Because drones are noisy and irritating in reality and nobody wants them flying around their neighborhood and they don’t scale and they can potentially scare animals and and and…

And they can't press buttons in the elevator. I don't think any delivery service will take off in a city if people have to leave their apartments.

Maybe we will end up with a mix of drones for places where we can reach by air, and robot operators to deliver other packages when human interfaces are what you have to deal with.

Uhhhh, balconies?

Reach out of an open window like a reverse drive-through?

I think you'd have to have nerves of steel as a company to try either of those maneuvers. The wind can be unpredictable so close to a structure, it is a cramped environment filled with objects and materials you can't predict, even a meal for 2 can be kindof bulky (doubly so bc it has to be packed well enough to be airworthy), the load might shift internally, and if you screw up there's a good chance a drone goes plummeting 20 stories down onto a crowded sidewalk.

Alright hear me out, a drone "cannon" that shoots the food onto the balcony. It's perfect for covering that last distance. Works best for food packaged in discrete boxes. ;)

Uber yeets

Oh ha ha ha. Funniest post in weeks.

How are they going to get the right apartment, and even if they do, what if the food gets fumbled in the handover and someone is injured by falling meals?

"We add a $70 surcharge to each delivery for the ballistic parachute system that protects people on the sidewalk from fumbled delivery handovers. This surcharge is refunded when the intact and unused parachute system is returned via the drone from your next delivery."

How do you shoot that used delivery parachute back to the drone upon next delivery?

DJI has those smart docking stations.

Maybe eventually each apartment will have one or it'll be subsidized by delivery platforms.

Food slides? Smart waiters? Hook and cook? And a large orange drink?

Pneumatic tubes

I'm disappointed society hasn't revisited pneumatic tube networks since we got good at packet switching and RFIDs and computing in general.

They're still used pretty heavily in hospitals and they do take advantage of newer technology like RFID for routing.

Separately, there's a very cool startup called Pipedream that does autonomous underground delivery robots that are kind of the next iteration of the concept.

But only for burritos. Pizza's not quite as resilient.

This reminds me of The Fifth Element. The restaurant should fly to my balcony and serve me there.

Chinese delivery robots have been using elevators for years. I believe they wirelessly communicate with the elevator control system.

>I believe they wirelessly communicate with the elevator control system.

That sounds hilariously abusable.

The robots are operated by the building, for what it's worth. The delivery drivers drop the deliveries off to the robots in the lobby, and the robots take it from there to the individual rooms.

That actually sounds a lot better.

You do understand this single fact undermines your previous claim completely?

This explains how elevators can always be hacked remotely by the Impossible Missions Force and other cinematic superteams.

This is very much location/culture dependent. Where I live is customary for the delivery drivers to wait on the sidewalk while you go down to pick the order up.

I can relate with most of what you said, but "drones don't scale", really? If they can scale in war, I can't see why they would not scale for other uses

in war, they do not need to care about collateral damage.

I sure hope that my neighbour's drone delivery doesn't produce collateral damage if it flew near my property. Otherwise, i will have to shoot down the drone.

They don't have to land safely, not cause liabilities or make return trips in war.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm, because it sounds almost exactly like how a horse rider would have described new-fangled automobiles.

Well were their wrong? Car-centric development has been an absolute disaster in dozens of different ways.

those disasters were externalities, which i dont disagree is disheartening, but the personal freedoms and transportation capability given by the personal automobile is worth it. Public transport, even good ones, does not provide this level of comfort and freedom.

Oh god we're going to get a new hellscape of drone noise which we won't be able to get rid of on account of the personal freedom granted by having second rate food delivered five minutes faster.

> hellscape of drone noise

on the other hand, if it removed some traffic noise which is equal or worse than drone noises...

Cities don't work like that. When you have less traffic, people start to squeeze in (real estate is rarely a limiting factor), and you get more people and more traffic. People want to live densely, and they will.

My, if only there was a better way to transport people in a city besides a 2-ton metal box moved my exploding fuel...

Perhaps some two-wheeled contraption, of the pedal-power sort?

Really good public transport does, because you're not constrained by having to return to your personal vehicle at the end of whatever you're doing, you're not constrained by its operational or mechanical limits (think: family members who can't drive for reasons of health or young/old age, large groups who won't fit in your car, drinking or other intoxicants that make you unfit, reading a book/resting your brain on the way to or from a long day, households not wanting or affording to own as many vehicles as there are people in their home).

OK, it's not as private or comfortable as your own vehicle, but I'd rather be in public but able to read/dream/listen than in private but having to concentrate on the road. (This of course requires a public transport system which is safe and not full of crazies, I understand that's a problem in those US cities which have it).

Granted, there's only a few dozen cities in the world that do it that well.

Surely horse-centric was a lot better.

Some people seem to think manure is cleaner than tailpipes.

Reminds me of an Indian ceremony where they believe cow manure is healthy (maybe it is, I have no clue) and they are walking on it on barefeet or something.

Balony express?

Drones were banned from cities already a good while ago, and I don't see that changing. Drone delivery could work on the countryside, but urban areas will be limited to delivery robots on wheels.

I guess you could pack all the meals in a truck, drive it to the edge of the city and then load all the drones and send them out over the burbs

Good luck getting permission to fly drones within X miles of an airport.