
that fly in a 10Km radius.

The network of shipping containers thus becomes also a distributed micro-grid
that is smart and that can route packages from one station to another. Think
of it as The Pony Express 2.0 .

As you can see, there are many ideas being put together and we are working
hard at this at ARIA.

~~~
bambax
> _The comments so far in Y Combinator..._

You're confusing Y Combinator with Hacker News; they're related but different.

The video is poor because it's inconsistent; it starts by saying that
Reallocate aims to "solve specific humanitarian issues" and then explains that
the first project is to build statues of people attending Burning Man and
delivering them via what appears to be AR Drones from Parrot.

Really? That's the most pressing humanitarian issue they could come up with?

There's nothing wrong with building 3D sculptures of people at Burning Man;
but it's bizarre to call this a humanitarian endeavor -- even if "in the next
decade" this technology may be used to order parts for "broken tractors".

Also, the speaker in the video talks too fast and drops her voice at the end
of sentences, making her speech hard to hear / difficult to engage with.

~~~
monkeytests
>Really? That's the most pressing humanitarian issue they could come up with?

I can't help but feel like you're being intentionally obtuse. Nowhere in that
video did it claim that the Burning Man test run was a pressing humanitarian
issue. Its clear this is just to raise awareness/funds in support of the
longer-term goal. The "no pressure" field-test aspect of it probably doesn't
hurt either.

~~~
arialogistics
monkeytests,

The 3D statues are perfect analogs for possible delivery services. Many
companies in the healthcare sector have begun looking at 3D printing for
building pills and prevent counterfeit medicine which is also a huge issue
worldwide.

------
gee_totes
Hate to be a negative nelly here, but what really turned me off about this
project is how narcissistic it seemed. Offering folks at burning man
autonomous robots that will deliver miniature statues of themselves seems the
furthest thing from something that could actually help the world.

And then to top it off the whole thing is being made into a TV show? Count me
out.

~~~
stcredzero
_> Offering folks at burning man autonomous robots that will deliver miniature
statues of themselves seems the furthest thing from something that could
actually help the world._

That's not the end goal. If you can deliver a tchotchke to someone, you can
also deliver a bottle of pills, documents, cellphone batteries, a Raspberry
Pi, or small craft items. Remember that lots of places in the 3rd world don't
have roads. Lots of places aren't even very passable by foot in parts of the
year. Having any kind of infrastructure at all is a win and will enable better
healthcare and more economic activity.

What better way to _test_ such a service than to send trivialities to 1st and
0th worlders? No one's going to die if they don't get their statue, and they
might even donate to the cause anyhow. Someone might die without their pills,
or their business might take a big hit without a part or a battery. Better to
practice on the Burners than on people who actually need it.

~~~
gee_totes
Thanks for the response, it really got me thinking. I was about to tear down
your critique bit by bit -- _you think healthcare is all about delivering
pills?_ \-- _what do you know about roads in the 3rd world_ \-- _etc, etc_ \--
but then I realized something vis a vis the 3rd world road analogy.

Why aren't the positioning the autonomous drone delivery network as something
that is more useful for the first world? I think running drone networks to
deliver medicine and small good is merely a stopgap measure to building roads.
And once roads are built, I feel that real economic growth can finally
commence.

<aside>In fact, having this drone delivery network in the 3rd world may retard
the development of roads; roads will only be needed to transport big things,
and people can get by with continuous delivery of small things via autonomous
drones, thus it will take longer for roads to be built because there will be
less demand.</aside>

If this dialectic between roads and these drones exists the 3rd world (or
rather, our idealized 3rd world with no roads), what about the first? Couldn't
these drones be used to reduce the number of delivery trucks, as small, light
items would simply be delivered by drone? Think of the reduction in carbon
emissions and the reduced cost of road maintenance that would be the result of
shrinking fleets of delivery trucks.

The above scenario, I feel, would make for a better pitch video. Showing me
how this network can be scaled to improve the environment (and roads) around
me is going to make me much more likely to open my wallet than telling me a
story about some imaginary farmer with a broken tractor part that can be
printed up with a 3D printer.

~~~
stcredzero
_> I was about to tear down your critique bit by bit -- you think healthcare
is all about delivering pills? -- what do you know about roads in the 3rd
world_

It's good you didn't because the 1st one would be putting words in my mouth,
and it's apparent I know a little bit more about roads in the 3rd world than
you do. (I've actually traveled and worked in parts of the world where there
are no roads whatsoever, no electricity/gas/landlines/mobile whatsoever,
locals have to take a boat 2 miles on the river to get their mail, and planes
have to land on the beach.)

 _> I think running drone networks to deliver medicine and small good is
merely a stopgap measure to building roads. And once roads are built, I feel
that real economic growth can finally commence._

You should read the Matternet site. That is exactly the idea. It's a good
hand-up idea. Once you enable healthcare, government, and economic activity,
you enable the local population to build and maintain real infrastructure.
Drones are interesting precisely because they are potentially low cost and
"better than nothing."

 _> In fact, having this drone delivery network in the 3rd world may retard
the development of roads; roads will only be needed to transport big things,
and people can get by with continuous delivery of small things via autonomous
drones, thus it will take longer for roads to be built because there will be
less demand._

Unlikely. Drones are simply better than nothing. Once you have more economic
activity, then you have the local economic base for real infrastructure, like
roads.

------
Qworg
Sadly, this is too filled with over the top platitudes to even be realistic.

Drones, IMAX domes, and 3D printers have nothing to do with building
sustainable businesses or Burning Man.

If anything, this is funding an art project so that the artists can go to
Burning Man for free. =/

------
sargun
I hope they're going to open up the delivery technology, either to allow
someone to commoditize it, and make it available to consumers (for taco
delivery), or other noble causes, like rescue, etc..

Additionally, I'm somewhat curious as to what their plan is on Oakland.

~~~
ajays
I can see drone delivery to be quite useful in far-flung communities (Alaska,
Australian Outback, Africa, etc.), to deliver critical stuff (medicines,
critical components, etc.). Assuming the drone doesn't use a ton of fuel, it
could literally be a life-saver.

Very excited to learn about this project, and hoping it literally takes off.

~~~
arialogistics
ajays,

Here is a video we put together a year ago while at Singularity University
when Matternet was a concept and before there were two groups.

<https://vimeo.com/28247681>

------
narrator
>Your only responsibility is to return the transponder and tell us your story
for our documentary.

You can't give your GPS transponder back to the drone?

------
eco
Surely they mean Burning Man 2013. Burning Man starts 6 days after this
fundraiser ends and I don't seem much here to show they have anything even
close to a working version.

~~~
nickmolnar2
Nope, this is all coming together in the next two weeks. Those Reallocators
are madmen, and know how to get things done.

------
thechut
How are addressing the fact that autonomous drones are not yet zoned for
commercial use? As far as I know accepting money for delivery of these 3D
printed statues constitutes non-recreational use, Burning man or not.

I'm genuinely curious, does this not apply? Do you have some kind of special
exemption?

~~~
waterlesscloud
I suspect this won't even make the top 10 of "regulations ignored at Burning
Man".

~~~
thechut
Very valid point, just curious about what there plans are.

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joeguilmette
This doesn't appear to be at all related to TacoCopters which was set up by
Star Simpson and Scott Torborg.

~~~
neurotech1
"No, Tacocopter is nothing more than a product concept created by Star
Simpson, an MIT grad who stumbled into the limelight in 2007 after being
arrested for wearing a hoax explosive device comprised of a circuit board and
green LEDs." - wired.com (<http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/03/qa-with-
tacocopter/>)

------
duncan
but will it also deliver tacos?!

~~~
Hilyin
3D printed taco in the shape of you.

~~~
lucian303
Can it be printed using human meat? Seems like the only way to do such a thing
right.

~~~
slurgfest
Gross. Just figure out how to culture the stuff economically and you can be
the first.

~~~
stcredzero
I bet someone could market yuppies their own flesh. It would be the ultimate
"me" food item.

