The truck wouldn't need to slow down (let alone stop), multiple drones would give high utilization, and you could further optimize delivery routes by "crow flying" to houses that aren't even on the same street.
https://www.inverse.com/article/43043-ready-player-one-drone...
- that book was set in a shitty gig economy dystopia, even if the main character managed to personally get rich in the end
- that book was fucking terrible and it's frankly embarrassing that grown adults make reference to it in a positive manner
You still avoid the inefficient stop-and-go driving and the time-wasting "last 100 feet" walk. Sure it's not as superior in rural areas vs suburban, but with low enough overhead you could still beat the traditional truck.
Naturally if the drone gear cost millions of dollars and took up half the truck, then I'd agree it wouldn't be worth it. In reality I don't think that's the tradeoff though.
UPS demoed an interesting "roof mounted" hardware approach (ignoring the rest of the operational depiction): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYBu2glKHTA
Can you share why you think it makes sense cost wise?
A truck gets that for free via tyres and tarmac.
Air travel makes sense for high-value and time-sensitive payloads, most especially passengers, but also communications (airmail delivery was, and remains, a significant revenue source for airlines).
Fixed-wing drones (as Zipline uses in Rwanda) are more efficient than rotary craft, as forward velocity generates lift, though at a cost of being unable to hover, which makes point delivery to locations lacking a landing strip (or other capture device) more challenging. Zipine utilises parachutes (and lightweight cargo) for its deliveries. Pivot-rotor craft (which Zipline seems to be experimenting with for urban deliveries) make hovering more viable whilst preserving the efficiency of fixed-wing flight.
I still see this as an option with very limited applicability.
(I'm not being sarcastic. "Why not both?" thinking is powerful!)
Somewhere years ago I have a chat log where I describe the whole thing as imagined, including the phrase "print out helipad_qr.pdf and tape it to your driveway" as part of the process. ;)
- a second person (pay + benefits + training)
- drones
- helipad
- vehicle idle time for loading the drones
is more expensive than one just driving the boxes around.
You're describing the total cost and ignoring the larger amount of packages being delivered.
Cost per package drops.
At that point you have reached human peak efficiency and then the only thing you can do is build a self driving delivery van with an integrated crane/robot arm to operate the locker.
Self driving is hard. Building a robot arm that inserts packages sideways into a locker doesn't appear as difficult. The post office can dictate the package formats and add visual markers to make it easier for the robot to grab the right side.
Just put the mailbox so the postman reaches it from the driver seat window.
No SaaS, apps, drones or VC money needed.
The truth is that the wave of “imminent drone delivery” mania was always just marketing, and wasn’t going to make sense except in extremely limited scenarios.
I don't remember seeing this demo, but considering it is exactly what I imagined and it's a demonstration from 6 years ago, maybe I did.
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCnpxmhWRuw and https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/drone-regulation-ir...
3. https://dronelife.com/2023/05/08/manna-drone-delivery-flies-...
(The prospect of delivery drones is silly, but whatever it is fun to think about).
A lone driver might get paid X $/hour but in a rural area, only reach a single house with his truck, whereas the same driver might make 10x deliveries in the same time period in an urban area. And optimally, you'd have one drone pilot controlling multiple drones at the same time with each one taking less time than a car.
I'm guessing the biggest cost here isn't fuel or energy, it's the staffing.
That would make sense if this was some incredibly capital-intense thing to develop and enjoyed immense economies of scale. But I don't see why that would be the case. Surely there are many thousands of towns each with tens of thousands of single-family homes that are sufficiently far from an airport and currently served by daily package deliveries via automobile. Unless we're considering every tiny community airport.
Most new town homes have rooftop decks (because Seattle doesn’t get much snow), why can’t they land on those?
https://b4ufly.aloft.ai/?lat=47.124171412997555&long=-122.39...
4. Payloads on flying things have severe weight and volume limitations. This limits what you can deliver to things that are small and light.
5. An autonomous drone represents an opportunity for theft or interference. See the drone coming, then: steal the goods when it delivers, interfere with its GPS and force it into an error mode that lands the drone, etc. You don't even need to be at the destination.
6. Multicopters, the devices most people think of when they think drones, have terrible range and payload capacity. The flight mode is akin to helicopters, "beat the air into submission". On the upside, they can hover on the spot. In contrast, plane-style drones which fly aerodynamically or "on the wing", have more range (being more efficient), but have difficulty landing on specific spots and then returning back to base. There are solutions around this, but not 100% viable in all cases. VTOL planes exist for instance, but they're finicky. Parachutes as a delivery mechanism also exist, but not everything can be delivered by dropping a payload.
And much more...
Air delivery exists in places where these aren't concerns and where the cost benefit analysis skews the other way. Zipline [0] has been doing a great job delivering blood to remote areas in Rwanda for a while now. Their product, payload, delivery method, geographical location, regulatory environment, all align to make it worth it. Watch some youtube videos of their operation, it's pretty neat.
This point to me seems like such an obvious hard limit on how well this could ever work without some serious advancements in battery tech, and it's why the whole thing seemed like mostly snake oil to me.
The x-copters have very low weight limits (and low flight times when loaded) and realistically this wouldn't be possible for weights over ~10 pounds without very short range limitations and massive downtime for recharging (and/or truly massive drones, which would pose too much of a safety risk in populated areas).
Not to mention the physical shape of even many small / light objects would make stable flight difficult or impossible. The second the wind picks up, they are in serious trouble.
Maybe some small and very specific niches can utilize it, but I suspect in almost all cases (even when it is possible to use these things optimally) driving is actually going to be cheaper overall.
> 1. FAA regulations - delivery drones can't operate within X miles of an airport (technically they can, but it requires a much stricter degree of certification and compliance nobody wants to bother with)
Nope. This isn't really the issue at all. We have an airport near by (two if you count the hospital and the FAA does). UAS delivery isn't actually under UAS rules, it's under commercial freight delivery rules. This is how Project Wing/Google operate because the FAA still doesn't allow beyond line of sight operations for UAS.
> 2. Drones need a landing space, so people without yards (like apartment and townhouse dwellers, who make up a lot of the population in exactly the densely populated areas where you'd want to use drones to begin with) can't be served
Sorta. They don't actually land, they drop the payload while hovering. So they do need some uninstructed space to drop the package, but not much. Works well in the suburbs and rural areas but awful in the city.
> And it turns out that once you exclude "houses within X miles of an airport" and "houses without an LZ", there aren't enough customers left to make delivery drones worth it.
Again, not an airport problem.
It's really economics. It's v expensive per gram to deliver by drone. That's why it works well for light but high value things (like medicine) but sucks for stuff like food.
I always suspected the reason was purely profit-driven so it's good to hear it confirmed.
I know I'm getting cynical as I age, but the idea that regulation was the only thing in the way of it seemed laughable given recent history.
Also there is a strong education and hobby to industry pipeline. However with the way the UAS space is being regulated that pipeline has been drying up.
What's the plan there? Leave my package out in the middle of the yard to get rained on or stolen?
I don't see this system being used to deliver stuff not being specifically requested (like say an Rx). Strong winds, fog, and rain would ground delivery also.
1. FAA regulations - delivery drones can't operate within X miles of an airport (technically they can, but it requires a much stricter degree of certification and compliance nobody wants to bother with)
2. Drones need a landing space, so people without yards (like apartment and townhouse dwellers, who make up a lot of the population in exactly the densely populated areas where you'd want to use drones to begin with) can't be served
And it turns out that once you exclude "houses within X miles of an airport" and "houses without an LZ", there aren't enough customers left to make delivery drones worth it.