For as little as it has to offer, it’s asking a lot in development costs, in changes to how consumers operate and the protections they already enjoy. ![]() One questions the need for this service, as well. More area to cover means less revenue per square mile, not to mention interference from homeowners’ associations, golf courses and others who don’t want the bother. Single-family homes may be able to take advantage of this, but remember the suburbs are very spread out and full of NIMBYs. The idea of a burrito delivery drone being trailed by a cawing multitude or being harried by a couple trash-loving bald eagles does have significant comic value, though. Good luck with food delivery too… crows are fast learners. It’s a really frictionless experience for the criminals, at least.Īir-dropping is one of the worst possible ways (outside of combat) to deliver anything, only slightly better than yeeting it over the fence - admittedly common, but disapproved of. Imagine if a package made a really loud whining noise wherever it went, then was guaranteed to be left out in the open somewhere. As commerce has moved online, parcel delivery has skyrocketed, and so has parcel theft. Where do packages go normally? In a big clearing in your building’s courtyard? On the roof? No, they go to the lobby, which locks, or perhaps in a parcel box… which locks. If we could make helicopters quiet we would have done so by now.Įven if we allow these drones dominion over the air and let them fly with impunity, they’re laughably limited. There are advances to be brought to bear here, but really, when you have four to eight little rotors spinning at however many thousand RPMs and moving the necessary air downwards to lift a couple dozen pounds of body and payload, you tend to create a certain amount of truly obnoxious noise. Small ones, big ones, they all sound horrible. ![]() No, drones make the most annoying sound in the world short of Jeff Bezos’s laugh. Drones are pretty loud, and it’s not even the kind of loud you can get used to, like the dull roar of a freeway a few blocks off. Done!Įven if they could guarantee no accidents, no one wants those things flying around their neighborhood. So what are they going to do, fly along the streets? High enough that they don’t hit any wires or trees? Carrying a one-pound package? Only at certain hours? It isn’t particularly efficient! And then, the first time one of those packages or drones drops out of the sky and cracks a windshield next to a grade school, those drones are done in that city, and probably every other city. Amazon has made no secret of its intention to take over the logistics and delivery industry bite by bite, partly through sideways subsidy from other parts of its lucrative, mutually buttressed businesses, and partly with a punishing franchise model that offloads risk and liability onto contractors.Īlphabet’s Wing drones hit 200,000 deliveries as it announces supermarket partnership That’s certainly the case with drone delivery. Johnson: “Sir, no man but a blockhead ever, except for money.” The answer there, fortunately, is as clear as why Amazon does anything. And although the Jetsons mentality explains our acceptance of the development of these technologies - unlike others that we disapprove of for their impracticability, cost or ethics - it doesn’t really explain why a company like Amazon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pursue it. ![]() We just have to wait for the right genius kid building the future out of their garage, with the help of your friendly neighborhood VCs. I suspect it is the Jetsons-esque technotopianism instilled in so many of us from birth: It’s only a matter of time and effort before we have the flying cars, subliminal learning pillows and robot housekeepers we deserve, right? It feels like because we have things that fly, and things that can navigate autonomously, we should be able to put those things together and make delivery drones and air taxis. There’s so little to be gained, while braving so much liability and danger, and necessitating so much invention and testing. The promise of drone deliveries, drone taxis and personal drone attendants has never sat, or rather floated, right with me. Maybe it’s time to put these foolish ambitions to rest and focus on where this technology could actually do some good, rather than pad out a billionaire’s bottom line or let the rich skip traffic. ![]() It’s year five, or maybe 10, of “drones are going to revolutionize transport,” and so far we’ve got very little to show for it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |