Deliverider

Drone deliveries could be the next big thing if logistics companies find a way to overcome the current hurdles. How long will it take them to figure things out? What Drone Delivery Could Look Like So far, the commercial sector has shown interest in various short-range drone applications. Last-mile delivery is one of the most likely uses for drones in logistics since the technology is better suited for brief trips. While conventional vans can travel incredibly long distances, the cost of deploying them in the last leg of shipping is absurdly high. Same-day delivery is another likely application because drones are small, fast, and lightweight. More importantly, they can typically only hold one package at a time, making them perfect for urgent order fulfillment. The food and grocery delivery surge highlights another potential application for cost-effective drones. While app-based services are popular, companies lose money paying their drivers. For example, Uber only — it lost millions every year prior. started making a profit in 2023 Pros of Using Drones for Package Deliveries There are numerous benefits to using drones for package deliveries. Fast Delivery Autonomous drones could cut delivery times in half. They can deliver lightweight packages because they’re agile and small. A large fleet could easily make thousands of deliveries daily. faster than conventional vehicles Inexpensive Operation Semi-trucks and delivery vans use diesel or gas, which is expensive and fluctuates in price often. On the other hand, drones use electricity, which is relatively inexpensive. In other words, their cost per trip is typically much lower. Higher Efficiency Drones are fast and use little fuel because roadways, traffic lights, congestion, or car accidents don’t hinder them. Instead, they can fly in a semi-direct path toward their target address. They're more efficient since they can achieve a higher delivery quota than trucks. Increased Accessibility Addresses in remote or congested areas can be challenging to get to by truck. Drones can travel to these spots with little trouble, increasing delivery accessibility — and potentially increasing order frequency. Automatic Delivery Autonomous drones pose less of a risk to public safety than self-driving vehicles. At the same time, they offer all of the benefits of automation — they can deliver packages around the clock, never have to take breaks, and won’t suffer from human-error-related mistakes. Cons of Using Drones for Package Deliveries As great as the benefits of drone deliveries are, downsides do exist. Unreliable Unfortunately, modern drones aren’t the most robust technology — a strong gust of wind or unpleasant weather can easily knock them off course. If conditions aren’t ideal, they won’t be able to leave the fulfillment center to make deliveries. Complex Currently, there are few out-of-the-box solutions for commercial drone delivery. Autonomous flight , requiring technology like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and GPS-independent navigation to work. Properly developing and integrating everything can be a highly complex undertaking. is very resource-intensive Involved Logistics companies can only deploy a fleet if they have storage space, chargers, navigation software, insurance, and maintenance. Developing the infrastructure to make drone deliveries is time-consuming and expensive. Expensive Commercial drones are expensive — on average, in 2024. Unfortunately, the price will only drop to $500 by 2028. Logistics companies will have to invest a significant portion of their budget into the upfront expenses alone. a single one costs $520 Error-Prone While conventional vehicles can experience a flat tire or a dead battery, the driver can fix it or call for assistance. If a drone suffers from a technical issue mid-air, it could land in a tree, on a roof or in the middle of a road, irreversibly damaging it and its package. Finding and retrieving it might be impossible if its geolocation features malfunction. Restricted Drones can only carry relatively lightweight packages. They’d have to be much larger to lift bulk or heavy objects — and who wants all that weight flying precariously above their head? Preventable Challenges to Widespread Adoption One of the most preventable challenges to the widespread adoption is drop-off uncertainty. Media often depicts drones gracefully swooping down and gingerly placing a package right where it needs to be. In reality, they need a pre-determined location like a parcel locker. Unoperated drones aren’t capable of the precision that placing a package at the right doorstep requires, so pick-up locations are ideal. However, they have to get relatively low to the ground to make these deliveries, meaning there’s a high likelihood of interference. While logistics companies can hope people remain civil, only some are fond of this novel delivery method. Residents of one town after the tech giant rolled them out. Although they’d face repercussions from destroying or damaging anything, the ensuing legal battles and replacement costs could be high. discussed shooting down Amazon’s drones At the very least, general public hesitation is another challenge halting widespread adoption. According to one survey, feel worried about potential drone accidents. Their concerns aren’t unfounded, either — drones are far more likely to crash than aircraft. nearly three in 10 people The issue of red tape is technically preventable but would be challenging in reality. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s Part 107 rule between the pilot and their drone at all times. Australia and the United Kingdom have similar regulations. This technicality all but prevents autonomous deliveries. requires a line of sight Moreover, operators must get a remote pilot certificate, register, certify, and pass tests before ever being able to fly — or watch over — a drone. Even if they have all these credentials, they can’t fly above 400 feet or over congested areas. The regulations are strict. While these challenges are all preventable with enough effort, money, and time, they still are massive obstacles to standardizing drone delivery. Unless a pioneering logistics company works to change things, they will remain in the way. Unavoidable Challenges to Widespread Adoption Logistics companies can’t remove every hurdle to adoption. Weather is one of the biggest obstacles — drones can’t fly in hail, fog, rain, sleet, or windy conditions. If it’s too hot out, their lifting capacity drops drastically, and their batteries drain much faster in the cold. Essentially, they are relatively useless unless it’s mild out. Their range is another longstanding challenge. Currently, autonomous drones can only get so far — a few miles, to be precise. For logistics companies to make an adequate return on investment, they’d need to build a micro-fulfillment center next to every major city. Obstacles are another frequently overlooked — and unavoidable — challenge. While autonomous delivery drones are often equipped with computer vision, artificial intelligence, and sensors, they won’t be able to recognize objects as well as humans. In other words, they have a much higher chance of running into power lines, low-flying aircraft, trees, birds, and people. What the Future of Drone Delivery Will Look Like While drone technology has potential, it’s facing some significant hurdles. Even if the FAA’s regulations suddenly disappeared, their success isn’t guaranteed. In fact, companies have yet to make much progress even though the FAA has already pulled back. Its 2021 rule change , enabling them to fly at night and over moving vehicles without a waiver. loosened commercial drone restrictions Still, the winds of change are definitely blowing. In 2021, registered their drones. More and more logistics enterprises are recognizing the potential of this technology. roughly 1.3 million commercial pilots Crucially, the general public’s awareness and acceptance of this technology is shifting. According to one study, to use package delivery drones if the option existed. While logistical adoption of the drone market, it likely won’t be an option at checkout for years. seven in 10 people would prefer is the fastest-growing portion Drones Could Be the Future of Logistics While delivery drones might not become a thing for years — possibly even decades — it’s clear that logistics brands are hard at work trying to make this technology happen. It could soon become the standard.

How Close Are We to Widespread Drone Deliveries?

আমরা ড্রোন ডেলিভারি ব্যাপকভাবে কতটা কাছাকাছি?

Wie nah sind wir an einer weit verbreiteten Verbreitung von Drohnenlieferungen?

¿Qué tan cerca estamos de las entregas generalizadas de drones?

À quel point sommes-nous proches des livraisons généralisées par drones ?

हम व्यापक ड्रोन डिलीवरी के कितने करीब हैं?

ドローン配送の普及はどのくらい近づいているのでしょうか?

드론 배송이 널리 확산되는 데 얼마나 가까이 다가왔나요?

Quão perto estamos das entregas generalizadas de drones?

Насколько мы близки к распространению доставки дронами?

Yaygın Drone Teslimatlarına Ne Kadar Yakınız?

Chúng ta đã tiến gần đến việc giao hàng bằng máy bay không người lái rộng rãi đến mức nào?

我们距离广泛的无人机送货还有多远？

How can Uber deliver food and always arrive on time or a few minutes before? How do they match riders to drivers so that you can always find a Uber? All that while also managing all the drivers?! Well, we will answer exactly that in the video... References ►Read the full article: ►Uber blog post: ►What are transformers: ►Linear Transformers: ►My Newsletter (A new AI application explained weekly to your emails!): https://www.louisbouchard.ai/uber-deepeta/ https://eng.uber.com/deepeta-how-uber-predicts-arrival-times/ https://youtu.be/sMCHC7XFynM https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.16236.pdf https://www.louisbouchard.ai/newsletter/ Video transcript 0:00 how can uber deliver food and always 0:02 arrive on time or a few minutes before 0:05 how do they match riders to drivers so 0:07 that you can always find a uber all that 0:10 while soon managing all the drivers we 0:12 will answer these questions in this 0:14 video with their arrival time prediction 0:16 algorithm deep eta deep eta is uber's 0:20 most advanced algorithm for estimating 0:22 arrival times using deep learning used 0:25 both for uber and uber eats deep eta can 0:28 magically organize everything in the 0:30 background so that riders drivers and 0:32 food are fluently going from point a to 0:34 point b as efficiently as possible many 0:37 different algorithms exist to estimate 0:40 travel on such road networks but i don't 0:42 think any are as optimized as uber's 0:45 previous arrival time prediction tools 0:47 including uber were built with what we 0:50 call shortest path algorithms which are 0:52 not well suited for real-world 0:54 predictions since they do not consider 0:56 real-time signals for several years uber 0:59 used xgboost a well-known gradient 1:02 boosted decision tree machine learning 1:04 library xjboost is extremely powerful 1:07 and used in many applications but was 1:09 limited in uber's case as the more it 1:11 grew the more latency it had they wanted 1:14 something faster more accurate and more 1:16 general to be used for drivers riders 1:18 and food delivery all orthogonal 1:20 challenges that are complex to solve 1:22 even for machine learning or ai 1:25 here comes deep eta a deep learning 1:28 model that improves upon xg boosts for 1:30 all of those oh and i almost forgot 1:33 here's the sponsor of this video 1:36 myself please take a minute to subscribe 1:39 if you like the content and leave a like 1:41 i'd also love to read your thoughts in 1:43 the comments or join the discord 1:45 community learn ai together to chat with 1:47 us let's get back to the video 1:49 deep eta is really powerful and 1:51 efficient because it doesn't simply take 1:53 data and generate a prediction there's a 1:56 whole preprocessing system to make this 1:58 data more digestible for the model this 2:00 makes it much easier for the model as it 2:02 can directly focus on optimized data 2:05 with much less noise and far smaller 2:07 inputs a first step in optimizing for 2:10 latency issues this pre-processing 2:12 module starts by taking map data and 2:14 real-time traffic measurements to 2:16 produce an initial estimated time of 2:18 arrival for any new customer request 2:21 then the model takes in these 2:23 transformed features with the spatial 2:25 origin and destination and time of the 2:27 request as a temporal feature but it 2:29 doesn't stop here it also takes more 2:32 information about real-time activities 2:34 like traffic weather or even the nature 2:36 of the request like delivery or ride 2:39 share pickup all this extra information 2:41 is necessary to improve from the 2:43 shortest path algorithms we mentioned 2:45 that are highly efficient but far from 2:47 intelligent are real world proof and 2:50 what kind of architecture does this 2:52 model use you guessed it a transformer 2:54 are you surprised because i'm definitely 2:56 not and this directly answers the first 2:59 challenge which was to make the model 3:01 more accurate i've already covered 3:03 transformers numerous times on my 3:04 channel so i won't go into how it works 3:07 in this video but i still wanted to 3:08 highlight a few specific features for 3:11 this one in particular first you must be 3:13 thinking but transformers are huge and 3:16 slow models how can it be of lower 3:18 latency than xg boost well you will be 3:21 right they've tried it and it was too 3:23 slow so they had to make some changes 3:26 the change with the biggest impact was 3:28 to use a linear transformer which scales 3:30 with the dimension of the input instead 3:33 of the input's length this means that if 3:35 the input is long transformers will be 3:38 very slow and this is often the case for 3:40 them with as much information as routing 3:42 data instead it scales with dimensions 3:45 something they can control that is much 3:47 smaller another great improvement in 3:49 speed is the discretization of inputs 3:52 meaning that they take continuous values 3:53 and make them much easier to compute by 3:56 clustering similar values together 3:58 discretization is regularly used in 4:00 prediction to speed up computation as 4:02 the speed it gives clearly outweighs the 4:04 error that duplicates values may bring 4:07 now there is one challenge left to cover 4:10 and by far the most interesting is how 4:13 they made it more general here is the 4:15 complete deep eta model to answer this 4:18 question there is the earlier 4:19 quantization of the data that are then 4:22 embedded and sent to the linear 4:24 transformer we just discussed then we 4:26 have the fully connected layer to make 4:28 our predictions and we have a final step 4:31 to make our model general the bias 4:33 adjustment decoder it will take in the 4:36 predictions and the type features we 4:38 mentioned at the beginning of the video 4:40 containing the reason the customer made 4:42 a request to uber to a render prediction 4:44 to a more appropriate value for a task 4:46 they periodically retrain and deploy 4:49 their model using their own platform 4:51 called michelangelo which i'd love to 4:53 cover next if you're interested if so 4:56 please let me know in the comments and 4:58 voila this is what uber currently use in 5:01 their system to deliver and give rides 5:03 to everyone as efficiently as possible 5:07 of course this was only an overview and 5:09 they used more techniques to improve the 5:11 architecture which you can find out in 5:13 their great blog post linked below if 5:16 you're curious i also just wanted to 5:18 note that this was just an overview of 5:20 their arrival time prediction algorithm 5:22 and i am in no way affiliated with uber 5:25 i hope you enjoyed this week's video 5:28 covering a model applied to the real 5:30 world instead of a new research paper 5:32 and if so please feel free to suggest 5:35 any interesting applications or tools to 5:37 cover next i'd love to read your ids 5:39 thank you for watching and i will see 5:41 you next week with another amazing paper [Music]

How Uber Uses AI to Improve Deliveries

Cómo utiliza Uber la IA para mejorar las entregas

Comment Uber utilise l'IA pour améliorer les livraisons

डिलीवरी को बेहतर बनाने के लिए Uber AI का इस्तेमाल कैसे करता है

Uber が AI を使用して配達を改善する方法

Como a Uber usa IA para melhorar as entregas

Cách Uber sử dụng AI để cải thiện việc giao hàng

优步如何使用人工智能来改善交付

Geeba plans to use blockchain technology to improve the speed of e-commerce deliveries and ease the burden on urban infrastructures. Blockchain technology is often touted as a world-historic shift in how we organize information, conduct economic transactions, and even our political structures. Yet, blockchain also has many less dramatic applications that fall short of fundamental social transformation. These practical applications still make a positive contribution to the social good. “Last-Mile” Delivery Many sectors of the traditional economy have segments in which blockchain technology could be hugely helpful in increasing efficiency, reducing waste, and easing pressure on urban infrastructures. One of these is known as “last-mile” delivery. The phrase “last-mile” refers to the final segment of a freight delivery journey, where parcels are transported from a distribution hub or warehouse to an end consumer’s location. Last mile delivery is an expensive and resource-intensive segment of the e-commerce and freighting markets due to a lack of flexibility in the supply chain. This lack of flexibility comes from two sources: 1) the monopoly of a few big companies that often rely on local subcontractors 2) the use of outdated technologies. One consequence of these factors is higher costs to consumers and businesses. Traditional Modes of Delivery are Harming Cities However, there are much broader social impacts beyond costs to customers and businesses. Urban freight vehicles, like cars and trucks, have a significant impact on the environment and the quality of life in cities. In Europe, for example, These numbers can be expected to rise even higher in the near future as the popularity of e-commerce continues to grow. A estimates that in 2013, products ordered online generated just over one billion deliveries. By 2018, this number had grown by 28.8% to 1.35 billion. This means the pressure that last mile delivery puts on urban infrastructure and the environment is increasing. traditional freight transport accounts for 6–18% of total urban travel, 9% of energy use, and 21% of CO2 emissions . study from Barclays The result is an urgency for new and innovative approaches to last mile delivery that go beyond offering cost savings to businesses and consumers, though this is an important factor. Addressing what appears as inefficiency from an economic perspective will contribute to the social good in more profound ways, such as easing pressures on urban infrastructure and helping the online shopping industry grow in a sustainable way. How Blockchain Can Improve Last Mile Delivery I recently came across one interesting startup that is hoping to achieve these goals. is a decentralized delivery ecosystem that enables businesses to operate deliveries with blockchain technology using autonomous vehicles (droids and drones) and smart hubs. Geeba is a joint venture between Doha-based autonomous vehicle logistics company Airlift and n-Gon, a company specializing in applications for UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). Airlift provides the autonomous surface vehicles, N-gon supplies the drones for transport through the air, and the newly-formed Geeba develops the blockchain technology that will connect the autonomous vehicles through an online platform. Geeba Geeba uses blockchain to add transparency and predictability to logistics operations, and ultimately to accelerate the physical flow of goods through more automated and error-free processes. With their system_, driverless c_argo bikes (droids) and drones in the sky will pick up cargo from a smart hub and then deliver it to customer doorsteps. In contrast to the subcontractor model, Geeba wants to create a community-driven network of decentralized distribution hubs within its areas of operation, which will be incentivized by a portion of delivery fees. Each of these “smart hubs” will serve as a local base for a delivery fleet (drones and/or droids, depending on the locale and terrain), with the entire exchange — order, confirmation and verification of delivery — recorded and stored on Geeba’s blockchain. According to Geeba, this will solve many of the problems associated with last mile delivery within cities and cut the expenses for e-commerce companies significantly. Conclusion Last-mile delivery is an example of one of those sectors of the economy that is ripe for innovation. Blockchain technology provides the tools to do just that. Geeba’s plans are ambitious and the startup has wisely chosen the Netherlands to incubate its ideas as the government in Holland is especially encouraging of startup experimentation. The technology and pilot will be developed at the Cambridge Innovation Center in Rotterdam and the platform, smart hubs, and driverless vehicles in place and ready to deploy across the Netherlands by 2020. _if you would like to be informed about blockchain and cryptocurrency projects. Subscribe to my channels Medium and Twitter If you have any questions about this article, please comment in the section below. Thank you!_

How Blockchain Can Improve Life in Cities and Reduce the Cost of Deliveries

Photo by Skitterphoto Cryptocurrencies are the future of payments. It is as clear as crystal to anyone involved with the blockchain world. The benefits for global e-commerce are obvious, as sellers no longer have to support a myriad of payment methods from different countries, nor do they have to pay hefty commissions for various middlemen like payment processors, credit card companies and fraud analysts. However, payment is not the only important part of the e-commerce flow. Eventually, you also have to physically deliver the product to the buyer. And it better be quick, efficient and inexpensive. Several new blockchain startups aim to disrupt the parcel delivery industry incumbents by decentralizing the delivery business and putting it on … you guessed it, the blockchain. Let’s take a look at what they offer. Triwer is a Norwegian company that works on a “revolutionary parcel delivery platform”. Their goal is to eliminate inefficiencies in cargo delivery by introducing a crowd delivery marketplace. In other words, they aim to be an Uber for parcel deliveries, with initial focus on deliveries from small and medium European e-commerce websites to the end consumer. Triwer Triwer plans to run the principle delivery smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, however the intermediate transactions (e.g. hand-offs), parcel tracking and pricing will be recorded on their custom sidechain for efficiency. The business plan is to charge a certain commission (5%-15%) on all delivery revenue. Access to the Triwer delivery network will be limited only to the Triwer couriers and consumer apps, so while their smart contract will run on a decentralized Ethereum blockchain, Triwer will still serve as a commission charging middleman. ParcelX Singaporean promises to be “The world’s first blockchain-powered parcel network.” with their focus being specifically on cross-border parcel delivery. They’re an existing Asian logistics network aiming to scale up by adopting the blockchain technology. ParcelX ParcelX has identified multiple inefficiencies in cross-border delivery industry, related to lack of transparency and trust between the different logistics providers. International parcel delivery usually go through several logistics vendor, each on their side of the border, and there is a lot of accounting and interoperability overhead in the interactions between the different vendors. ParcelX’s idea is to solve these issues with the blockchain technology, taking advantage of its inherent transparency and trust. ParcelX network will use two separate blockchains. The first, a permissioned consortium blockchain, will use the Hyperledger Fabric technology for managing interactions between registered service providers. The second is the public Metaverse blockchain, on which all GPX (ParcelX’s token) transactions will run transparently. At the end of the day, ParcelX aims to be a B2B blockchain solution that will make cross-border logistics much more reliable and efficient than they are now. VOLT is a Korean P2P delivery platform based on blockchain technology. In a somewhat similar manner to Triwer, VOLT aims to reduce costs and delivery times by introducing a crowd delivery marketplace, clearly inspired by Uber/AirBnB. VOLT While anyone will be able to offer courier services on the VOLT marketplace, the deliveries will be paid for with ACDC, the electrically named VOLT’s token. VOLT plans to burn 5% of all the token payments charged, thus deflating the token supply and driving up its price. VOLT platform is based on the existing Korean delivery service called QuickQuick, however the lack of a public Github repository and further details about their platform’s implementation is disappointing. PAKET The Israeli Project represents a global vision: a decentralized delivery network which is open to everybody, fully transparent and doesn’t take any commission. Similar to how the TCP/IP protocol routes data packets between all the Internet-connected devices, PAKET is building a protocol for deliveries of physical parcels between any network participants, wherever they might be located. PAKET PAKET protocol takes into account insuring the parcels (courier must put a collateral into escrow), relays (a courier can hand-off a parcel to another courier at any point) and storage in hubs (any physical location that can store a package and get paid for it). This emerging ecosystem will be fully decentralized, as no entity will control the PAKET protocol and anyone will be able to develop apps and services on top of PAKET. The idea is not to compete with existing or future providers, but to establish a network on which all providers would be able to cooperate seamlessly. PAKET protocol runs on the Stellar blockchain, which is known to be very fast and doesn’t suffer from the scalability issues that other major blockchains currently experience. Summary Several blockchain delivery startups are currently building their solutions, ranging from Uber-style crowd delivery apps to a fully decentralized physical delivery protocol. They all promise to eliminate inherent inefficiencies in the old centralized model, and to cut costs for the end consumer. It remains to be seen who will win in this race, but one thing is certain: courier and parcel delivery industry is ripe for disruption by blockchain startups.

Parcel Deliveries On The Blockchain

How AI and Blockchain will be changing the way we receive our goods. In the last few weeks, America’s largest company, Walmart, announced that it is planning to expand it’s same day delivery service to over 100 different cities across the US. Only currently available in 6 markets, they aim to have their service available to more than 40% of U.S. households by the end of the year. They are trying to compete with Amazon, a same-day delivery giant, but they are not alone as more and more companies are starting to offer this once premium service on a wide range of products and goods. Which makes sense. There is a growing demand for this kind of service. totalled around $14.2 billion in 2017 and by 2021 they are expected to rise to nearly $30 billion. U.S. online grocery sales But it is not just grocery shopping driving the same-day delivery market. A poll of 995 people carried out in February of this year by Dropoff, a national courier service in America, found 47% of people had paid extra for a faster delivery time for any goods in the previous 12 months. 50% said they would be more inclined to shop for goods online if same-day delivery was the norm and 74% said they would be more likely to revisit an online store that provided a same-day service. So with the demand clearly being there, how is the market place going to adjust to meet it? A classic ‘Hub & Spoke’ model has its benefits in distributing worldwide or over huge distances but it is not designed to manage a same-day delivery service. The best it can typically do is ‘next -day’ and for same city deliveries, often packages will take inefficient routes to their destinations via the ‘Hub’. Some companies have seen a gap in the market though and have setup to act as a middleman, taking commission for facilitating the deliveries. But this system has its flaws too, as Phillip Lee, CEO of , a Point to Point delivery platform told earlier this year. “Messengers and customers were not always matched [correctly], so Volt’s employees had to manage orders [themselves].” VOLT IrishTechNews So to solve this problem, have come up with another way. VOLT They have developed a Point-to-Point (P2P) decentralised platform, based on Blockchain, that will cut out the middleman and their commission fee’s by connecting messengers directly with senders. The efficiency of the deliveries will be increased using AI to streamline the process, matching senders to the right messengers. Do to the decentralized nature of the platform, the service will be completely transparent, giving all parties a way of tracking fees and expenses securely. This method will lower fees for the customer, provide the messengers with more profit and will also decrease emissions due to a more efficient delivery system. As the same-day delivery market continues to grow, more and more companies and indivudals will be looking to utilise a service like . Small businesses especially will be looking for a way to compete with the big boys and as technology continues to look towards an ever increasingly decentralised future, more companies like VOLT will come into the fold offering a smarter, cheaper more efficent alternative to the current way of doing things. VOLT sources: https://irishtechnews.ie/how-volt-are-using-blockchain-for-the-last-mile-delivery-philip-lee-dubai-bii-march-19th/ https://www.twice.com/retailing/ship-it-fast-and-they-will-spend https://medium.com/volt-technology

Same-Day Deliveries, Coming To A Place Near You, Today.

By , Former Director of Safety, Air Transport Association. on . Tom Farrier Originally published Quora Drone delivery proposals are just one strategy aimed at addressing a larger business challenge generally referred to as the “last mile” problem. offers a brief, non-drone-related explanation of this issue. Why is the last mile so inefficient? In a related article ( ), drone delivery is mentioned as a potential game-changer. However, it acknowledges one current challenge to all such possibilities: “The robot needs human accompaniment in case it has a problem.” To me, that is a issue that the sexy pitches for drone deliveries really tend to gloss over quite a bit. 9 trends in last-mile delivery major “Delivery” implies that the aircraft will have to land somewhere or get low enough to drop an item without damage. That is likely to put it uncomfortably close to people who can be injured, or obstacles than can be damaged or cause damage to the unmanned aircraft itself. Those are sources of both safety and business risk that will have to be solved. The economics of making such activity cost-effective pretty much demand multiple drones in the air at once under a single person’s control. A single delivery truck can drop off dozens of packages in a single run; the only way drones can match that is for them to be almost entirely self-guiding (autonomous), except perhaps at the very moment the delivery is taking place. However, even if a single pilot can supervise multiple aircraft and service each in turn for drop-offs, they all still would have to find their way to their delivery destination, and then home again. Right now, drones don’t have the technical means of doing that without being at risk of running into other aircraft or things sticking up from the ground. Drones also can’t necessarily stay electronically connected to their pilots in congested, built-up areas over significant distances without expensive satellite connectivity. The proponents of delivery services don’t want to pay for that — it would make the proposition ruinously expensive over just using a truck — so they are exercising significant pressure on regulators (and legislators) to tell everyone else to stay out of their way so they can go make money with less liability and the ability to rely on autonomous aircraft that don’t need a human operator at all. Say they get their way and the regulators get arm-twisted into allowing drone deliveries and similar activities at the expense of others. Some of the advocates for various commercial uses of drones are trying to walk a razor-thin wire, and I think it’s going to cut them sooner or later. In the U.S., the principle of “preemption” ( ) allows them to say that they are operating under the FAA’s authority to regulate aviation operations. After all, people can’t sue anybody for flying an airliner 30,000 feet above their house. If a lower-level jurisdiction tries to ban drones flying within their city limits, as the linked article notes, “a federal court may require a state to stop certain behavior it believes interferes with, or is in conflict with, federal law.” The Supremacy Clause and the Doctrine of Preemption — FindLaw Now, say the operator wants to provide a service that is beneficial to those members of the community who want their sub sandwiches delivered fresh and hot, but annoys others who just want to get some sleep or don’t want to have to worry about their kids getting struck by a drone in flight. I can forsee such cases becoming common, every one of which could devolve into a vicious fight over the primacy of federal aviation regulations versus the rights of citizens in their own homes. A canary of this type already has died. ( I consider this an example of judicial overreach compounded by dumb legislation. However, the bald fact of the matter is that, in 2012, the Congress of the United States explicitly barred the FAA from making “any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft.” (P.L. 112–95, Section 336) There are a few special-interest qualifiers and weasel-words that follow this passage, but they’re essentially meaningless in actual practice. There’s too much room for misbehavior, and that latitude is going to mean that people who want to make money probably won’t have too much to worry about with respect to becoming public nuisances unless and until Congress reverses itself. Singer v. City of Newton-(Case Declaring Local Drone Law Illegal) Based on this bad law, courts are now saying that preemption applies to aviation matters, so federal authority trumps that of the states; then they say that, since Congress said the regulator responsible for aviation matters — the FAA — may not make rules about model aircraft, they can pretty much do as they please and not be subject to registration, local ordinances or anything else needed for accountability or safety. Since you can’t tell drones in flight apart based on the intent of the operator — a business operator versus a “hobbyist” — all drones are going to start being viewed the same way by the public. Getting away from grand strategy issues, let’s narrow the focus a bit. Your question alludes to urban congestion for the deliveries themselves. Your point is well taken. Using drones only to fly to central pick-up points — say, your local post office — would just be side-stepping the “last mile” problem. People want their pizzas delivered to their front door or their impulse buys plunked in their back yard, and the advocates for drone uses in such applications know that. Regardless of their “The Future Is Now” concepts, the long and the short of it is that, to me at least, drone deliveries to individual customers — especially in urban areas — are likely to be about as practical as flying cars, which similarly have been touted as the Next Big Thing in personal transportation literally for generations. Delivery drones make sense in niche applications where “last mile” concerns can be outweighed by virtue of the distance to be covered or the value of the cargo. There are highly worthwhile tests being flown using drones in other parts of the world to deliver medical supplies or other badly needed emergency items to isolated locations; it’s easy to see how beneficial such a capability would be in the wake of a natural disaster as well. do Still, clouds of drones bringing Stretch Armstrong collectibles from eBay to eager purchasers strikes me as a lot harder sell from both a regulatory an economic perspective. The various sources of risk they might entail that have to be accounted for in the overall calculus of the delivery services themselves are non-trivial and complex. As a result, if customers aren’t willing to pay a premium for high-speed drone delivery, the business model seems likely to fail. and serious There are companies that have built or are building scores of central warehouse/distribution points all over the U.S. They use trucks or vans to take purchases to their customers… for the “last mile,” if you will. Since many of those facilities are in or adjacent to major metropolitan areas, surface transportation can do a pretty good job of satisfying consumer “I want it NOW” cravings within a few hours of an order being placed. All of the above observations make me ask, “What’s the real value of even a drone that can do the same thing as a truck if it’s going to cost more to do it, or anger the people affected by drone operations but are told they can’t do anything about them?” Honestly, the “last mile” factor suggests that drones may never be cost-effective. They make for great advertising on the basis of any given company’s commitment to the New and the Best and the Fastest. However, I personally believe that any brand that becomes interwoven with drone use is going to suffer brand harm every time somebody is hurt by one, or the noise from them becomes a source of community ire, or a drone is stolen by somebody with a big net. having Set aside the rhetoric, the promises of huge job growth and the pandering to public demands for instant gratification. Big-city use of delivery drones strikes me as a losing proposition. If would-be providers of such services can’t address of the elements of the “last mile” problem satisfactorily with drones, and are perceived as creating community problems that outweigh their stated benefits, all it seems like they’d be doing is trying to create a high-tech identity that would become impossible to distinguish from any other user ( abuser) of drones every time something went wrong. Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best. all or In the immortal words of Dennis Miller, “Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.” By , Former Director of Safety, Air Transport Association. on .. Tom Farrier Originally published Quora For more trending tech answers from , visit . Quora HackerNoon.com/quora

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