Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
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.
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I have always said you have to crawl before you can walk. Why anybody has thought they were going to go straight to flying delivery is just dreaming. The drones would have to be bigger to do what is a common size payload and even then where are they going to put it? Best case you get it out in your driveway but what about apartments? None of the apartments on my route even have rooftop access and I don't think customers will appreciate a pile of packages randomly stacked out by the pool.
Now tracked or wheeled slow drones on the sidewalks could fill lockers placed at apartments or put it on the porch of a house.