[soylentcola]

I'm curious because every battery operated "drone" I've seen has a pretty limited range and flight time. Some of the higher-end multicopters built for videography can carry a decent camera for maybe a half hour but it seems like for deliveries, you'd be really limited in terms of weight carried and distance. The thing still has to get back to the warehouse even if it manages to land, drop the package, and fly back without hitting anything.

I say this as a big fan of hobbyist multicopters as well. The more automated the solution, the less useful and feasible it seems to me. I guess you could have someone at the "home base" watching a camera feed over LTE and maybe the latency wouldn't be so bad but just in terms of logistics, I can't see how some battery-powered DJI multicopter would be of much use outside of some edge cases.

Still, I guess it's cool to see companies experimenting. Sometimes you learn one thing by trying another. And on the surface it really does seem to make more sense to fly a small, battery-powered craft to drop off small items rather than having to drive a car back and forth across town to deliver a t-shirt or a roll of TP.

[blktiger]

According to the article, walmart wants to test a drone delivering a package from a truck and then returning to the truck. If that is the case, then they could use an automated truck to deliver packages to the general area first. Then the drone would activate and deliver the package the last few feet to the door. Presumably, if they did something like this the drones would have their batteries charged while the truck was driving to each location.

[hyperpallium]

In the various combinations, I wonder if there's a place for a mini-autonomous van, too small for a person, but can carry a few packages.

The main truck stops regularly along a main road, and releases a few of these tiny vans. The last few feet to the door (tricky to navigate, usually require a "off-road" person) are by drone, as here.

[ape4]

Wow, that could work. A self driving van. Of course, the drone would charge from van.

How about the optimization: as the van is slowing down or looking for a parking spot the drone takes off. Van begins unparking as the drone gets near.

Or in cities, the drone could take the subway.

[drakenot]

I worked as a "holiday helper" for UPS during a Christmas season when I was in college. My only job was to take the package to the door for the truck driver while they queued up their next package.

I could see these drone systems working a lot like what I did at that job. Even if the driver still had to drive almost right next to the house, if they could reliably have that "last 100ft" delivery taken care of by drones it would be a big efficiency boost.

[mabbo]

Just remember that there are a lot of economic factors pushing batteries to be cheaper and smaller. Elon Musk may actually make drones economically viable, thanks to Tesla's need for the exact same thing- cheap, dense energy storage.

[apendleton]

I think Google's experiments with drone delivery have been with fixed wing for that reason. Quadcopters' range is just too bad.