In the future, I want a drone with a replicator to land and make the shipment of products right in front of me. :-P

The main reason we don't have drones deliver things is because the FAA bans it. No state or municipality can override the FAA, so we're all stuck until the feds change the law.

1. https://libjournals.mtsu.edu/index.php/jfee/article/download...

> We assume that operating costs for personnel, loading, and monitoring will be approximately the same per package for truck as for drone delivery.

but at least they included

> There are additional drone costs such as: setting-up and running the drone delivery stations, the investment in research and development, and lobbying the FAA. Other costs include: buildings and land associated with the drone stations, computers and monitoring software systems for drone flights, computer technicians and drone monitors on site, robotics engineers for maintenance and upgrades to drones on site, utility costs of running the building, logistics management team to oversee operations, potential insurance and legal fees associated with drones, and potential air and/or radio frequency rights for drones, etc. There is also the potential for legal costs in some of the following situations: drones are found operating in unauthorized airspace, drones are shot down by civilians, a drone lands in an unauthorized space, etc

There's also mention that the drones can only deliver up to 5lb packages.

Aside from electric vehicles some companies (DHL, Coolblue) also use electric bikes.

https://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wing-expands-drone-delivery...

https://twitter.com/zipline/status/1245333880930029570

They have been solving these problems operationally for years now.

Emergency medical supplies (the twitter mentions "Lifesaving deliveries by drone") is quite different than delivering packages. That you can get something up and running for lifesaving stuff is one thing. Doing the same for my 0.50 EUR AliExpress package is different though, I'm not going to be home. If it's lifesaving I'd imagine you need it asap and someone will ensure that they'll be waiting for the package.

Every family will have a drone “pet” with sole purpose if delivering Amazon stuff, in this case literally.

There's just no reason to waste the energy, the coordination effort or take on the risk.

I do agree though that they make a lot more sense than drones, for several reasons: (a) power consumption / mileage per charge (b) carrying capacity (c) safety in populated areas (d) privacy when flying by buildings (e) lack of suitable landing areas in urban centers (f) noise in residential areas.

Source: I am the co-founder of one and aware of internals of several others

Putting robots directly where people are creates way more unknowns than having them operate outside of the normal human space.

Or, more optimally, you would configure delivery windows and tell it when someone will be available and they schedule one or two delivery times in that window.

Legality: how high above your property do you own? Would a drone flying at 50 feet be trespassing? 100? 200?

Loss: how do you recover a crashed drone? Or one intentionally downed?

Range: how much power can you pack onboard without compromising payload capacity?

Payload capacity: how much can you reasonably lift?

Cost: dollar for dollar, is it more cost effective than trucks (even robotic ones)?

And so on.

Drones are loud. Incredibly loud.

Also it would seem it’s not an energy efficient way to deliver goods to people, but who knows. Paradoxically it would make sense for high value/low mass items like medicines (or narcotics too), but that would make them a more enticing target.

Delivering tacos or sushi on the other hand... maybe years hence.

Piloting the drones isn't the problem- the problem is logistics, noise, regulation, costs, etc.

But they're not stopping the program until June, by which time the shipping will likely have slowed dramatically. Maybe they're announcing it now to appease FedEx and UPS when they desperately need their help, and can just renege later.