I've an efficiency fantasy of them piggybacking on the roofs of trucks going in the right direction in order to save fuel, then hopping off when the truck starts to head in a different direction. Techno parasitism.
This is actually how (some) couriers worked in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. They latched on to the back of passing cars/trucks with magnetic harpoons and hitched a free ride until they needed to head another way.
There's going to be some problematic airflow around vehicles like this. The air behind and to the sides will be turbulent, I'm not sure a drone could safely approach a truck this closely. It might require more powerful motors.
A truck on the freeway could be even harder, a drone would need to hold 55mph, throw in a headwind of say 15mph and you'll need a 70mph drone. Even on a highway at 40 + 15mph you're looking at 55mph in an environment with overhead lines, other vehicles, people.
Takeoff would be harder still, once the drone is released from a truck then it's instantly doing 55mph, or more if there is a tailwind. Should there be a failure during this mavouvre, there's no safety mechanism: the drone would become a 55mph+ projectile heading straight towards the following car's windshield.
That would actually cause a net increase of fuel consumption. The drag on the truck would offset the drone's saving. Overpass clearance could also be problematic.
The net result would be lawsuits and damaged drones I'm afraid. At least until a drone operator enters into an agreement with a hauling company.
Not to be a downer, but I think the whole drone delivery thing, at least for now, nothing but a media show. Worked great for Amazon, .... (Maybe the technology will evolve enough later to be cost effective, and tests are important on that path.)
It's already happening. Imagine delivery of high-value, light goods to remote locations, e.g. medicines in the Australian Outback, or island off the German coast. These are examples of what has already been done.
I'm still not convinced by delivery by drone. There's many problems that have yet to be solved, some have obvious solutions that are still none trivial to implement - others at least in my mind are very much an issue.
So far as none trivial but solvable problems - there's going to have to be communication with all vendors operating delivery drones. Each drone will have to be aware of other drones by other companies and their flight-paths in the area and avoid collisions.
The biggest problem that I can see is the customer and public themselves. What is to stop someone stealing drones? Or plain vandalism of them? Follow it in a car to it's destination and you know it's going to have to come low enough down for a quick grab. Otherwise if there's some controlled drop off point, air rifles or crossbows or other publicly available small projectile weapons.
> I'm still not convinced by delivery by drone. There's many problems that have yet to be solved
Of course - that's why we try things that have never been done before. It might work really well, or it might fail spectacularly. In both cases the important thing is we learn a ton for the next time we try something we've never done before.
It's important we keep trying to do things we've never done before.
The vast majority of the Chinese population with meaningful consumption power live in hire rise apartment buildings in the cities. So if you can't drop the package in a yard, how do you deliver by drone?
I wonder if China's more lax regulations aren't a big win for Alibaba and improves their ability to go to market faster than Amazon will with drove delivery.
They have more lax regulations about some things, but apparently civil aviation is extremely tightly regulated, with most of the country set aside for military aviation (James Fallows has written about this). I'm sure they'd be wary of all their civilians runnings drones, filming things that shouldn't be seen, etc as well.
How is the communist regime's governance in China "lax?" There's probably significant worry on the part of the CCP to keep drones controlled as they may see and record things that are politically inconvenient for this autocratic regime like political prisoners being abused or heavy-handed riot police action.
Chinese aerospace laws, from a casual googling, seem to be very strict as well, and geared towards favoritism for their military.
If drones take off anywhere, I imagine it will be in the most transparent countries, like the ultra-liberal Scandinavian democracies. I doubt drones are autocrat friendly for obvious reasons. I also imagine there's a nice middle ground between planes and rc hobbyists with defined paths and lots of rules that will eventually shake-out in many countries. Drone delivery just makes a lot of sense ,perhaps not so much with toothpaste, but with, say blood or organ delivery where a proper helicopter costs many times more and an accident is lethal. A drone accident is just a lost resource.
Chinese airspace is highly regulated, especially in the cities mentioned. Theoretically, every single drone flight has to be reported and registered with multiple military and civil agencies.
The drone in this stunt is operated by YuanTong, a parcel delivery company, not Alibaba. Also Alibaba does not (generally?) maintain distribution centers or hold inventory. So from a strategic perspective drones don't mean to Alibaba what they could to Amazon.
You are right, Alibaba doesn't even sell anything, they are like e-bay, just connect the buyer to the seller. As far as I know Alibaba also doesn't have a delivery service, ShungFeng Express is the most used delivery company. The chinese Amazon is YiHaoDian(360buy), they sell their own things and they have their own delivery operation.
Whenever I see drone delivery, I always see quadrocopters. Aren't octocopters more safe (they can still fly with 7 rotors)? Intuitively they can also carry more load. It should be a very simple decision considering that the main objection against drones is safety.
Quads are an MVP in this sense-- I imagine commercial fleets of any type will be primarily 8 or 16 rotor machines.
With just 4 rotors you are pretty much toast if any single component fails, with a well built and properly programmed 16 rotor craft you could theoretically stay up, or at least do a somewhat controlled landing on just 4, assuming opposing pairs.
It's......really weird. Solving a problem that doesn't exist. Tea? Really? Asian cultures as so different and seem weird to me with this kind of technology related announcements.
Are they using auto pilot or stick and yoke? Just curious, as the article mentions in the conclusion this isn't addressed. Recent regional news would indicate this may be a valid concern...well, at least from a cold-blooded investor standpoint (liability vs. profitability).
Great question, fundamental really. If it's auto pilot what's to stop some malicious hacker from diverting the drones. If it's manual how much are the pilots getting paid and are they bonded? Seems like a huge can of worms to me.
Most likely GPS autopilot with FPV human backup in case something goes wrong. And I'm sure they will have crashes sooner or later if they start doing this at scale
How big is Alibaba inside China? Just like Amazon in the USA, the go-to place for people to buy stuff online? Disclaimer: I live in Brazil, and I use Alibaba only to buy inexpensive stuff, so that's the picture I have of the company.
Alibaba is like MercadoLivre, they don't sell anything. They pretty dominant, in China they have TaoBao, an e-bay like, TianMao, also like e-bay, but more selected, more expensive to open a shop in it, and more brand-oriented than TaoBao, and finally they have Alibaba China, that is a B2B site, it means real wholesale. Oh, there is also Alipay, huge, it is the Paypal in China, people here use it even to pay 10 bucks to a friend when sharing a restaurant bill, a guy just taps his mobile phone and send the 10 bucks to his friend that is sitting just across from him, it's funny. There is also Alimama, advertising market. The thing is that in Brazil (I'm a brazilian too!) the e-commerce is still far from the level it has reached in China. My wife (chinese) buys everything in the internet, even noodles, milk, oil, soap,her clothes, her Lenovo laptop, her Iphone6, everything from the internet. She can't spent a day without buying at least a pair of socks from the internet. Brazil lacked a good payment system, but now with PagSeguro i guess things will improve. But there is also the expensive delivery in Brazil, in China it's ridiculously cheap, like you pay 30 Reais to send a 5 kilos pack 2000 Kilometer away to the other side of the country within 24 hours!!
I wonder what is the difference in efficiency between drone delivery and the old-fashioned truck logistics, taking into account speed, carbon emissions, human factor etc – I wouldn't be surprised if 5x or 10x is the factor.
I wonder how often this happens for companies, where a PR stunt or vaporware press release from company A convinces company B to expend resources to "beat them to market".
That's how we got StarCraft, and thus modern RTS games. Someone created a fake rendered demo at E3 conference and Blizzard fell for the trick; they believed the awesome thing they saw is real, and they worked their butts off to beat it.
One inevitable business area is in anti-drone system, particularly in drone-capture systems (e.g. intercept and actually "capture" the drone and its cargo for forensics, etc). If you made such a system right now, you'd immediately have orders from the White House, other high security locations, and eventually the wealthy, etc.
And of course, stealing from delivery drones is going to become a thing.
[+] [-] muxxa|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psb217|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jahewson|11 years ago|reply
A truck on the freeway could be even harder, a drone would need to hold 55mph, throw in a headwind of say 15mph and you'll need a 70mph drone. Even on a highway at 40 + 15mph you're looking at 55mph in an environment with overhead lines, other vehicles, people.
Takeoff would be harder still, once the drone is released from a truck then it's instantly doing 55mph, or more if there is a tailwind. Should there be a failure during this mavouvre, there's no safety mechanism: the drone would become a 55mph+ projectile heading straight towards the following car's windshield.
So it's insanely dangerous.
[+] [-] acveilleux|11 years ago|reply
The net result would be lawsuits and damaged drones I'm afraid. At least until a drone operator enters into an agreement with a hauling company.
[+] [-] emiliobumachar|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forkandwait|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w-ll|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __jochen__|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legulere|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshkpeterson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Derpdiherp|11 years ago|reply
So far as none trivial but solvable problems - there's going to have to be communication with all vendors operating delivery drones. Each drone will have to be aware of other drones by other companies and their flight-paths in the area and avoid collisions.
The biggest problem that I can see is the customer and public themselves. What is to stop someone stealing drones? Or plain vandalism of them? Follow it in a car to it's destination and you know it's going to have to come low enough down for a quick grab. Otherwise if there's some controlled drop off point, air rifles or crossbows or other publicly available small projectile weapons.
[+] [-] josu|11 years ago|reply
Cameras on drones and laws. Stealing a motorbike is relativelly simple, and it doesn't happen that often.
Eventually the cops will start using drones, and the rest has already been told by South Park.
[+] [-] grecy|11 years ago|reply
Of course - that's why we try things that have never been done before. It might work really well, or it might fail spectacularly. In both cases the important thing is we learn a ton for the next time we try something we've never done before.
It's important we keep trying to do things we've never done before.
[+] [-] gutnor|11 years ago|reply
It is profitable to have pizza hand-delivered in the US/Europe where labor cost is high. In China, I wonder how that is even possible.
[+] [-] kailuowang|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zorked|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aioprisan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] houshuang|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|11 years ago|reply
Chinese aerospace laws, from a casual googling, seem to be very strict as well, and geared towards favoritism for their military.
If drones take off anywhere, I imagine it will be in the most transparent countries, like the ultra-liberal Scandinavian democracies. I doubt drones are autocrat friendly for obvious reasons. I also imagine there's a nice middle ground between planes and rc hobbyists with defined paths and lots of rules that will eventually shake-out in many countries. Drone delivery just makes a lot of sense ,perhaps not so much with toothpaste, but with, say blood or organ delivery where a proper helicopter costs many times more and an accident is lethal. A drone accident is just a lost resource.
[+] [-] howlingfantods|11 years ago|reply
Enforcement is a different story.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|11 years ago|reply
(Unless what I'm hearing is true, and being a non-Chinese company is a big hindrance.)
[+] [-] auganov|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pagnotta|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IanDrake|11 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com/search?q=quadcopter+injuries&num=50&e...
[+] [-] sly010|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nicholas_C|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Phlarp|11 years ago|reply
With just 4 rotors you are pretty much toast if any single component fails, with a well built and properly programmed 16 rotor craft you could theoretically stay up, or at least do a somewhat controlled landing on just 4, assuming opposing pairs.
[+] [-] aroman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamleppert|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Panoramix|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kleer001|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dharma1|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thalesmello|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pagnotta|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] officialjunk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zirkonit|11 years ago|reply
I wonder what is the difference in efficiency between drone delivery and the old-fashioned truck logistics, taking into account speed, carbon emissions, human factor etc – I wouldn't be surprised if 5x or 10x is the factor.
[+] [-] web007|11 years ago|reply
I wonder how often this happens for companies, where a PR stunt or vaporware press release from company A convinces company B to expend resources to "beat them to market".
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dharma1|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mephi5t0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] harisamin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] engendered|11 years ago|reply
And of course, stealing from delivery drones is going to become a thing.
[+] [-] CmonDev|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada#iPhone_controversy