Rather, a one-time demonstration of a quadcopter flying from the restaurant to an open rooftop. It tackles none of the problems of actually delivering products via drone in a city, namely, flight safety, navigation, and delivering to actual apartments which are not likely to have nice open rooftops.
As an ad for the pizza company, it works well though given how much this video seems to have been shared.
> As an ad for the pizza company, it works well though given how much this video seems to have been shared.
I was exhibiting at a UAV conference back in November, at there was a guy from Hootsuite exhibiting for the conference next door.
He spent quite some time trying to convince me that we should be working with pizza companies on an advertising campaign involving UAV delivered pizza. He was right, it's a good 'viral' ad idea.
Well, to be fair, they also flew past someone playing cricket, chowpatty and what I think was byculla. That's a fairly circuitous route, but I guess they didn't want the pizza to be too hot when it landed.
Straight to the point my friend. I completely agree with you!
Also there was no demonstration of they input their data in an automated system that guides the drone through a GPS... It could just be them guiding it with a remote control just to create the Ad.
As alphakappa[0] says[1], it's just a one-off demo that doesn't show solutions to any of the real problems. It damn near hit that lamp-post, bizarrely flew under an arch, and, all-in-all, it didn't seem automated in any real sense.
From the GPS/Compass mount and the flashing LED I think its a pretty safe bet that it's a NAZA flight controller, which doesn't offer any autonomy (beyond stabilisation and GPS assisted position hold). So someone is flying it by remote control, like any RC aircraft.
People often worry about future visual/noise pollution due to drones. It seems realistic to assume that drones will eventually be as common of a sight as cars, or at least as common as seeing a plane. They're very useful in a variety of contexts, and history has shown that useful things will eventually become widespread.
Personally, I'm undecided about the visual/noise pollution issue. On one hand, I can't wait to live in the future. On the other hand I can see how it might become a problem, especially if they're very noisy and the drones are flying at night.
Another problem we'll have initially is safety. Drones might pretty cool and useful, until one drops from they sky and mauls pedestrians or vehicles.
So, at least in areas with a lot of people, the same places where small drones can be very useful, there needs to be quite a large built in safety. This means encrypted communication for drone control, resilience for radio jamming, quite a lot of built in autonomous abilities to handle anomalities. And probably some big physical changes to lower potential damage. Don't underestimate the damage small fast spinning propellers can do.
Initially this might mean drones either get banned, or get banned after the 1. incident, slowing down adoption and increasing cost to make them safer.
I think both can easily be addressed by having flight corridors - much akin to virtual roads in the sky. It does take away some of the freedom / versatility / ability to go as the crow flies; but would ensure a degree of safety / sanity.
I think it shouldn't be impossible to establish a protocol for drones nearing each other to avoid collision and restricted zones. Of course, they'll all need to be equipped with a parachute and probably other forms of emergency damage control as well.
EDIT: the important damage to control would be that of citizens on the ground. I'm not suggesting drones should prioritize their own safety.
"Sense and avoid" is the current holy grail of UAV research.
Restricted zones have some interesting effects. DJI, a Chinese multirotor manufacturer, recently introduced 'no-fly zones' around airports for their ultra-consumer-level uav, the phantom 2. An unfortunate side effect, in the UK at least, is you are now unable to fly your phantom 2 in areas where it is perfectly legal to do so. I believe this limitation also effects where you can place waypoints on their more advanced autopilots.
They also prevent you flying over or near Tienanmen square...
It's just a viral video... India passed a law a little more than a year ago banning the use of any aerial device in Indian airspace by civilians .... Apparently something to do with security and privacy
Even if someone is flying it remotely, this would beat all the conventional delivery times hands down plus energy efficiency. Well worth pursuing in my opinion.
Not necessarily. How fast does a drone fly - will it always be faster than a moped, especially on a short, direct route? Also, more significantly, what's the maximum weight a drone can realistically carry? A moped can carry several pizzas at once for delivery to multiple addresses. Plus 'awkward' orders (litre bottle of soda?) aren't really catered for by drone, as far as I can tell.
Not totally dismissing the technology - drones obviously have great future potential and, hopefully, are ultimately far better for our environment - but not convinced that takeaway delivery is a suitable use case.
In an urban area? I doubt it. Sure, the pizza delivery guy has to deal with car traffic, obstacles, and pedestrians. But the last 100 meters s/he has to enter a PIN to get into my building. Then has to be buzzed in. Finally has to scale 4 floors.
The UAV that can do all of that hasn't been engineered yet and won't be cheaper than a part-time college student.
At this stage UAV propulsion is quite primitive. Their fixed-pitch blades don't compensate with changes in the environment well. While this is not a problem for small hobby/camera drones large, cargo carrying drones will have real problems compensating on a windy day.
The collective-pitch mechanisms in modern helicopters and VTOL are marvels of engineering (read $$$). The reason they are used is to allow large lifting bodies to change thrust without changing rotational velocity.
Right at the end after the qc delivers the pizza and takes off, the shot pretends to be from a camera on the qc itself, but the shadow of the qc remains fixed size and sharpness on the terrace. Looked doctored to me.
Seriously? Don't ever go by India media. as mentioned by other it is just an ad. In reality people will throw stone at drone eat pizza and give the parts to their children to play
People may call it "ad".
People may criticize the law.
People may criticize other peoples.
But its a huge step forward to compete with international markets.
Where is the step forward? The drone requires a skilled pilot to fly it. The drone cannot knock on doors. It cannot navigate stair cases. The recipient is inconvenienced and must stand in an open place to receive the pizza.
This is going to come off as abrasive (out of context it sounds pretty bad), but:
I've never understood why progress should be sacrificed because 'someone loses a job.'
Idealistically, this indicates a problem with society - that people have to keep toiling away at automatable jobs for the sake of earning enough to live on.
Practically, this is going to happen at some point sooner or later once it becomes commercially profitable to do so and enough players are in the market.
Some of the greatest inventions have come out of the most meaningless original intentions. To play devil's advocate, maybe using drones for food delivery could eventually lead to finer-grained drone control - surgeries might very well be drone-assisted in the future!
Not trying to be flippant, honestly, but you'll understand when it's you that loses the job.
Also, the folks who lose their jobs inevitably feel that the automated/offshored/whatever replacement for their artisanal skills and loving care just doesn't deliver as good an end result, and so it's one more sign of the world going to hell in a handcart as everything races to the bottom.
Oh noes, robots are stealing our jobs. I wonder how did we ever gotten off from hand picked cottons, horse-n-buggy, and all that time-consuming manual labor of olds.
How did a luddite ended up on a tech forum anyway? Did someone fixed the irony device? He could've at least waited to read this news from the good old newspaper to support his local economy.
Many objections to ideas around social benefits are not around the practicality of it, but whether non-citizens could 'unjustly' get it. It makes sense from a branding point of view, at least in the American & Western European political milieu.
As an ad for the pizza company, it works well though given how much this video seems to have been shared.