Amazon details drone delivery plans | Hacker News Reader

Amazon details drone delivery plans

bbc.co.uk

40 pointsescapologybb18 comments

First sentence: "According to the patent, the drones will be able to track the location of the person it is delivering to by pulling data from their smartphone."

Further down: "Using Audi's...communications system...DHL delivery drivers would track a customer's vehicle over a specified period of time and then use a digital access code to unlock the boot. This code would then expire as soon as the boot was shut."

...well this is all a little more unsettling than having your mailman or a FedEx driver drop by your house

Don't opt for that service then. If you are more comfortable with it, just tick the "Deliver to my home" box..

It's probably only an option in the amazon mobile app. I doubt they would track your phone with NSA style tech.

If the issue is someone knowing your whereabouts during the day, hopefully you consider it pretty unsettling that everyone who knows your address can be reasonably certain where you are between 6 PM and 7 AM.

That being said, I can see being uncomfortable with them having access to your trunk.

There is reasonable expectation that people can drop by when you are "at home".

But when driving around on 5th avenue, seeing a DHL truck chasing you around? That's just not a reasonable expectation.

Why not?

The reason these companies deliver to an address is because historically, that is the most convenient way for them to get your package to you.

Now it would be more convenient for you (and less so for them, given the amount of effort that goes into route planning) to deliver to wherever you are.

A truck would hardly 'chase you around', but might follow you until you've parked, and give the package to you then.

I'd say the service places an unreasonable expectation on the shipping company, rather than on the consumer.

It's not unsettling to know where a person might be in the middle of the night.

It's unsettling to know with absolute precise certainty where a person is at all times of the day. It's even more unsettling to know that a retailer knows where their customers are at all times of the day.

This is Apple/Google's fault. It really wouldn't be hard to add a section to settings that very clearly defines which apps have which permissions, and make it easy to turn off permissions for specific apps. Google tried something like this, but backtracked quickly. Instead, they need to double down and kick out any apps that crash if they don't have permissions enabled for specific functions.

How the hell do they plan to plan efficient deliveries to moving targets?

I don't see any implementatin details in that patent, only a very rough sketch of how such a system could work (but many important details missing!) It could be me though.

Yeah, I am wondering about the limits of range, package weight, recharging operations and more for this kind of use. There are probably many headaches involved in implementing such projects.

Range could be handled by having recharging stations spread out through a city (a drone could also swap batteries). However, the challenge is to keep the solution as low-cost as possible, because drones will be lost to weather, crashes, etc.

None of this is addressed though.

Why is the challenge to keep costs low?

If this means I can have something delivered in 45 minutes, or maybe 20 minutes!, they can charge a premium for that. Otherwise I wait for the big truck to bring it by within 2 days and it's free. Right now there is no solution at any cost, in my market, by which I can order almost any product from Amazon and have it within a few hours.

Amazon already does same-day delivery in more areas than you're likely to see drone-delivery in the next 5-10 years.

In most places, the fancy technology has zero advantage over employing a handful of couriers. Exceptions would include extreme geography or traffic conditions.

Straight line delivery and Amazons ability to mark a job finished more quickly are both valuable in any area.

I'm keenly interested reducing package weight and waste. I'd love to see innovation in that value chain.

For instance, shipping medications in baggies (pouches), where the script label is printed directly on the baggie.

Boxes within boxes, plus all the packing material, drives me nuts.

I don't understand why or how a rough sketch of a system is patentable in the first place. The air traffic control system isn't patented, our system of roads and highways aren't patented, bike paths, trails, and so on are not patented. Patenting a system of automated "see and avoid" for autonomous flight is a maybe, but ultimately all such aircraft have to fit into a standardized system that cannot depend on any one patent. One company can't "own" the drone air traffic control system.

Title is misleading.

Given that you can patent without implementing, and unimplemented patents can leave you open to lawsuits, organizations are forced to patent everything they they may want to do someday.

A patent isn't necessarily what someone will implement. It's just one possible embodiment.

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