Amazon Delivery Drones

Thought it was a good interview. I liked the statement that the drones could not be in service until 2016 ,to get FAA regs changed. Wishfull thinking. He did stae it was probably many years down the road.
 
Yeah I watched it. I like to see how they navigate 30 kt winds, snow, rain, wires, birds, trees and EMI issues. With a 10 mile range it would seem that an electric car loaded with multiple packages would be far more efficient.
 
I saw it and I wondered if it would end up being a post.

I don't see why the FAA wouldn't allow it as long as there is an altitude limit. I was just wondering about where they would drop the package. If they just leave a package in someone's driveway it would get stolen in a lot of places.
 
Quite a lot of variables involved. Do you route direct or do you follow roads? If you go direct how do you account for any buildings between A & B. Bezos is not the only one contemplating this. It was either Papa Johns or Dominos that was looking into it also. How many of these can be in the air at the same time without issues?
 
So many problems... how does it know about power/telephone lines, tree branches, sprinklers, and pitbulls.
 
CT4ME said:
So many problems... how does it know about power/telephone lines, tree branches, sprinklers, and pitbulls.
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I think the terminal delivery issue (doorstep or middle of the driveway?) is the hard part. GPS can get it there, and machine vision combined with some creative programming can avoid the oopses. But where to put the thing is the problem.

As is your neighbor with a 12 gauge shooting down your pizza so he can eat it himself.
 
kyleb said:
I think the terminal delivery issue (doorstep or middle of the driveway?) is the hard part. GPS can get it there, and machine vision combined with some creative programming can avoid the oopses. But where to put the thing is the problem.

As is your neighbor with a 12 gauge shooting down your pizza so he can eat it himself.
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"Hey, Ma I just killed us one of the drone thingys for supper"

I can't see this happening. If there is a system failure you have drones raining up to 5lbs missiles onto people below.
 
First thing I thought was how much liability insurance will they have to carry? Second thought was, how many people are going to see if they can jam/override the GPS signal for fun, or illegal profit.

Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express
 
People will find a way to figure out what's inside them and then shoot them down. It would be quite lucrative
 
Everskyward said:
I saw it and I wondered if it would end up being a post.

I don't see why the FAA wouldn't allow it as long as there is an altitude limit. I was just wondering about where they would drop the package. If they just leave a package in someone's driveway it would get stolen in a lot of places.
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Drop it in my driveway in a snowstorm I'll run it over. Ha.
 
As my parents used to say....


" It is all fun and games, till someone loses an eye"....

Liability alone will shoot down this idea after the first law suit over an injury...:yes:
 
He did say that the biggest expense of resources will be to develop redundant systems for them so they don't fall out of the sky, etc. I'm guessing security is included in that effort.

If you're only serving a 10nm radius, you can spend the time to do some intricate 'airway' mapping for routes as needed. Heck, get an aerial photo and pay a room of college interns to do mapping of landing/delivery points for every location within the 10nm radius and you're done.
 
This is a sort of retail "moonshot" problem, I doubt he has any intentions of /actually/ doing this... but rather showing people/investors that Amazon is forward thinking and wants to stay on the cutting edge (plus file a patent on the idea, just incase someone else does it).
 
teamcoltra said:
This is a sort of retail "moonshot" problem, I doubt he has any intentions of /actually/ doing this... but rather showing people/investors that Amazon is forward thinking and wants to stay on the cutting edge (plus file a patent on the idea, just incase someone else does it).
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I don't know. I could see this working with a very targeted geographic area and a very targeted product offering. They've already figured out how to optimize their storage capacity in a warehouse. Build the WH vertically in a downtown area and offer an "Amazon NOW!" group of products based on previous buying patterns of the people within the 10nm radius of your WH. Might be able to tie it in with their current home grocery delivery and you might have a marketable solution.
 
I work next door to their newest fulfillment center (DuPont, WA). I'd have to draw a 10 mile radius circle around the location to see where they could deliver from there, but I doubt it would make it to my house. Gimmick, more than anything. They'd better keep them low as we already have to mark the radio masts on top of our buildings due to proximity to Gray Army Airfield at JBLM.
 
Ghery said:
I work next door to their newest fulfillment center (DuPont, WA). I'd have to draw a 10 mile radius circle around the location to see where they could deliver from there, but I doubt it would make it to my house. Gimmick, more than anything. They'd better keep them low as we already have to mark the radio masts on top of our buildings due to proximity to Gray Army Airfield at JBLM.
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Speaking of Military implications......

What happens during a POTUS TFR ????
 
Cant wait to order a $5 HDMI cable complete with free drone.

This is a horrible idea.
 
Oh great, another product from Cyberdyne Systems. I keep seeing more and more of their products lately. This will be quite viable when Cyberdyne is able to fine tune the AI and build a good sky network for their drones. ;)
 
This is in your future:

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I just can't see it happening. No matter how many redundancies you build in you'd still have drones falling from the sky. If it's possible for something to go wrong, at some point it will. Especially when you're shipping 300 pkgs every second of every day.

I remember him being on the cover of Newsweek a decade ago and wondering just how big Amazon would get. It's hard to believe it's growing faster now than even back then.

The only thing that irked me a little was his attitude about running over other smaller businesses w/o a care in the world. It would be hard to feel sorry for him if he were hit by a bus crossing the road. "Gee, Jeff, bad things happen to people all the time. You need to be more resilient."
 
Sit on my porch with a shotgun and get free stuff from Amazon.
 
As people start shooting these drones, Cyberdyne creates the T-Series AI to protect the drones. In the meantime, Amazon and Cyberdyne sky network improves to the point where 30 minutes can be guaranteed to your porch or backyard. People will refer to the delivery network as "Skynet".
 
Forgive me for the ignorance, but if they can find people who shoot a laser at an airplane at night, wouldn't they be able to find out who shot down their drone? Or who stole it?
 
jpower said:
Forgive me for the ignorance, but if they can find people who shoot a laser at an airplane at night, wouldn't they be able to find out who shot down their drone? Or who stole it?
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Hire mules, just like the drug industry. Someone else shoots down and gathers, multiple layers from them to the kingpin. ;)

(Watched another episode of Breaking Bad on Netflix this weekend. See? Educational!)
 
Oh another problem added to the ones I listed, density altitude. 5 lb payloads out west will end up being significantly less.
 
ARFlyer said:
"Hey, Ma I just killed us one of the drone thingys for supper"

I can't see this happening. If there is a system failure you have drones raining up to 5lbs missiles onto people below.
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It's actually quite easy to create autonomous drones to do this sort of thing that don't depend on "the system" at all. A few electric motors, an ArduPilot board and some freely available software, and you can have your very own.

There will not be a single-computer-crashes-and-drones-rain-down scenario.
 
johnrweb said:
Oh great, another product from Cyberdyne Systems. I keep seeing more and more of their products lately. This will be quite viable when Cyberdyne is able to fine tune the AI and build a good sky network for their drones. ;)
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No, we changed the future.

And yes, I rented that movie on August 29th, 1997. Luckily, it didn't "feel pretty f-in real" to me!
 
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