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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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[–] Whelks_chance@lemmy.world 62 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Ok sure, there's limitations. So what percentage of their current deliveries are actually possible with drones? If it's above 0%, then there's an opportunity.

Beyond that it's a finance/ risk/ reward/ regulation issue.

Imagine a van which drives into a suburban housing estate and instead of parking individually at different houses for 5-10 mins each, spends less than 5 mins prepping a set of drones which take off from the roof of the van and return in minutes.

It saves time and fuel. It doesn't work everywhere, but it doesn't need to.

In fact it could be the same van. Do deliveries exactly as normal, and use a drone for the last half mile when convenient. It's not either/or.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 45 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The big win, I hear, is the massively rural areas;farms and cabins.

The truck can apparently launch two drones at a time, and they save time and fuel -- and don't present a driving hazard for a panel van which now needs to turn around in a potentially winding driveway. Then the truck moves on to the next stopping point when all drones are back.

[–] yiliu@informis.land 30 points 1 year ago

Yeah, "small and below 5 lbs" describes like 90+% of Amazon deliveries.