[janosdebugs]

That example doesn't quite hold up. A helicopter is roughly the same size and weight as an ambulance and needs to transport a whole bunch of equipment. If we could get a Zipline drone to drive on the street, it would be vastly more efficient than its airborne brethren, but our infrastructure isn't set up for that.

[dgacmu]

It's also a lot more dangerous, both for the patient and the flight crew. It takes a pretty critical need to offset that.

[Breza]

I've long thought there's potential in using drones to transport drugs and light equipment to hospitals. Crewed helicopters are expensive and risky, but the stakes are lower when your drone is only carrying a few thousand dollars of a drug that's rare enough it's not worth stocking.

[cancerhacker]

Here's a thought: vehicles that are already scheduled (uber or robot-taxies) are already scheduled from point A to point B. Drone scheduling could piggyback on this such that as large vehicle passes restaurant R at A', a drone from R lands and disgorges your sandwich into a locker mounted on a landing pad on top of the taxi. (hand waves - that's just a mechanical problem, can't be worse than what a fast food place is doing.) As the ground vehicle approaches B, a new drone (or the same drone, if it was just hitching) could finish the delivery to your home H at B'.

Obviously it would take a lot longer than a direct flight, but the energy consumed would be far less.

Or, people should just make a sandwich.

[Hextinium]

A network of "wardriving" drones that use semi-trucks and box trucks as charging hubs while in transit is the next innovation of short distance delivery.