Amazon Prime Air- Drone Delivery

G

groveChuck

U-matic Member
The eventual goal is to deliver packages weighing 5 pounds or less within half an hour.
"One day, seeing Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road," Amazon writes.
Amazon also says that this isn't the final design for Prime Air and that the retailer is testing as many as a dozen different design prototypes intended for different uses...

...On a newly updated Amazon Prime Air landing page, Amazon shares an updated Prime Air drone design.
Alongside that update goes a pair of new videos, one starring controversial former "Top Gear" star and recent Amazon Studios employee Jeremy Clarkson,
detailing what Amazon Prime Air will be like in real life.

The drones are being developed in research centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel, Amazon says.
Recently, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the UK was a likely candidate for being one of the first places to start seeing Amazon Prime Air drones take flight.
Click to expand...

http://www.businessinsider.com/new-amazon-prime-air-delivery-drone-2015-11


This one looks like a VTOL heli/plane.
Maybe tomorrow is Air Tuesday???
 
someone on "another forum" swears up and down Amazon is full of sheyitt, that this whole idea is way cost ineffective and otherwise unfeasible and that basically this will never, ever happen.
 
There are a lot of questions to answer to make this work. Manned or unmanned? Where will they land? your front lawn? Kids playing... Apartments? How do you know the right person got the package? Target practice...

I think the retail store model is the most efficient but they want to push the envelope for speed and convenience. The internet is very convenient for the customer but millions of individual boxes moving around the country is not very efficient compared to large truck deliveries once and a while to stores. But folks want it now! these days.
 
Imagine if this were a person making the delivery instead of a drone.

That person would pick up a single package at a distribution center, take it to a specific address. Then he would come all the way back to the distribution center, pick up another package, and take that one to an address. Again and again he goes all the way back to the distribution center to get another package and take it to another address.

That's exactly what a drone would have to do, assuming it's going to deliver more than one package in a day. And although the drone eliminates a person traveling from the distribution center to the address, it doesn't eliminate the need for a person to control the drone. So it's still one guy delivering one package at a time. Nevermind the fact that the drone has a weight limit, a distance limit, etc.

How is this in any way efficient?

Also, where is this drone going to be dispatched from? It can't come all the way from Amazon's central warehouse to my house. So it's going to have to be based locally, somewhere fairly near me. That means whatever I order still has to be shipped down the line to that local drone base before it's put on a drone to fly the half a mile or so to my house.

I just don't see any logical, reasonable way this could work.
 
That is what I mean, manned as in flying the drone compared to a computer controlled GPS route. And my point is illustrated by David above.
 
Did you all notice the paper target (with the Amazon logo on it) that had to be placed in the yard for the drone to find its landing spot? The mom picks it up and brings it in when she retrieves the box from the front yard. This places the responsibility for picking the landing zone on the recipient of the package. It would have to come with a long list of rules for correct placement. So many feet from buildings, trees, overhead wires, etc. Will all the people who might receive a package be able to follow all the restrictions every single time? If I picked the spot in my back yard that is the farthest from all the trees and structures, it would be directly under the power and phone lines running from the pole out back into my house. Would everyone think about that, every single time? What if I place the target out there and it blows into my neighbor's yard while waiting for the drone? Or if I really wanted to be mischievous, I could put it up on the sloping roof of my garage. The drone might be able to touch down there, but probably wouldn't be able to take off again. I know many a teenager who would get a kick out of hacking the system like that. Whose responsibility is it if the drone gets damaged on landing or stuck in a location that it can't fly out of? Are they going to charge me to repair it? At the very least it means dispatching a truck to pick it up, which instantly wipes out the time and cost advantages of automated delivery. From all my experience with model aircraft and such, I don't see this being such a terribly rare occurrence.

Can this thing operate in rain, snow, high winds, or in the dark? (I'm betting not.) What happens if it flies into an unexpected thunderstorm on the way to my house? Will I have to pay for the damages, aside from not getting my package?

But the big thing is, if the drone has, say, a 15-mile range, then everyone needs to be within 7.5 miles of an Amazon warehouse stocked with all the stuff you might want to order. They list probably millions of items online. At best, they could offer only a tiny fraction of these deployed around the world for quick drone delivery. The video portrayed a very carefully selected case study where the kid needed a popular item in what is apparently a common size. What if she had extra big feet or insisted on the fluorescent orange version that wasn't in stock? The attraction of Amazon as a shopping destination rests largely on their enormous selection of goods and the hard-to-find and specialized items they sell. I am much less likely to order from them if the item is available in a local store anyway.

Or imagine if the kid had needed a baseball bat instead of a pair of shoes. Oops, sorry, too big for the drone to handle.

So -- technically it's kind of cool, but they're glossing over the economics and many unfavorable practical details in this promo.

- Greg
 
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Greg Smith said:
Did you all notice the paper target (with the Amazon logo on it) that had to be placed in the yard for the drone to find its landing spot? The mom picks it up and brings it in when she retrieves the box from the front yard. This places the responsibility for picking the landing zone on the recipient of the package. It would have to come with a long list of rules for correct placement. So many feet from buildings, trees, overhead wires, etc. Will all the people who might receive a package be able to follow all the restrictions every single time? If I picked the spot in my back yard that is the farthest from all the trees and structures, it would be directly under the power and phone lines running from the pole out back into my house. Would everyone think about that, every single time? What if I place the target out there and it blows into my neighbor's yard while waiting for the drone? Or if I really wanted to be mischievous, I could put it up on the sloping roof of my garage. The drone might be able to touch down there, but probably wouldn't be able to take off again. I know many a teenager who would get a kick out of hacking the system like that. Whose responsibility is it if the drone gets damaged on landing or stuck in a location that it can't fly out of? Are they going to charge me to repair it? At the very least it means dispatching a truck to pick it up, which instantly wipes out the time and cost advantages of automated delivery. From all my experience with model aircraft and such, I don't see this being such a terribly rare occurrence.

Can this thing operate in rain, snow, high winds, or in the dark? (I'm betting not.) What happens if it flies into an unexpected thunderstorm on the way to my house? Will I have to pay for the damages, aside from not getting my package?

But the big thing is, if the drone has, say, a 15-mile range, then everyone needs to be within 7.5 miles of an Amazon warehouse stocked with all the stuff you might want to order. They list probably millions of items online. At best, they could offer only a tiny fraction of these deployed around the world for quick drone delivery. The video portrayed a very carefully selected case study where the kid needed a popular item in what is apparently a common size. What if she had extra big feet or insisted on the fluorescent orange version that wasn't in stock? The attraction of Amazon as a shopping destination rests largely on their enormous selection of goods and the hard-to-find and specialized items they sell. I am much less likely to order from them if the item is available in a local store anyway.

Or imagine if the kid had needed a baseball bat instead of a pair of shoes. Oops, sorry, too big for the drone to handle.

So -- technically it's kind of cool, but they're glossing over the economics and many unfavorable practical details in this promo.

- Greg
Click to expand...

winner winner chicken dinner
 
But I do think there is a feasible future for this. It may not be tomorrow. But technology and automation is improving an insane amount.

In certain major areas and cities, a warehouse stocked with the most common and popular items could free up a ton of traffic. AMazon could cut out the middle man in delivery which could help pay for the drones themselves. A fleet of fully automated drones... 3000+ in a city... with advanced digitial tech to block out bad weather times with up to minute forecast data, self regulating in terms of air traffic, pre-designated landing zones or hubs for places like apartments where you pick up from the main office, etc.

In the longer term, this just makes sense. And it's pretty cool. But before its truly useful, practical, and common its going to need time, tech, iteration, and trial and error. I think it's a way offs. I do think in 10-15 years this will be insanely common.
 
I think this could happen, but it all comes down to dollars and cents. If it saves money or makes money then it's probably inevitable. I actually think we're more likely to see it in rural areas than in big cities first.
 
Sharks with friggin' laser beams on their heads.

This is an unnecessarily elaborate method that will never happen, but who's real purpose is to gain attention for the people proposing it so that we'd all talk about it...oh damn. They just got us.
PT Barnum style marketing for the 21st century.
 
Where it might make sense would be in delivering to remote areas. A blimp mothership will be laden with cargo and the worker bee drones will fly to station and pick up a load to be delivered and refuel.
 
filmguy123 said:
But I do think there is a feasible future for this. It may not be tomorrow. But technology and automation is improving an insane amount.

In certain major areas and cities, a warehouse stocked with the most common and popular items could free up a ton of traffic. AMazon could cut out the middle man in delivery which could help pay for the drones themselves. A fleet of fully automated drones... 3000+ in a city... with advanced digitial tech to block out bad weather times with up to minute forecast data, self regulating in terms of air traffic, pre-designated landing zones or hubs for places like apartments where you pick up from the main office, etc.

In the longer term, this just makes sense. And it's pretty cool. But before its truly useful, practical, and common its going to need time, tech, iteration, and trial and error. I think it's a way offs. I do think in 10-15 years this will be insanely common.
Click to expand...


This is as likely to happen as flying cars which have been predicted for at least 70 years. Existing and working well for everyday use are two different things.
 
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