>It's all well and good for the unmanned vehicles to fly to a particular GPS site, but how does it then find the package's intended recipient?
The drones could be almost fully automated - fly to this GPS point above the person's house, at which point control is handed to a pilot for the landing & package drop.
>How is the transfer of the package enacted? What stops someone else stealing the package along the way?
I'd imagine the same way it's done today, the same way USPS/UPS handles packages - by dropping them on my porch and hoping my neighbors are honest.
>And what happens when next door's kid decides to shoot the drone with his BB rifle?
He gets a spanking and the drone gets repaired? The same thing that would happen if he shot the tires off the Fedex truck?
This article raises some good points about the political ramifications of drone technology, and some excellent ones about it being a PR move to squelch negative reporting, but I'm left with the feeling that, if he were alive a century ago, James Ball wouldn't be out of place writing an article titled "Sears & Roebuck to stop horse-drawn carriage delivery in favor of the automobile? Don't believe the hype".
> The drones could be almost fully automated - fly to this GPS point above the person's house, at which point control is handed to a pilot for the landing & package drop
In the real world, you can't "fly to this GPS point". If this were possible, we would have automated airplanes and pilots would be out of their jobs. Remember the real world has other aircraft and a number of interesting obstacles: power lines, lamp posts, fences, trees, cranes, trucks, chimneys, kites and all other kinds of interesting stuff.
Flying blind to a preprogrammed GPS location is simply impossible in the real world.
Also, remember that GPS isn't quite enough to drop a package right on your doorstep. You need much more than that.
>Flying blind to a preprogrammed GPS location is simply impossible in the real world.
I didn't intend to rule out the need for clever self-flying technology on the part of Amazon.
But comparing the challenges that face an airplane that carries people at very high speeds and altitudes to a low altitude slow-moving drone is pretty silly.
Google's self driving car does this at road speed limits. There's no reason a drone doing 20 MPH with an extra degree of freedom couldn't do it as well.
>Also, remember that GPS isn't quite enough to drop a package right on your doorstep. You need much more than that.
>> at which point control is handed to a pilot for the landing & package drop
Well, if we assume that the drone is pilotless up to the point when the drone needs to land:
* the drone flies to the GPS point in question and hovers pending instruction
* the drone takes a picture of the ground area and sends it via 4G to a controller
* the controller identifies a landing point and transmits it back to the drone
* the drone uses its obstacle avoidance systems to land, drop the package, and take back off for a return to Amazon's center.
This is just one idea. Perhaps Amazon provides you with a beacon for the drone, or you get a big QR code for the drone to target your house & they don't need pilots at all. Who knows!
Either way, it seems to me that the most interesting thing would be the collision avoidance systems for automated flight. But considering Google can do this with a car on highways, I'd imagine that a slow moving drone that can also operate along the Z axis would be easier.
> Flying military drones is a very complicated matter.
I'm sure it is - but military drones have an incredibly different mission; comparing them to a slow package delivery drone isn't really worthwhile. Hell, according to Wiki the Predator drone's stall speed is 60 mph - Amazon drones sound like they will be much slower, at least at first.
Yes, my point was that such a device is going to be relatively easy to fly remotely even over a balky, high-latency connection. (Except perhaps in high winds, but high winds are likely to ground these things anyway.)
No, air traffic is not 'almost automated', and pilots are not 'just there as a safety backup'. The only part of flying that has been automated is avionics, ie: taking off, flying the aircraft along a pre-set flight path, and landing it. While this may seem this is 'all you need to automate away pilots', it completely ignores these nasty few percent of tail risk where things turn out not to follow the exact preconditions at the time of the flight plan. Like weather, technical problems (in the plane or on the ground), delays, airspace congestion, diversions, whatever. In each and every one of such cases it's still the pilot that has to decide how to handle the situation and either fly the plane itself, or reprogram the autopilot.
People always seem to think planes fly 'autonomously', but they don't. They can fly 'automatic' maybe 90% of the time, but they don't fly themselves.
>In each and every one of such cases it's still the pilot that has to decide how to handle the situation and either fly the plane itself, or reprogram the autopilot.
So far I've heard these drones won't work because existing aircraft can't do this, or because military drones can't do that.
But no one seems to consider that these drones don't fulfill the same role as a Predator drone or a jumbo jet, so many of these objections are incredibly odd.
I remember seeing a link on HN several weeks ago about a flying robot that was designed to bump into walls and reorient itself. What if we had an army of package delivering robots that flew at 5 MPH, did best-case collision avoidance, and if they bumped into the side of a brick wall it's not a huge deal?
If an Amazon drone runs into bad weather it could be programmed to land on the nearest flat roof. If unexpected airspace congestion is detected it could just turn back to home. Or hover in place until things resolve. Or(...)
We aren't trying to safely land an airplane full of humans at 100 knots, or deliver a Hellfire missile on a moving target. We are flying a lightweight, slow moving drone with a tiny package. The considerations are completely different.
>> So far I've heard these drones won't work because existing aircraft can't do this, or because military drones can't do that.
That's not the reason why I think this Amazon drone thing is just a way to generate some media hype, I can think of many other reasons why the idea is silly and won't work. You can find most if not all of them in other peoples posts in the various Amazon drone articles, I don't have to list them here.
My main point was not that delivery drones are impossible because planes or military drones still need pilots, I just wanted to point out that 'self-flying planes' are so often used as proof for other types of autonomous vehicles, which is based on the false premise that planes are autonomous.
90% is probably good enough for Amazon package delivery. The other 10% they send out another one. The cost of this is included in the fast-delivery surcharge. Unique and living products are not eligible for air delivery.
Devices that do this already exist and have done since 1983: Tomahawk cruise missiles. Huge areas of military technology have been developed for precisely delivering explosives; now they are being repurposed for non-harmful use.
GPS is certainly enough to fly it to the visual vicinity of your house. I can imagine needing to supply a landing marker (large QR code?) to tell it exactly where to land.
A QR code is a nice idea. Another solution could be to take a picture or a short video of the place you want the drone to leave the package. Machine vision technology is easily sophisticated enough to translate this into an accurate 3D model which could be correlated with known GPS information.
This kind of process will probably happening anyway for hazard avoidance.
It's pretty easy for a drone to fly higher than almost all the obstacles you just listed. Skyscrapers and smokestacks are going to be a concern, but those don't move and it's easy to do offline route planning to avoid those. Construction cranes and other temporary obstacles are a problem, but some rudimentary sensing and fallback to human control should solve that.
As someone who makes delivery robots for hospitals, let me say that I envy navigation problems of flying drones. I'd seriously worry about power and range and weather and how you recover a drone that has a problem and crashes, but not navigation in general.
Amazon doesn't need this to use drones for 100% of deliveries. But if they pick enough constraints, could it work?
Assume it will never work in NYC, but could it work in Albuquerque, New Mexico? Assume it won't fly if the winds are over mph. Assume that only human operated landings are performed the first time to scope the landing zone, with future approach and landings to be automated. Assume that anything unexpected causes the delivery to get canceled.
In the 60 Minutes interview, Bezos was optimistic but more cautious about when it would be ready -- more like 2018+. Also, the earlier part of the segment was about how it took Amazon Fresh 5 years to expand grocery delivery to its second city. Bezos, of all tech companies, knows the value of staying with a problem for the long term. If I had to bet if Amazon could figure this out over the next 50 years, I would say yes. Sooner is a bonus.
>In the real world, you can't "fly to this GPS point". If this were possible, we would have automated airplanes and pilots would be out of their jobs.
These things don't follow. We actually do have automated airplanes and pilots jobs are really just there for passenger comfort, but that is because Autoland and autopilot utilize ILS' and other sensor data besides GPS to make it precise enough.
So while your point about GPS alone being insufficient for precision delivery is correct, the overall thought that we can't do precision delivery is misguided.
While it is hard, impossible is a stretch. You can buy drones with autopilot that will land at a point as long as you have 10 ft of clear space. A friend yesterday was using one he'd received for $3000 to film some cliff tops while we were walking the edge. After shutting off the remote it can fly back to where it was turned on so you don't have to carry it. Bear in mind this is with tech that's a few years old.
Yes, as long as there isn't a crane, net, tilted lamppost, kite, human, dog, or any other unplanned obstacle.
Come on, people. Being able to draw a trajectory isn't the same as moving a physical object through space. And moving a drone to a predetermined GPS location in ideal conditions while you are watching it and when you know there is nothing around has nothing to do with day-to-day deliveries using drones.
So you believe sensor based obstacle avoidance is an impossible problem in robotics? Second, unrelated question, do you think drones need to complete 100% of their scheduled tasks or do you think it's acceptable to fail a small fraction of the time?
I know, but with the Raspberry Pi's and similar tech we can't be that far away from something that's technically feasible. We also don't know what Amazon has been working on behind closed doors. They are known for vast technical prowess after all.
I would disagree with it being impossible, especially in the drone delivery business. Definitely hard but not impossible.
The drone leave a known location to go to another location using a direct path. It is a point A to point B algorithm. Amazon could build or use a database of information regarding obstacles and traffic, to program and test well ahead of time destination between A (the warehouse) to B (i.e. every doorstep in a 30 minutes radius) and back to A.
GPS is often accurate within 1 meter which should be enough for door delivery (http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/histogra...).
I agree that humans will be involved in monitoring the drones 24/7.
> I'd imagine the same way it's done today, the same way USPS/UPS handles packages - by dropping them on my porch and hoping my neighbors are honest.
These drones have a 10 miles range, I would guess they are intended for densely populated metropolitan areas where it is viable to have a closeby Amazon warehouse. So in most cases simply there is no porch.
From careful research (watching Friends and How I Met Your Mother) I've learned that all New Yorkers have access to a romantic roof-space. That would be a rather superior alternative to porches.
Which does make me wonder how much better this plan would be than using, say, motorcycle couriers.
If the story had been - 'Amazon to deploy motor bikes to deliver packages within 10 miles of their distribution centre' it'd have received a lot less attention.
Packages are routinely delivered quickly, accurately, securely and cheaply in urban areas. I do think Amazon are solving a problem that doesn't exist. Nice bit of PR though.
Motorcycle couriers are comparatively very expensive - a 10 mile delivery is easily half an hour of real human time (plus gas, wear, etc). It might be "cheap" if they're delivering $50 of (high margin) pizza, but less so if they're delivering a single book. That's the problem they're trying to solve - delivering small items quickly and cheaply.
You can hit most of a medium-sized metro area from a 10-mile radius. NYC and cities like it are exceptional; most metros have an abundance of single-family homes with porches and backyards, even just a mile or so from the central business district.
Amazon would not need a full-fledged distribution center as a drone base. Orders received by, say, 10am could be put on a truck from a distribution center that's an hour or two's drive from the center of the metro area. The truck goes to the drone base in the middle of town and unloads. You can still deliver before 5pm.
Having a drone drop my package on my fire escape would be far better than dropping it on the street. Lots of New Yorkers have trouble getting packages (well, those not rich enough for doormen). Being able to specify a dropoff point would be fantastic. Shit, I'll build a little drone landing pad if I have to.
Alternative proposal: take the package to the customer's phone. At this sort of timing, "where I am now" is better than "where I usually am".
The customer must have a smartphone and place the order with Amazon's special app. The app then continually uploads the customer's gps data to Amazon so the drone can target. Once the drone gets close, the phone also gives a distinctive beacon using wifi for the drone to hone in on. When it's time to receive the package, the app displays a specific QR code and the drone scans it.
It's the customer's responsibility to be outside at the right time, but the app will tell them when to within a few minutes. Likewise, if the phone's battery dies during delivery, the delivery is aborted for a partial refund (the app provides warnings).
Some people will worry about accruing "failure to receive" charges due to Amazon's failings, but once a good track record is established, that will fade. Others will worry about the NSA seizing all that location data, but they already have it from the cell phone companies.
> "... by dropping them on my porch and hoping my neighbors are honest."
You wouldn't even need to do this. If you have a garden (even a communal one) then the drone could simply land there instead. Or perhaps a balcony, if large enough. I can imagine Amazon sending you a beacon of some kind which the drone could communicate with when nearby to pinpoint where it's supposed to land.
>So now you have to put a camera and a remote control system with a range of many miles on the drone. And it can only work if there's a line of sight.
Pack it in, boys. Until someone develops some sort of wireless technology which we could use to receive information from the drone as well as control it, and deploys it widely across high population-density areas, this drone idea just won't be feasible.
I've never researched the exact technology behind military drones but my understanding is they are capable of everything you mentioned being not yet possible.
I just can't wrap my head around how these are possible in areas like Manhattan where they would be most useful. Not to mention 4 or 5 years is probably about the understatement of the century as to when it will be permitted by the FAA.
The power requirements for a camera and a cell connection are pretty small compared to what it takes to keep that thing in the air. I mean, your phone can go for a full day with it's tiny little battery, and it even has that big power sucking screen to drive too.
>You didn't address the weight and the power requirements for it.
Likely nominal. Considering the drone probably has a camera already for routine (non-piloted operations) weight wouldn't be significant. Power wouldn't be huge as wireless service wouldn't be required until the drone is ready to land. Besides, this isn't a long-flight drone.
>The range of the drones is already horrible.
The range of the drones is likely driven by business, not technology. I'm sure if Amazon is serious about this program they've selected a 10 mile radius from their processing centers as a way to control costs & give the drone high operating time margins. If they do it, and it works, I wouldn't be surprised to see larger runs in the future.
>The costs of controlling drones over the wireless networks would be pretty high too.
I can't speak to that directly, but don't forget Amazon already subsidizes wireless costs with Whispernet on the Kindle, so I wouldn't be surprised if they've got some good agreements with wireless networks already. Of course the data needs for video is much greater than for sending an ebook, but this is a lower-volume proposition, both in actual wireless use time & customer count.
There are some people that only see downsides, that compulsively expect failures. We call them nay-sayers. You want a handful of them in your organization, especially in tech, since they keep your head out of the clouds. But too often they tend to be averse to innovation and derail progress. James Ball, the author of the article, seems to be one of those people.
On October 9, 1903, two months before the Wright brothers flew for the first time, the New York times declared "The ridiculous fiasco which attended the attempt at aerial navigation in the Langley flying machine was not unexpected… it might be assumed that the flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians and mechanicians in from one million to ten million years" [1]
I imagine someone like James Ball wrote that article, too.
Come on, this is a complete straw man. The article is not saying it's physically impossible, because clearly it isn't, it's saying there are legal and logistical problems to consider.
Plus, following your argument you could swat away any criticism of any outlandish claim by saying that people once thought the world was flat. Hardly constructive. Not that there are any claims of this magnitude by Amazon or in this article.
Well the main point of the article was "it's all hot air and baloney". His logistical issues seem like he's grasping for anything he can to discredit the idea. With his added sarcasm ("any second now"), I'd put him in the exact same camp as the NY Times writer.
He didn't called it "hot air and baloney" because he thinks it would never physically work. He called it that because he believes it was timed to coincide with Cyber Monday. The bureaucratic hurdles for this are too numerous to mention. It goes in the Hyperloop-from-LA-to-NYC category.
I doubt he's missed the mark since there's not many other logical reasons for Amazon to announce this possibility five years in advance.
Whether or not it's hype isn't at issue. Hype can exist for real things. Sure, this may be a very well timed reveal, and it's probably not an accident. But that doesn't make the idea any less real.
66 years later we landed men on the moon. Funny how fast things take off once your crack that first big problem.
That said, Bezos is a businessman. Everything he does promotes Amazon in several different ways. This video will be used as negotiation muscle with delivery companies. It'll be used during union negotiations within UPS. It'll be used to make Amazon look technologically progressive and not just America's biggest mall. It'll make Bezos look good to investors. It'll spook smaller companies trying to get into this game (how's the nook doing?).
It might also lead to actually landing packages on people's front porches.
My point is that a startup is going to look at how he crushed the nook and decide not to compete in this space now that Bezos has a head start and all the resources of Amazon at his disposal. The nook was a 'me too' effort that never managed to provide the level of value the kindle could.
In this case though, he's nay-saying for the purpose of bashing Amazon. Once he's done making rather weak arguments about why it won't work (all of the issues he brought up can and will be solved), he makes his anti-Amazon agenda pretty clear (see last two paragraphs). The content of the announcement was inconsequential; he just needed an Amazon story to write about.
Many political websites do the same thing: they use a linkbait headline, briefly mention something in the news that is barely tangential to the actual message they want to get out, then say whatever it is they wanted to in the first place. Huffington Post 101.
You've missed the main point of the article. He does spend some time raising practical objections, true. But this is really about Amazon's PR tactics, and how a carefully timed press release about a pie in the sky drone project is raising Amazon's profile in the holiday shopping season and (especially in the UK) pushing negative Amazon stories out of the news.
Just because someone was wrong about the Wright brothers a century ago doesn't mean that someone else is wrong about something completely different today. Carl Sagan said it best:
"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
Here's the thing, though. The problems the 'critical thinkers' point out are usually so obvious as to be completely uninteresting.
Strangely these 'critical thinkers' rarely apply their massive brainpower to then thinking of potential solutions for the problems that everyone else has also seen.
In other words, no one is impressed by your ability to see problems. Everyone else here can see them too. We've all got brains, thanks. The trick is to use them to solve problems, that's the valuable skill.
Yeah, here's my solution to the myriad problems with this idea: self-driving electric cars as delivery vehicles. It's far more realistic and practical in every conceivable way.
Are you sure? Self driving cars have to deal with human drivers, cyclists and pedestrians - none of which are in the sky at the same numbers. They also can't communicate intelligently with those in the ways that drones could intelligently avoid collisions by being in constant contact with everything near them. Self driving cars are constrained to roads while drones may be able to fly in different areas. Drones can fly up and down too, so there won't be any traffic jams - they can be avoided even easier since every vehicle can be in communication with each other.
For what it's worth I think your solution is likely better, but not in every conceivable way. There are real benefits of taking self-driving cars and giving them 3 dimensions and no human obstacles.
"drones could intelligently avoid collisions by being in constant contact with everything near them"
I noticed that you didn't bring up weather or birds, neither of which will communicate with the drone. I cannot wait for ravens to figure out some drones have food in them.
"3 dimensions and no human obstacles"
There are an amazing number of obstacles in both an urban and rural environment for a drone to navigate. Cables going from building to building are one such example. Never mind that the architects understand delivery by people/ground vehicle where drones are going to have to figure out how to fit in. Roads are used for travel and have mechanisms / procedures to clear them for use, the air routes are for drones are going to be something different.
Fair points, "everything around them" was an unreasonable overstatement. Weather will be a lot tougher to deal with (I suspect it becomes efficient or resistant for a long time, with weather resistant stuff being heavier) than for a car. You're probably right about birds too..these probably look a lot easier to peck into than a car. Again, anything protecting the package is going to weigh it down.
I would be surprised if the skies were more dangerous for a drone than the roads for a car, but I probably did understate the problems. I do agree though that self-driving cars for delivery are more more likely and practical in the near term.
"I would be surprised if the skies were more dangerous for a drone than the roads for a car"
We have a huge amount of experience with cars and people. We have designed large systems and procedures for cars and people. We are getting some experience[1] with automated cars which is helped greatly by the experience, systems, and rules developed for cars and people.
We don't know the form that automated car deliveries will take, but the unknown distance is from the curb to the domicile. With drones, we have nothing from the warehouse to the domicile and no experience to draw from.
We know what to do in a car crash, I get the feeling drones are really going to go send people into a tizzy. The amount of crap hanging above people's heads is amazing and there is no map to help.
I might be more pessimistic because of the blowing snow outside currently.
1) automated cars in snow seems to be a bit lacking
personally, i don't suspect any of the obstacles really matter.
look at it like a cart-before-the-horse problem. similar to the ebook/kindle, amazon will simply create something that solves an enormous pain point for people and then effectively whitelist the delivery of it.
meaning, the ebook is to the kindle as air prime is to pre-determined-as-safe landing spot in your yard. you can't have your 30 minute delivery unless you've gotten your landing spot signed off by amazon. just like (back then anyway) you couldn't read your amazon ebook unless you had a place to deliver it.
Nope, and now perhaps you can appreciate how hard it is to come up with solutions. Problems are easy to spot, your intuitions on solutions is often wrong. Thousands of drones are in use right now, this very day, serving useful purposes. Drones can already survive heavy wind and rain. Part of the reason is that open space is far less obstructed and much easier to navigate in an automated fashion than public roads. In comparison to drones, the number of non-experimental self-driving cars is probably close to zero.
Self-driving cars also would have no flexibility in package placement, making the idea a non-starter. Amazon isn't going to leave your packages at the curb.
One problem people seem to be having is that they think Amazon has to come up with a perfect solution that covers every edge case. They don't. They can start using drones for carefully defined environments and expand from there.
Hmm, Missile Mail would probably have worked much better if you could have made the missiles land properly at the other end, instead of crashing, made them reusable, and maybe stuck a pilot in them to handle the tricky landing bit.
Thank you for this. I turned this into a nice life lesson for my 7 and 10 year old this morning about the possibilities that you can get by taking the long view.
I'm glad to hear that! I find the story inspirational myself, and look to the great innovators like the Wright brothers, Jeff Bezos and of course Elon Musk as role models for looking at the big picture
"Bezos' neat trick has knocked several real stories about Amazon out of the way. Last week's Panorama investigation into Amazon's working and hiring practices, suggesting that the site's employees had an increased risk of mental illness, is the latest in a long line of pieces about the company's working conditions – zero-hour contracts, short breaks, and employees' every move tracked by internal systems. Amazon's drone debacle also moved discussion of its tax bill – another long-running controversy, sparked by the Guardian's revelation last year that the company had UK sales of £7bn but paid no UK corporation tax – to the margins."
I find it strange that The Guardian wants to call Amazon's effort a publicity stunt, but when a Sydney company announced plans for the world's first Book-delivery-by-drone back in October, The Guardian was happy to run that story without any skepticism:
Why not just use digital versions of the textbooks? I like physical books over "ebooks" but it seems like an incredibly wasteful service to shuttle around physical textbooks.
As far as why the difference in coverage? I would guess that a company like Amazon generally announces these sorts of initiatives when they're pretty much available, which makes the "earliest in 2015" bit turn this into a big PR stunt imo.
"Amazon's drone debacle also moved discussion of its tax bill – another long-running controversy, sparked by the Guardian's revelation last year that the company had UK sales of £7bn but paid no UK corporation tax "
- Introducing your own newspaper into the debate negates any chance you have that this is in impartial journalistic piece. Secondly, I doubt Bezos is thinking about some UK tax noise when deciding whether or not to discuss drone's with 60 minutes.
"It's too late for the clickfarms already. But outlets and journalists who'd like to think of themselves as serious must stop regurgitating this crap. And, even more importantly, you,concerned citizen, must try to stop clicking on it."
- Let me lecture both my peers and my audience on how they need to behave. I'm uniquely qualified to do this because........well for no real reason actually except a heightened sense of self worth.
The amount of idea-bashing coming out against this Amazon drone concept is astonishing. Aren't we supposed to the be champions of the future? Do you think for a second that your nail-in-the-coffin counterpoint hasn't already been brought up around the meeting table? Can't we focus on how instead of why not?
Drone deliveries are cool and futuristic idea, and I'm sure they will happen at some point.
But there is a big difference between "Bezos thinks drone deliveries would be cool in 5 years time", and "Amazon starts drone deliveries". The article rightly concludes that at this time, it's a PR trick for driving black friday sales.
The concept of drone deliveries isn't that novel: at least 10 companies have announced that they are working on or have put out promotional videos of the same thing in the last few years. The novel and interesting bit would be to figure out the real logistical difficulties, which Amazon nor the others have yet presented.
The Tacocoptor was the first thing that came to mind when I was watching 60 Minutes. The difference here is that Amazon has a really compelling reason, and more importantly, the capability (money/people) to push the technology forward. I think that's really exciting.
> Aren't we supposed to be the champions of the future?
If you mean as "hackers", to pick a word from the name of this website, who were for a long time, rightly or wrongly, supposed to be conscientious watchdogs of present and future technology, no.
If for no other reason, as technologists who witnessed Stallman, Assange, Bradley, Snowden, so on in their lifetimes, you're supposed to be first and foremost astute critics of the future that dominant forces of the realm of technology such as Amazon are aiming to build. And rather than enthusiastically applaud whatever new and possibly exciting technology they bring to the table that contributes to your present or future paycheck and their private profit, you're supposed to take political responsibility for the future you help build by being their employees, customers and unpaid evangelists.
We're talking about delivering packages, not stealing your privacy or freedom. Now, I'm sure we can think up ways on how it can be used for evil, but that hasn't been the focus of all the negativity. Landing on small children and having your packages stolen are hardly concerns I'd associate with names like Stallman, Assange, Bradley, and Snowden.
I was commenting in a general sense, on the notion I quoted, of which the current discussion is a mere symptom; not specifically about Amazon or package delivery. Yet the point is: when a technology giant talks about delivering packages in a new and technologically novel, yet questionable way, we shouldn't be talking about delivering packages; we should be talking in a broader sense about the political and economical implications of that new way, and how it's going to affect people in the foreseeable future.
The notion of being unquestioning "champions of the future" is a general trait of most HN participants, and in direct contrast to what you problematize, what I find problematic is the great wave of instant enthusiasm we're seeing among so-called "hackers" for Amazon's stated intentions.
Why are you so quick to claim it's a "less-than-carefully thought out [idea]"? If I recall correctly, Bezos even joked about how they need to make sure it doesn't land on people's heads. There was also mention of the forthcoming FAA rabbit hole to step into. They're not idiots, so give a but more credit where it is due. He fully acknowledges the technology is years away, but gives us a taste of what's potentially coming.
I'd sell/give away clip-on baskets with a fat QR-code or similar imprinted on the inside bottom (or with embedded iBeacon-like-tech or even infrared lights similar to the Wii) to all customers who want to use this service and ask them to attach it to a window-sill, preferably upstairs or to the the back of the house. This would allow the copter to make a secure drop. As the copters are weight-limited anyway the baskets could also be.
It's also worth noting that as this service is for urgent items (why else would you pay extra for a 30 min service) why would you need to worry about the recipient being out? With GPS built-into mobile phones, 4G internet, bluetooth and iBeacon-like tech you could inform the recipient just before delivery or even better and it directly to them (or a special basket placed on the ground).
I'm also surprised that Jeff Bezos, well known for avoiding the press, spotlight, and all interviews, was suddenly being interviewed by a prominent television network.
Moreover, Bezos, who almost never talks about products in advance, was talking about something which won't be available for at least several years -- complete with a video demo.
I believe that Amazon has been investing time, money, and energy in this delivery-by-drone system. And I'm even excited by this possibility, far-off as it might be, and unlikely to come to my part of the world (i.e., Israel) in the foreseeable future. So this wasn't a just damage-control press tour, as the Guardian author seems to think.
But something is going on here, and I can't put my finger on it. Maybe Amazon is just trying to encourage more people to buy from them during the US "holiday shopping period," as it's known. Maybe this is something of an attempt to soften the negative image that Amazon workers' conditions have received lately. (Several of my relatives were talking about it over the weekend, so it has struck a chord with some people.) Maybe it's a "don't hurt us, since we're doing such cool things" image campaign. I'm really not sure. But this does seem rather out of character, and I'm glad that at least someone is raising questions about it.
I don't think Amazon needs to hype up the biggest shopping day of the year, it will likely be a record day of sales for them whatever happens. It's more likely that Amazon has some potential long term logistics contracts with couriers to renew, and they're showing what they could likely be capable of.
The article reminded me of all the buzz surrounding the Segway. There was so much buzz, in fact, people had a heyday trying to figure out what it was. Most thought it was some kind of personal flying device - which led to long discussions about the implications and roadblocks such a device would encounter. Which is very similar to having packages delivered via drones.
In the end, the Segway hardly lived up to all the hype. I mean, Bezo's himself was quoted as saying, "Cities will be built around these devices." Which should give you a good idea of how masterful he's at over hyping certain things. I now take most of his announcements with a pound of salt, considering his colorful history.
As someone who builds these for a hobby, the biggest problem is battery life and range.
The battery life life of the craft is determined by the weight/battery capacity ratio. Since is hardly any aerodynamics, the multicopter is constantly fighting the force of gravity by delivering an equal force using its motors and props.
An optimistic range estimate for current batteries would be about 10 mi, but the craft would also have to return, so make that 5mi.
Now imagine what happens when you attach a payload to it.
Regulations may change, and flight controlers keep getting better, but batteries would need significant improvement for this to become viable.
If range is a problem (and I have to assume that Bezos and team are aware of the performance characteristics of current/near term drone tech) they don't have to limit themselves to batteries.
>I love how The Guardian thinks that in six hours it can think of several dealbreaker problems that Amazon hasn't thought of in six months.
No, what they actually think is that in six hours they can think of several dealbreaker problems that Amazon has also thought of but doesn't care about, because it's a publicity stunt.
This is a mixture of the Guardian being stereotypically British, seeing the problems in everything, and ignoring the vast suburban reality of much of the US, where the problems would be smaller and the idea that much more practical, even if it's not necessarily easy.
It clearly is inevitable that at some point things will be delivered in this manner, but simply whining about it in this way is just an attempt to take away from anyone that tries to make progress, because heaven help the Guardian if they ever acknowledge someone in the private sector contributing to the advance of humanity.
1.) The Guardian et al. complain about working conditions at Amazon.
2.) Amazon puts out PR hinting that many of those workers will be replaced by automation before too long.
3.) The Guardian says it's just shopping season hype to distract from the working conditions and such.
Basically Amazon just called their bluff, and is now under pressure to deliver some seriously impressive results. How can a reporter complain about working conditions for drones? Will they go full-on Luddite and try to blame Amazon for destroying jobs? This should be interesting.
It would be very cool if they will be able to do this, I've toyed around a bit with multicopters and know a thing or two about the current state of non-military UAV's, here are my thoughts:
- They use a octocopter; that's great for the payload, plus it adds some redundancy; If a motor fails the others take over to get back safely without crashing. A bad thing about this is that it's a heavy lift, so more battery drain, so it needs a bigger battery == even more drain. I think you can get 30 minutes of flight time at the max out of that, with a lot of heavy batteries.
- Multicopters carrying payloads use powerful electronic motors; You do not want to put a finger near a spinning prop, for safety reasons a UAV within reach of people or animals should always be controlled by a human, what if someone runs up to the package to pick it up and the UAV automatically spins up to return to home?
- Auto landing is possible, but might be dangerous; The current systems (for example ArduPilot) use GPS and acc/baro/gyro/compasses to achieve autonomous flight. It works if your in field without trees around you, but the system can't find the best spot to land for you, so you need to land it by hand for this delivery service, controlled by a pilot over FPV (first person, wireless video connection).
- Experimental FPV ranges over 10 miles are possible, but not fail proof, especially in a non-line of sight environment or while landing (low to the ground).
Hate it to be a nay-sayer, this will have a future but the tech isn't here yet at this moment to accomplish it fully autonomous and safe.
It would not be that hard to write an app to authenticate the person picking up the package to the drone.
You don't know when the UPS guy is going to show up, but presumably, with this system, it's fast enough that you will be right where the order is dropped off.
They're trying to solve a very real problem for their industry. I would also point out that others may want to get involved. To wit: Google mainstreamed the idea of automating cars yet mercedez, bmw, etc. will probably beat them to the punch en masse. Whether amazon solves it or walmart/target/USPS/FedEx/UPS/etc. we all win.
First and foremost, if Amazon Drones deliver within 10 miles radius in 2018, why on Earth won't you let me drive to your facility (10 miles) and then pickup my crap personally? Just build a platform you drive by you punch your order number, confirm it then a basket with my junk drives by to the front. No need to wait 5 years to make my life much easier.
Second of all, you wont see the air being open to commercial solutions until the government is done with it. Its just how things work. Neither FAA nor any other government organisation will allow anyone to ask questions why is amazon flying stuff around but yet the streets are not patrolled by unmanned aircrafts? or a fire put out by a team of cooperating drones? Until then (10 years?) Jeff is just advertising himself, a day before cyber Monday (like article is indicating) and as usually he's doing great job!
I'd love to see some sort of crowd sourced solution for this system where Amazon offers up what it sees as the biggest technical/legal limitations and asks the internet for its solutions.
So far in just the HN threads, I've read some pretty innovative ideas (QR code landing pads that homes can setup for the drones). I'm pretty sure with the hive mind of the internet this problem can be solved by the collective engineer/lawyer/politician/etc
We put men on the moon I think we can put amazon packages in people's backyards!
The part that strikes me the most about this article: "Opening up crowded urban areas full of terror targets to large numbers of flying platforms is always going to be packed with conflicting interests and difficulties"
Yes, because urban areas full of terror targets aren't already full of platforms for weapons delivery. It's not like anyone can strap on a backpack and walk into a crowded mall.
Terror is not that real a threat. If you're worried about the terror prospects, you've already lost. Terror has been possible since the invention of explosives. Most people are friendly and cooperative, and do not value random acts of violence. Real work to combat terror involves improving the lives of marginalized people, and hunting down the few rabid dogs that are spreading their disease.
Not sure why people are fixating on autonomous drones. If this happens at all, the first drones will clearly be human controlled from the point they leave the warehouse to when they reach the delivery zone. They will be teleoperated and probably armed with a speaker and microphone so that the operator can speak to the recipient. There will be multiple cameras so if someone is interfering or trying to steal the payload, their face can be recorded so that they can be reported to the authorities. Unless there is extremely high winds or precipitation, weather doesn't have to be that huge a limiting factor either. Pointing out the problems of autonomous aerial navigation in this case is irrelevant.
It's disappointing to read all this negativity around the drone delivery story. Who knows if this will happen as soon as they claim, but it is a cool idea with a lot of genuinely interesting implications.
The fact that Amazon is trying to generate good PR is a tangental story in my opinion, and I wonder if investing in a drone delivery program just to show it off would be the most cost effective way to get good press.
I am also very unimpressed with the challenges that Mr. Ball identified. He probably had fun fashioning himself as some kind of technology muckraker, but please go after uninspired technology instead of taking easy shots at interesting and bold ideas.
If you read the article to the end, you realize that the author has big problems with Amazon, but they have nothing to do with drones. He is using an uptick in publicity about Amazon to voice his opposition to Amazon's business practices.
As to the issues he raised with the idea itself, the reality is that every single one of the issues will be resolved. This type of delivery, along with privately owned drones carrying out mundane tasks that would normally have us driving around town, is our future. It will happen, the only question is when.
I wasn't refuting anything. Just stating a fact: this author is clearly not making impartial judgments about the company. His objections appear to have more to do with his anti-Amazon feelings than anything else.
Autonomous wheeled delivery would seem to accomplish Amazon's goals with the benefit of reduced cost per lb-mile. Vertical thrust air transport is very inefficient compared to ground transport - more energy is spent maintaining altitude than moving forward.
Autonomous ground delivery does suffer from reduced navigational flexibility (anything other than curbside delivery is tricky). But it potentially has lower operating costs and safer failure modes. It may also be easier to integrate into existing regulatory frameworks.
If a start-up had done this, they'd write a blog called "how we hacked cyber monday" and the CEO would be your new man-crush, he'd then write an e-book called "PR hacking for profit and more profit", you'd drool when he spoke at the next TED, then a couple years from now your review of the prime air service would be full of OMGs
My point is it's a smart move now for the PR and in the future for what this tech could do, one does not damn the other. Amazon has more than proven its tech chops are beyond that of a just a website, combine that with the fact that the copter tech has been advancing on it's own at a fast pace and I think you'd be a fool to bet against Amazon on this one.
If they develop the technology, they're not restricted to using it in the USA. Some country will allow them, then it's another issue of the USA lagging behind due to regulations and we'll get it eventually. Bezos was more than transparent about 2015 being the best case scenario and not giving any true expectations. Either way, it's a matter of when, not if.
What I'm finding weird is that the skepticism over droned delivery feels like its more than the scope of Amazon.com, the world's largest internet retailer with super cheap prices, being able to deliver stuff via drones within 30 minutes. Doesn't that count for being anything sublime?
Would it be unpredictable that USPS/Fedex/DHL start doing something like it too?
Yes, this story, at worst a pie-in-the-sky project of one company, that will fade into the background in a week, this is the thing we should be skeptical about.
The consequences if I did "believe the hype" are terrible, I'm sure, although I can't think of a single one right now.
I believe this is possible. Just look at these autonomous drones doing stunts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM Delivering a packet is much easier than the stuff the are doing in this vid.
Those drones aren't fully-autonomous they are flying in an intelligent room with cameras and special lights attached to the walls. The control computers are also not on-board.
Except you'd also have to deal with the delivery driver. It's valid to observe that a bored kid may not think much of shooting down a small unmanned quadrotor, whereas they might not be so keen to attack a delivery man or a car containing a delivery man.
You wait until the driver leaves. It's safer than stealing from a drone; someone buying air delivery is probably home and might catch you in the act. If the UPS driver left a package at the door and nobody came out for it, the recipient's probably not home.
That's why they don't just leave packages on the street, at least not any package I've had delivered by courier in the UK. You have to sign for it otherwise it goes back to the depot and they leave you a note.
Must be regional. Whether a signature is required is up to the shipper, and Amazon generally doesn't request one. You could follow a UPS driver around in the US and pick up boxes from in front of doors all day. There are 1700 YouTube videos called "UPS package thief".
In Germany it's normal that you have to sign for your packages and I'm not aware that there is an option not to do that.
That being said, some delivery people simply dump the package in front of my flat and shipment tracking says I (who wasn't home) signed for it. And of course the fun of living in a dorm with 120 people and the illegible signature (are there others?) and you don't know who it belongs to (because the slip of paper in your mailbox just says "delivered to neighbour").
I don't think the handover issue is a fundamental problem with the drones though. For example you could receive an automated phone call to let you know the package is hovering above your house. If you're ordering something to be delivered in 30 minutes you're probably going to be there to receive it.
But I still see theft in transit as an issue. The moral/mental threshold is surely much lower for shooting down a mechanical fly than it is for raiding a van.
The threshold for destroying a device costing several thousand dollar which is actively having its location monitored?
If a police car is nearby it could be on the scene before the drone even hits the ground and having a few stories of parents getting a giant bill might do the trick.
Also I would imagine that the drone could be transmitting a live video feed. Anyone trying to steal/attack the drone would be recorded trying to do so.
This depends on the ambient level of crime where you live. In my family's home (way out in the middle of nowhere), all packages are just left on the porch (this lax approach allowed me to later leave my backpack in my car overnight in Santa Cruz proper; the window was smashed and the backpack stolen). When I was in San Francisco, leaving packages at your door was apparently not to be thought of.
Personally, I can see the appeal of the strategy "just don't have crime"; things are a lot more convenient that way.
Yes. There's not much to this article. Same goes for a kid shooting it. It would just like a kid shooting a car or a person. The law provides protection. I suspect regulation will be the biggest obstacle - as it already is in the US.
I am not trying to be obstructive or distract the discussion - but it occurs to me that anyone can shoot down the drone and retrieve valuable artifacts that are being transported.
The drones could be almost fully automated - fly to this GPS point above the person's house, at which point control is handed to a pilot for the landing & package drop.
>How is the transfer of the package enacted? What stops someone else stealing the package along the way?
I'd imagine the same way it's done today, the same way USPS/UPS handles packages - by dropping them on my porch and hoping my neighbors are honest.
>And what happens when next door's kid decides to shoot the drone with his BB rifle?
He gets a spanking and the drone gets repaired? The same thing that would happen if he shot the tires off the Fedex truck?
This article raises some good points about the political ramifications of drone technology, and some excellent ones about it being a PR move to squelch negative reporting, but I'm left with the feeling that, if he were alive a century ago, James Ball wouldn't be out of place writing an article titled "Sears & Roebuck to stop horse-drawn carriage delivery in favor of the automobile? Don't believe the hype".