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Amazon Drones

Jobs are a thing of the past anyway in the glorious future of leisure and self education. All we'll do is tend the community garden, smile at the drones and spend blissful afternoons in the sunshine reading permitted literature and ensuring our gps tags don't record us straying outside designated zones.
 
It just doesn't really work though, does it? How are they supposed to get my parcel up to my second floor flat? Am I supposed to wait for a phonecall and open the window? Hang out the window with my eyes on the sky? Have it delivered to the roof and risk falling 20m?
 
There are very many electric wires and other entanglements that could mess up the passage of drones. This could be an idea that only works in a few limited environments. It is a science fiction fantasy.
 
The Boy said:
It just doesn't really work though, does it? How are they supposed to get my parcel up to my second floor flat? Am I supposed to wait for a phonecall and open the window? Hang out the window with my eyes on the sky? Have it delivered to the roof and risk falling 20m?
Click to expand...
Pay someone from TaskRabbit to collect it for you.
 
The Boy said:
It just doesn't really work though, does it? How are they supposed to get my parcel up to my second floor flat? Am I supposed to wait for a phonecall and open the window? Hang out the window with my eyes on the sky? Have it delivered to the roof and risk falling 20m?
Click to expand...
They need a landing location, so my immediate thought is that presumably in future you'll be able to buy an electronically tagged mat with hooks that you unfold and hang outside your 2nd floor window for it to land on. Then fold it down and store behind the wardrobe or under the bed until the next delivery. Is anyone round here a designer who can create that for Amazon?

These drones will need legislation to allow them to fly, which is likely to include a mandatory requirement that they all have the technology enabling them to be kept out of civil aviation space that is also capable of forcing them to be grounded by the CAA (I saw a company at an event who has already developed that tech for drones, clever guys who may become very wealthy in years to come if drones really take off). No idea how it would be paid for, possibly a pay-per-flight model. I hope they're at least quiet.
 
tangerinedream said:
Jobs are a thing of the past anyway in the glorious future of leisure and self education. All we'll do is tend the community garden, smile at the drones and spend blissful afternoons in the sunshine reading permitted literature and ensuring our gps tags don't record us straying outside designated zones.
Click to expand...

Got to admit, I'm starting to see some sort of prison sentence as a valid route to retirement.

Got to be better than surviving off state pension
 
I'm sure the idea of drone delivery makes perfect sense in sunny Silicon Valley where there are loads of well paid consumers living in nice houses with large gardens, in an area of the world that tends to have clement weather - ideal territory for flying & landing drones, plus a ready supply of people willing to pay a premium to have crap delivered to their lawn. In anywhere congested, built-up, with no space for landing, strict air space regulations & obstacles everywhere, it's just not practical. I'm sure it will happen, but I'm also sure it'll be nothing but a niche curiosity for many, many years to come. It's a bit like the flying cars we've been promised for years - even if practical versions existed today, you'd never be allowed to fly one over central London, let alone land on an inner city street.
 
They once emailed me a photo of my parcel in my garage, saying it had been delivered. Except I don't have a garage, and on cross examination, nobody had a very clear idea where this particular garage was. Now that they can effectively deliver things to roofs by remote control I can't imagine the situation improving.
 
Hocus Eye. said:
There are very many electric wires and other entanglements that could mess up the passage of drones. This could be an idea that only works in a few limited environments. It is a science fiction fantasy.
Click to expand...

The final approach at Edinburgh airport on the Forth being directly between the city and their main warehouse is a bigger problem. Though they'd have to rethink their distribution strategy anyway with lots of smaller depots that cover the range of a drone. Gimmick at best
 
gosub said:
The final approach at Edinburgh airport on the Forth being directly between the city and their main warehouse is a bigger problem. Though they'd have to rethink their distribution strategy anyway with lots of smaller depots that cover the range of a drone. Gimmick at best
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Your parcel has been delivered.

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as long as you only want small light things and current drones need an operator so hardly cheap or easy.
police forces thought they could get something like a predator able to stay up for days much cheaper and less annoying than a helicopter:D
actually what they get is something slightly better than what you can buy in the shop yourself.:facepalm:
useful for crowd surveillance but hardly awe inspiring
 
bi0boy said:
That why this would be a great idea for rural locations where drones can fly over fields.
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In theory yes, but not in practice. Small drones can only carry small things, and large drones capable of carrying significant cargo payloads aren't really a reality yet - and even if they were, the idea of something the weight of a small helicopter flying around unmanned may have just one or two regulatory issues to contend with... But perhaps the biggest show stopper is battery life. To delver to a rural location requires a drone that can keep flying for long durations - most long duration flying craft use combustion engines & fuel tanks, not batteries & electric motors. Realistically, you'd really need something like a turbine powered drone the size of a car to make rural deliveries viable. So what you'd basically be talking about is a dedicated helicopter equivalent craft used to deliver a DVD box set to a farmer's house. I suspect we'll be stuck with a man in a delivery truck for a long time yet. This is a gimmick, nothing more.
 
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