[btreecat]

As someone who used to be in the industry, and living in one of the only US locations with a current UAS delivery program I can help clarify.

> 1. FAA regulations - delivery drones can't operate within X miles of an airport (technically they can, but it requires a much stricter degree of certification and compliance nobody wants to bother with)

Nope. This isn't really the issue at all. We have an airport near by (two if you count the hospital and the FAA does). UAS delivery isn't actually under UAS rules, it's under commercial freight delivery rules. This is how Project Wing/Google operate because the FAA still doesn't allow beyond line of sight operations for UAS.

> 2. Drones need a landing space, so people without yards (like apartment and townhouse dwellers, who make up a lot of the population in exactly the densely populated areas where you'd want to use drones to begin with) can't be served

Sorta. They don't actually land, they drop the payload while hovering. So they do need some uninstructed space to drop the package, but not much. Works well in the suburbs and rural areas but awful in the city.

> And it turns out that once you exclude "houses within X miles of an airport" and "houses without an LZ", there aren't enough customers left to make delivery drones worth it.

Again, not an airport problem.

It's really economics. It's v expensive per gram to deliver by drone. That's why it works well for light but high value things (like medicine) but sucks for stuff like food.

[KnobbleMcKnees]

> It's really economics. It's v expensive per gram to deliver by drone. That's why it works well for light but high value things (like medicine) but sucks for stuff like food.

I always suspected the reason was purely profit-driven so it's good to hear it confirmed.

I know I'm getting cynical as I age, but the idea that regulation was the only thing in the way of it seemed laughable given recent history.

[btreecat]

It's certainly not the only thing, but it's also not helping. It's an area where we need some more research into better power efficiency systems for cost to improve. But regulations are not encouraging investments in the space as much as you would think.

Also there is a strong education and hobby to industry pipeline. However with the way the UAS space is being regulated that pipeline has been drying up.

[olyjohn]

> Sorta. They don't actually land, they drop the payload while hovering. So they do need some uninstructed space to drop the package, but not much. Works well in the suburbs and rural areas but awful in the city.

What's the plan there? Leave my package out in the middle of the yard to get rained on or stolen?

[btreecat]

So the way project Wing works is you order through an app and track the delivery. Delivery is within a few minutes so the lag time is fairly low.

I don't see this system being used to deliver stuff not being specifically requested (like say an Rx). Strong winds, fog, and rain would ground delivery also.