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by Guest98123 3480 days ago
Cities seem like the easiest challenge to tackle. Amazon could work with commercial and residential high rises and put a dock on their rooftops. So, the drone approaches the building rooftop, puts the package in the docking area (that keeps out poor weather), and then flies away. One of the receptionists could then get a notification of a new package, pick it up, and either put it in the appropriate mailbox, or hold it at the desk.

Want to get more advanced and efficient? When your package is delivered, Amazon sends you an access key to the dock. You can now go to the rooftop, type in your access key, and get access to the room to get your package. After it's claimed, your access key expires. This means only people with packages inside the dock have access. Yes, technically if you get a package delivered, you could access the room, and steal a package from someone else. However, there would likely be a camera in the room, and there's a record of you having access, so I can't see it being an issue. You could offset the risk even more by having 10 compartments in the docking area, so there's a 10x less chance of someone else having access to the same compartment. Right now I walk through my modern condo and see packages sitting in front of doors, in hallways without cameras, and there isn't a problem.

There might be 1,000 people living in a high rise, or thousands working in one. It would be easy to get tens of thousands of people access to air deliveries at home and work with a dozen docks. It's also a great selling point for offices and condos. "Our building allows you to receive air deliveries."

2 comments

A rooftop of a residential high rise isn't a place filled with machinery, it's patio space. The whole top floor is either one or two apartments, has 14' high ceilings, and the very richest live there. They're not gonna want Amazon to land a drone in the middle of their party, nor have anyone come up to say Hi and pick up a package.
That's simply not true. Take a look at Google maps and you'll realize the vast majority of residential high rises are actually filled with equipment, huge fans, loud air-conditioners and empty space. Most have terraces and pools on lower floors, and most penthouses don't have rooftop access.

For example, look at the below image of high rise condos in Chicago. They're all filled with heavy equipment. They're not filled with the super rich having extravagant cocktail parties.

http://i.imgur.com/QC8rakm.jpg

In my experience in NYC, most buildings have some mechanical and some recreational space somewhere on their roofs and/or balconies. Sometimes this is private recreational space, sometimes shared, sometimes a little of both.
Amazon already has an "Amazon Locker"[1] service in selected areas. Drone delivery could certainly be integrated with some of those.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Locker