Amazon to use quad copters to deliver packages

[ironpony]

Do not know how to link to it but Amazon is in the process of getting FAA approval to use quad copters to deliver packages to your door in less than 30 mins.
google it, interesting. I do not think it will ever work but...................
Cant believe no one else has posted this.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

I can think of 1000 reasons why this may not be a roaring success. Some obvious ones and others like ,WIll these things have RADAR to keep then from crashing into each other and buildings ,trees, ect. One of the obvious questions is, at what $ cost will this happen. Might only be for those willing to pay $50 for delivery.

 

[ironpony]

apparently they are spending millions to try and make it work

 

[USMC80]

I hear dominos pizza is looking into it as well

 

[WarmBluthner]

They can drop logs right down the chimney!

 

[ironpony]

up to five pounds from what I've read.

 

[BrotherBart]

An advertising stunt the night before cyber Monday.

 

[WarmBluthner]

Tomorrow it's Sinterklaas in Holland, seated on his white horse he throws parcels down the chimney. He'll be out of a job soon.

 

[BrotherBart]

A 30 second ad on 60 Minutes costs something like a hundred grand. Amazon got a free fifteen minutes. Freakin brilliant.

 

[fossil]

Meh...

(broken link removed to http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/drone-drops-beers-bombs-south-africa-article-1.1422617)

 

[Ashful]

A 30 second ad on 60 Minutes costs something like a hundred grand. Amazon got a free fifteen minutes. Freakin brilliant.

You nailed it.

 

[webbie]

Traffic and income on my drone site doubled as soon as that PR came out!

Thanks, Amazon!

 

[webbie]

Here is the present reality explained:
(broken link removed to http://www.pcworld.com/article/2069000/heres-why-amazon-drones-may-never-land-at-your-door.html)

BUT, Amazon and others are futurists. I have little doubt they are studying it and putting some R&D into it. Why not? Of course there are obstacles, but many of them can be overcome eventually.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

I agree with BB it was an advertising stunt. If it ever does happen it will be prohibitively expensive.

 

[Stax]

Webbie…the pcworld article is exactly where my mind went with the drone deliveries in the first place. Where are these UAV's taking off from? They'd half to have a fulfillment center in every city in every state. Not gonna happen.

 

[BrotherBart]

I like the PC article thing about landing. Ask any helicopter pilot about electric and telephone lines.

 

[webbie]

Ah, all ye of little faith. That's why guys like Bezos and friends are billionaires...they think ahead

How about one of these with lots of smaller quads attached to it???
http://www.e-volo.com/

In the end, electric flight is fairly inexpensive. I can just imagine all you guys lamenting that it would be impossible that someday there would be paved roads and trucks to deliver packages to everyone within one day......



I want to be reincarnated just so I can watch all this stuff happen. Meanwhile, my book is becoming a best seller.......

Look at that! #4 in reference!
At this rate, I'll be able to retire and fly quadcopters all day long....

 

[BrotherBart]

I know. I am a Luddite. Stuck making the small bucks for 40 years trying to make the crap the visionaries came up with actually work.

 

[webbie]

How many of us would do what those German dudes are doing and invest millions in this stuff?

You have to have respect for people like that, IMHO. They bet the farm over and over again...

 

[jharkin]

Yeah, this one has turned int oa couple of long running discussions on my favorite RC helicopter site.

The talk is that it will be limited to packages under 5lb delivered within 5 miles of one of their hubs for prime members.

I can see this actually being cheaper than regular delivery long term when you consider how much it costs to operate delivery trucks and pay drivers.

The copters they will use will be nothing like the toys in the mall obviously.

I can see a lot of problems still - legal issues, how does the thing avoid collisions with other air trafic, your car, how does it know not to drop the box on your kids head, etc. But I'm sure these are solvable issues. If you saw an R/C helicopter from the 1990's and looked at a modern drone you wouldn't believe how the technology has evolved so far, just give it time...

Ideas like this make me think of bigger picture questions, like what to we do in 20 years when automation and AI means there just are not nearly enough to keep 7 billion people busy... If any of you have ever read the Isaac Asimov "Robot" novels you will know what I mean

 

[woodgeek]

Personally I think a network of pneumatic tubes will make the Bezos copters obsolete...I saw it in futurama.

 

[BrotherBart]

Personally I think a network of pneumatic tubes will make the Bezos copters obsolete...I saw it in futurama.

It used to work getting payments upstairs and the receipts back in Penny's and Sear's in the 50's

Damn I'm old.

 

[woodgeek]

Found a snapshot of you hard at it...

 

[firefighterjake]

It used to work getting payments upstairs and the receipts back in Penny's and Sear's in the 50's

Damn I'm old.

Still in use in some hospitals . . . wife worked at a place where they shipped meds and other items via the tubes . . . and once in awhile they would clean off the nurses desk by sending the crap off to random locations via the tubes . . . and then there was that ice cream incident she told me about . . . I guess that didn't end quite as well.

 

[Ashful]

Ideas like this make me think of bigger picture questions, like what to we do in 20 years when automation and AI means there just are not nearly enough to keep 7 billion people busy... If any of you have ever read the Isaac Asimov "Robot" novels you will know what I mean

Not looking to make this political, but last I checked, robotics repair paid way more than delivery driver. Programmer more than that, and automation engineer, even more. There'll be lots of good jobs in manufacturing, programming, and maintaining those drones.

Close a door, open a window...