Anyone know how these type of "logistics" companies are planning on solving the last 10 feet problem.

I.e. where does the drone land? How does the recipient pick up their package? What if you live in an apartment, how do you get your pie?

This make me think drone delivery is probably waaay more valuable in suburbia than a city setting. Delivery in the suburbia seems costlier currently (larger distances, lower densities so less stops per route, etc) and drones are well suited to deliver to a nice big front/back yard.

In cities - I don't see how they'll deliver pizzas, but maybe non-perishables can be deposited into receptacles on rooftops or street corners and picked up asynchronously.

That is my biggest concern too.

Let's say they somehow manage to perfect street landing, so that drones won't come crashing down on people, parked cars, construction sites etc, independent of weather conditions (snow, ice) - what happens then? Does the drone wait until you go down and pick up your pizza? What would prevent people from stealing a (rather expensive, I imagine) landed drone?

Does it just drop the deliverable from a safe distance? So what about "oh hey, there's a hovering drone, let's go pick up some free pizza".

Really interesting thought around theft. Since there is already anti-collision software included, maybe anti-theft software is next to be developed?

There seem like a lot of logistical issues but there are some opportunities as well. Because delivery is so quick, customers might be expected to wait at the designated delivery point or no delivery will take place. A smartphone might well play a role. You order your pizza, and when it's ready for delivery you receive a notification that you have five minutes to get outside. Once outside the smartphone might also be used for verification purposes via some sort of wireless connection.

Still lots of ways for things to go wrong, but I bet there are some interesting solutions. It's all very new.

Or, hey, as long as we're spitballing, what if it were common to have some sort of household bot? A butler-bot, if you will. It might have the responsibility of ascending to the roof (via some sort of track) to take delivery. You might need some sort of defenses against burglar-bots but ... I think I'd better stop here. ;)

Lessons from Santa Claus; If your house has a roof pickup mechanism for drones we may deliver there. Locking and securing capsules wouldn't be a big problem. QR Codes, cameras, cryptographic locks, Bluetooth maybe used.

May be something like, GPS + "Bluetooth pairing at destination". This could allow the fly-copter to lock onto the target when in vicinity of the original (or updated) destination GPS coordinates.

There seems to a bunch of seemingly plausible ways to do this, but the first group to work on the problem will surely solve it then patent the method.

I would think one of the best way is to have a drone operator take control of the drone when it has reached it's delivery location, in order to ensure a safe delivery. This would require you to keep a drone operator at hand, but if you have multiple drones in air at the same time, it might pay off.

How about a large QR tag :) With the data: DROP-ZONE-house-number-5a :)

The article points out that the drones don't have onboard cameras.

Good point. Drone can easily locate the land area with QR tag.

Pizza, Starbucks, mail? Really? What worthless examples.

I'm guessing most mail can be eliminated, tomorrow. Make snail mail marketing illegal, you take out probably 90% or more of all mail. You also take out 90% of the income for the post office, making the rest more expensive, driving people to digitize what bits they haven't already done. Convenience win, environmental win.

As for Pizza, what socially worthless tradeoff. Noise pollution, total surveillance by corporations, crashed drones and trash in your backyard, for what? So that we can get fatter with even less effort?

Rescue services, organ transplants, air pollution monitoring, emergency communications, OK. But making it easier for someone to get a Frappachino? Do we still need to solve that problem?

No.

Millions of details need to be sorted out before even beginning to draft legislation. One must be insane to think this could "just work" and promote innovation. Try running an airport. This would be orders of magnitude more complicated. Not unfeasible, but please be patient and methodical.

How long until the drone owners start selling not ads, but data collection/reconnaissance services to corporations/governments...?

I agree there are numerous issues and details. If a suburban area decided to take a stand and pass legislation, we could begin ironing out those details. By no means am I suggesting a free-for-all right out of the gate, but a well executed ramp up of activity could prove successful.

I really hope Zookal have their safety measures sorted out. All it takes is one drone to run out of juice carrying a thick stack of physics textbooks and crash into a pram. Then the party's over for everyone.

Seriously though, how are the flightpaths going to be managed once multiple services start flying drones? Centralized proximity detection service based on GPS? (Hmm startup idea anyone...)

If my GPS experiences are anything to go by, big stuff (buildings and mountains) and cold (possibly heat too?) make GPS inaccurate enough that it would be pretty much useless. Up high in subzero temperatures on a mountain we would get strange coordinates back due to (I assume) the mountain blocking or reflecting signal somehow. And that was when it worked - sub zero with a big wind chill and the batteries would last about 10 seconds, then back under the jacket it had to go to warm up. This has been on multiple brands of hardware. Things may have improved since this experience as it was 5 years ago.

I doubt GPS could be trusted for autopilot, but if the accuracy is reliable for a ~30 foot sphere it could be used as a proximity alarm. ("Cool your jets human, there's another drone nearby")

The GPS on my iPhone is good enough to pinpoint my 2D position to within ~10 feet, so I don't see why not.

GPS is good enough for autopilot; I've flown with them just fine. It's also common to do GPS approaches in inclement weather, and when you break out of the clouds, the runway is right where it should be!

1. It's Australia. It doesn't snow here. 2. Almost all apartments have balconies. Good luck landing on the 10th floor during storm season though.

Fast forward 10-20 years, above your house is the constant whirr of hundreds of drones going back and forth above your property every single minute of every day.

One drone is fun, hundreds need more thinking through.

I imagine they'd have to be limited to vertical paths anywhere near the ground, otherwise as you say the noise of hundreds of drones would be unbearable. I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be a few stations around urban areas for silent landing/launching i.e. nets for drones to drop into(potentially assisted by small parachute/wings) and launchers(catapults etc.) to get them out of earshot before they fire up their motors. You'd still have a little activity in the last few meters but how many deliveries are actually delivered to a particular area per hour?

I recently read something about HN cynical top-level comments syndrome. Is it just too hard for us to dream anymore? I'm confident we'll work out the details; the future is going to be really cool!

  > Mail, pizza, and Starbucks all delivered by drones which saves everyone money and creates more happiness

I liked the article until I read this. I don't think you can link the existence of Starbucks with creating happiness at all.

[1] http://www.beyondbars.org/starbucks_private_prison_labor

[2] http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2006/07/16/dear-starbucks-cust...

> Mail, pizza, and Starbucks all delivered by drones which saves everyone money and creates more happiness

I don't see how it would create more happiness. The "oh look, a drone" reaction would lay off pretty soon. But, perhaps it can save some energy and lessen the use of fossil fuels.

Also, I see they're self-driving. How well would this work with tiny in air obstacles like power lines?

There is anti-collision software included. I'm imagining it works very similar to the way Google's self-driving car does.

Actual article: http://pandodaily.com/2013/10/14/zookal-starts-world-first-d...

Maybe the official world's first drone delivery. We tested this service years ago but unfortunately the FCC regulations stopped us.

So the question "are we innovative enough to follow?" is somehow exaggerated. We could've asked the same question 4-5 years ago. The better question would be "When will the FCC adapt to innovation?"

Elaborate on your experience? I'd love to know what happened (any conversations...) when you encountered the FCC regulations?

Well we wanted to build a similar project maybe more complex a few years ago and we tested some standard drones and some custom made ones for it and then we wanted to launch a service like this. We did some research about it and there weren't any regulations for drones so we waited...and we are still waiting...probably 2015 will be the year.

Tacocopter: It's real now!

Delivery by self driving car makes more sense to me. Both are automated but a car avoids weight, landing and FAA issues. Not to mention that our homes are already configured for easy access to roadways.

I've imagined a sub-car-sized delivery drone. Think one or two-wheeled drone that arrived outside with your bread and milk. Impacts traffic less, you don't need to be driven, makes smaller purchases more economical.

You could have a postbox-like port that it could put items into.

You mean like self-driving motorcycle? Why won't people just get on a bike, and pick up small items themselves (+health benefits, sustainability)?

Convenience, safety and lower costs. When you're cooking and you forgot some ingredients, push a few buttons and 10 minutes later your order arrives, sans humans and hassle. Like pizza delivery, but for everything and with fewer costs. Lower costs mean smaller transactions become economical. No flying bladed helicopters mean reduced risks and requirements for landing spots.

We have grocery delivery in my area, but it's such a hassle because I have to be home within their time window and I have to book it a couple days in advance. Why can't I just hit a "now" button and it arrives via drone, at 2am if I so desire, when most delivery people are sleeping? Or in a rainstorm, because the drone doesn't care?

Maybe the people have reduced mobility. Maybe they have small kids or elderly people they can't bring with them nor leave alone. Maybe they have an extremely busy schedule. Maybe the streets where they live are dangerous for cyclists. Maybe the packages are too big to safely carry on a normal bike. Maybe they just don't have a bike or even know how to ride one. Maybe they just don't feel like it.

It could work better with residential buildings, I think.

Our building doesn't have a helicopter landing pad or anything that fancy, but it's fairly clear and well-maintained (no debris or trees growing up there). There's no reason a relatively light drone can't land without issues.

Exactly. And if it's big enough, it becomes really hard to steal and it can transport some sort of locker that the client can open.

Crap, it's not going to work until we solve energy usage. It's not free energy or cheap to deliver by air.

Need pizza? hack a drone. BTW great idea.