Goods delivery by drones - it's happening

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MountainDude

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I think this is super cool, but am curious at what altitude these will fly, if they will have ADS-B OUT, how they will avoid each other, how do we avoid them, and how people will react to their crashes over homes (and childcare centers).
www.flyingmag.com

Zipline Drone Delivery Takes Flight in Texas With Walmart—for Free

Free service offers aerial transport of more than 65,000 products in 30 minutes or less, including in rain and strong winds.
www.flyingmag.com www.flyingmag.com
 
MountainDude said:
I think this is super cool, but am curious at what altitude these will fly, if they will have ADS-B OUT, how they will avoid each other, how do we avoid them, and how people will react to their crashes over homes (and childcare centers).
www.flyingmag.com

Zipline Drone Delivery Takes Flight in Texas With Walmart—for Free

Free service offers aerial transport of more than 65,000 products in 30 minutes or less, including in rain and strong winds.
www.flyingmag.com www.flyingmag.com
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An old helicopter launch pad near The Star where the Cowboys complex is up in Frisco has been doing that for over a year. I've got pics somewhere. I can't see it "taking off" everywhere, but they are still operating there last I checked.

Personal opinion is that they will have issues because they won't be viable in all conditions and at the end of the day, reliability will require fleets of humans. Kind of like expecting solar panels to take over all of our electricity needs.
 
I've been reading about this plan to use drones to remove trash from Mt Everest: https://gripped.com/news/giant-drones-to-carry-trash-off-mount-everest/?mc_cid=2298229c39

No idea how practical it will be, but the trash problem certainly needs to be addressed. They'll be loaded by climbers, the big advantage is that if successful it will eliminate the need for climbers to make multiple hazardous trips through the Khumba icefall to carry the junk out.
 
GaryM said:
I've been reading about this plan to use drones to remove trash from Mt Everest: https://gripped.com/news/giant-drones-to-carry-trash-off-mount-everest/?mc_cid=2298229c39

No idea how practical it will be, but the trash problem certainly needs to be addressed. They'll be loaded by climbers, the big advantage is that if successful it will eliminate the need for climbers to make multiple hazardous trips through the Khumba icefall to carry the junk out.
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No need for drones. Just load the trash on some plastic sleds, tie it down, and send it.
 
EdFred said:
No need for drones. Just load the trash on some plastic sleds, tie it down, and send it.
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um, just in case you were serious, I don't think unguided sled hurtling down any mountain is a good idea...
 
GaryM said:
I think discarded oxygen tanks make up most of the trash, by weight.
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I guess the climbers don't follow the "take only pictures, leave only footprints" concept of responsible camping. :-/
 
GaryM said:
I've been reading about this plan to use drones to remove trash from Mt Everest: https://gripped.com/news/giant-drones-to-carry-trash-off-mount-everest/?mc_cid=2298229c39

No idea how practical it will be, but the trash problem certainly needs to be addressed. They'll be loaded by climbers, the big advantage is that if successful it will eliminate the need for climbers to make multiple hazardous trips through the Khumba icefall to carry the junk out.
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What's the service ceiling on a DJI drone (at max weight) ?
 
One of my best friends got VERY wealthy when Google first decided to get into this 13 years ago. Like retire and collect warbirds wealthy. They brought his company in to do secret prototypes, then bought him out.
 
Been done before in many trials. Why did WalMart abandon Droneup? Cost? Liability? Speed?

I'd make sure my house had outside camera's to document the damage when one of these things falls on your house/car/property.
 
All the reasons really boil down to cost. Paying damages for dropping a drone on someone’s head is a cost. Paying fines for deviating from FARs is a cost. The overhead of making drone delivery an option is a cost. For a sufficiently large corporation, all these costs are fungible. I think people just don’t really want to pay the extra cost of this form of delivery compared with other options.

When my Amazon packages usually take 1-3 weeks for them to ship, the method of shipping is more or less moot.
 
Groundpounder said:
Maybe if they put a few full ones in the burn pile it would help.
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Help redistribute the trash all over the mountain, maybe.

iamtheari said:
When my Amazon packages usually take 1-3 weeks for them to ship, the method of shipping is more or less moot.
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1-3 weeks? From Amazon? Where are you, Mars? :o
 
flyingcheesehead said:
1-3 weeks? From Amazon? Where are you, Mars? :o
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Maybe I’m just ordering things they keep at the back of the warehouse. It’s quite common that I will order something that ships from Amazon and they won’t ship it for a week or longer. It doesn’t matter that I pay for Prime and it doesn’t matter which shipping method I choose. (As long as the USPS never gets involved. They add a minimum of 2 days to get anything from the truck to my post office box in their building, and I think the record was 6 months but that was just an important original document, not a bag of Amazon Basics tube socks.)

Sometimes they do better. For instance I just ordered some stuff last week and it might arrive by tomorrow. But I never order something from Amazon that I can’t do without for a month.

Oh, I forgot to answer your question. I don’t live on Mars, but I might retire there to be closer to the sea and good restaurants.
 
iamtheari said:
Maybe I’m just ordering things they keep at the back of the warehouse. It’s quite common that I will order something that ships from Amazon and they won’t ship it for a week or longer. It doesn’t matter that I pay for Prime and it doesn’t matter which shipping method I choose. (As long as the USPS never gets involved. They add a minimum of 2 days to get anything from the truck to my post office box in their building, and I think the record was 6 months but that was just an important original document, not a bag of Amazon Basics tube socks.)

Sometimes they do better. For instance I just ordered some stuff last week and it might arrive by tomorrow. But I never order something from Amazon that I can’t do without for a month.

Oh, I forgot to answer your question. I don’t live on Mars, but I might retire there to be closer to the sea and good restaurants.
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Are you paying attention to source when selecting?

Anything marked Prime is going to be quicker. Usually those are either stocked at an endpoint warehouse or the vendor has an agreement with Amazon. The drop shipped stuff from irregular vendors usually takes longer.

I live about 30 minutes from the Amazon air/ground hub at Lakeland FL. Most prime stuff is overnight, and sometimes same day.
 
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I really don't see a viable market for these things. Yeah its cool, cutting edge, whiz-bang, all that. Just think how many packages one UPS driver in one brown truck can accomplish in a shift. Think how many drones it would take to match that productivity. Do it reliably in rain, wind, snow. Just like all the fuss about EVOTL operations for personal transport. I don't see it ever working out from a business case.
 
Remember, a good marketing campaign can override any poor drone delivery performance. If you can market to 500 customers, you don't need perfect deliveries.
 
The business case is compelling, if you assume away some of the technical challenges. Which is more cost effective: a $500 autonomous drone, or a $50K van driven by a human? And which carries more risk: a 5 pound drone falling from the sky, or a delivery van running into a bus full of school kids because the van driver likes to smoke weed before his shift?

Jeff Bezos has the deepest pockets in the history of the Universe, and he operates a worldwide fleet of unhappy minimum wage drivers. And he looks like a Mike Myers parody of a Bond villain, right down to a fiancé who is more plastic than flesh. He is every personal injury lawyer's wet dream.

But "inevitable" does not necessarily mean "now" or "soon". The big players are all doing operational experimentation so that when the technology and infrastructure finally lines up to make it fully viable, they won't be caught flat footed.

IMO the biggest technical challenge is AI pilotage. Ain't there yet. If you gotta have a remote operator flying each drone, you don't save any labor cost. But that tech is rapidly advancing due to the war in Ukraine. Both sides are on track to procure more than a million drones this year, and many, many companies are vying for full autonomy as a counter-countermeasure for jamming.
 
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Ed Haywood said:
Are you paying attention to source when selecting?

Anything marked Prime is going to be quicker. Usually those are either stocked at an endpoint warehouse or the vendor has an agreement with Amazon. The drop shipped stuff from irregular vendors usually takes longer.

I live about 30 minutes from the Amazon air/ground hub at Lakeland FL. Most prime stuff is overnight, and sometimes same day.
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I’m pretty careful about choosing items marked Prime. Maybe the algorithm is that, if UPS can’t live up to a time commitment based on my location, they prioritize fulfilling orders that have a hope of keeping the old 2-day free commitment that came with a Prime membership.
 
MauleSkinner said:
Weather cancellations, beyond their control. Same excuse for ****ty service that the airlines use.
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As someone who works at a very large and very busy Airport weather delays are no joke. I see many many AC with lightning strikes. Thunderstorms and wind shear are not to be triffeled with.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Which is more cost effective: a $500 autonomous drone, or a $50K van driven by a human?
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You are forgetting infrastructure costs, lost equipment, and dozens of other costs

A driver sticks to known roads .. a drone has to worry about trees,flag poles, antennas on top of weather and vandalism.

If you think a drone is gonna cost only $500 you are not current on drone prices or performance.
 
pfarber said:
You are forgetting infrastructure costs, lost equipment, and dozens of other costs

A driver sticks to known roads .. a drone has to worry about trees,flag poles, antennas on top of weather and vandalism.

If you think a drone is gonna cost only $500 you are not current on drone prices or performance.
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That's a huge point as well. Our latest DJI purchase for the Fire Department, an off the shelf DJI with a thermal camera, close to 10k. I just went to an open house for the local Ag spraying drone dealer, $40-70k depending on size.

$500 doesn't get you anything more than a personal consumer grade drone these days.
 
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