I was always suspicious that this was one of those tech visions divorced from reality. A ‘we can make a cool video about how the future will be amazing’ without having done any of the hard, boring things to lay the groundwork.
See Tesla robot for further details
It was always a bit of a silly idea… 1 drone per parcel wouldn’t scale. They’d never get the permission to fly over populated areas and people would shoot them down and sell them on ebay.
It’s not a completely crazy idea but it’s certainly not going to become the norm any time soon.
Neither my house nor my place of work have suitable landing points, and I suspect that’s not uncommon.
Still, if you think about drone delivery as competing with same day motorcycle couriers (but not free standard next day delivery), then I think… maybe… just maybe the economics of it could work.
Perhaps the biggest market for this isn’t Amazon, but the likes of Deliveroo, Uber eats, etc. The economics aren’t just about getting the food from A to B, they include all the time the riders/drivers are sat about waiting for orders to come in, and that might help tip the balance in favour of drones. It all feels like a very long way off tho.
Pretty essential for a drone really
Or you could just have an AED (defibrillator) on a wall at the local church/pub/phone kiosk/car park/Spar, plugged in and charged, clearly marked, and ready to use.
You really need a defib on someone within 3 minutes to significantly raise the chance of survival. Why on earth does it need to be delivered by drone??
“999!! I need a drone delivery of a defibrillator”
3 mins later
“999!!! I need a paramedic to deal with lacerations!”
For those who like audio, this was also covered in the wired UK podcast episode 529
This popped up today, my phone must be reading the forum
At least it shows a potential use case in rural areas.