Drone deliveries might have made sense 10 year ago when Amazon announced they were working on it. Back then folks maybe got packages from Amazon once a month, or heavy purchasers once every week or two. These days a lot of folks get Amazon deliveries every day. Drones may have made sense back when they were delivering one package a day to a given neighborhood. But now when you have a truck load of deliveries for every street, probably doesn't make as much sense. Delivering prescriptions by drone, that sort of still makes sense.
However, it takes so long to get things approved by the federal governmet that, by the time they finally get these approved (15-20 years from now?), they will probably no longer make sense. The bureaucracy in the USA is killing inovation. We invent stuff here that we aren't allowed to use for years, or sometimes decades, after it's widely available in the rest of the world. My PGP public key: https://vanderwal.us/evdl_pgp.key April 9, 2021 1:45 AM, "Bill Dube via EV" <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote: > In my opinion, the "delivery drones" have the wrong paradigm. The delivery > drone really doesn't > need to travel long distances or carry more than one package. > > The real issue is the final 50-100 feet of delivery. The UPS driver has to > park the truck, get the > package out of the back of the truck, and carry it to the front door, then > walk back to the truck, > start it and go to the next address. The "drone" should do only this > "walking" portion of the > mission instead of the driver. The truck just travels by the house, and the > drone flies out of the > top of the truck with the package, and delivers it to the front door, then > returns to the still > moving truck. > > The truck may not need to even stop, but only slow down, or not. The drone > might actually be > tethered for large/heavy packages and very short distances. > > The drone does what it does best; short hops. It returns to the truck quickly > for the next package > and a recharge. > > The driver can ascertain if there is any problem, and intervene quickly to > correct it. The driver > can opt to hand deliver a package that the drone may not be able to deliver > effectively. Perhaps > dense trees, power lines, winds, or other issues. > > Bill D. > > _______________________________________________ > Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org > No other addresses in TO and CC fields > UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub > ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive > LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/ LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
