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Amazon's drone delivery program is the joke it always sounded like. (news.yahoo.com)

submitted 1 year ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Only one item can be delivered at a time. It can’t weigh more than 5 pounds. It can’t be too big. It can’t be something breakable, since the drone drops it from 12 feet. The drones can’t fly when it is too hot or too windy or too rainy.

You need to be home to put out the landing target and to make sure that a porch pirate doesn’t make off with your item or that it doesn’t roll into the street (which happened once to Lord and Silverman). But your car can’t be in the driveway. Letting the drone land in the backyard would avoid some of these problems, but not if there are trees.

Amazon has also warned customers that drone delivery is unavailable during periods of high demand for drone delivery.

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[–] EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I won’t say never, but when and how will drone delivery be more efficient than a truck?

Per package it’s more energy, it’s more risk, and the tech is harder.

To purchase a fleet of drones big enough will cost more than paying a driver for a long time still.

[–] setsubyou@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty much everybody in this thread who is laughing at Amazon’s drones is thinking of drones as they are right now. But Amazon is not using drones because it’s a good idea now. They’re using drones now so they already have the experience and the setup when inevitable technical progress happens.

The drones might never work out or they might eventually work out, but this is exactly how Amazon got so big in the first place. They started selling books online when a lot of people still weren’t sure whether that could work and they started selling cloud computing almost ten years before anyone else thought to do that.

[–] EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago

Fair, but the flying drone delivery in my opinion doesn’t scale up.

I think the real savings would be in something like a robot moving packages from the truck or a mobile base to the door.

[–] ShadowRam@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Per package it’s more energy

How you figure? compared to point to point electrical energy costs compared to moving a truck mass around streets with constant stopping/starting?

[–] EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s the same as a train, by moving bulk you reduce average costs. Plus drones have to stay in the air, and travel from their base for each package, whereas if a truck has two stops on a street it’s moving less distance.

[–] ShadowRam@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Train isn't doing point to point.

You're gonna have to actually do the calculations before making claims.