|
The past month we've been getting nearly daily deliveries of packages since we no longer go to the store to buy anything but groceries and other consumable goods. That means stuff is being delivered on a nearly daily basis, and that will likely be true for the majority of people soon.
This got me thinking about drone deliveries and the problems they must overcome to be viable. My first thought was how darn noisy my drone is. You can hear it half a mile away, and when it's nearby, it's very loud. If we had thousands of these drones we'd have a perpetual buzz. Nobody would tolerate that. Perhaps the problem could be minimized with larger diameter rotors, which would probably necessitate a helicopter rather than multi-rotor design. Even that might still be too loud.
Next there is the problem of air traffic and vandalism, and failures resulting in objects falling from the sky. Big risk of injury when thousands of these are running about at all hours.
I'm not so sure we'll see drone deliveries, but autonomous vehicle delivery seems very likely. They would be nearly silent, and a breakdown would not result in injury. At some point I won't even be going to the grocery store. Delivery will be so cheap that it will be more expensive to have a storefront and the associated "breakage" and other waste rather than a warehouse that dispatches deliveries.
Most retail outlets will disappear and autonomous deliveries will help facilitate this.
|