[saosebastiao]

> Self-driving cars will make natural delivery vehicles.

Are you sure about that? Self-Driving cars are currently a very limited use case. They drive, but they haven't shown to be very adept at more anomalous behavior that humans can do, such as following detour signs, following traffic officer signaling at intersections, or finding parking spots in locations where they are unlikely to be towed.

Furthermore, when you want to actually deliver something, you have to do far more than a car is even capable of, such as unlocking doors (for apartment buildings with controlled access), opening the million different types of latches for front yard fence gates, obtaining legitimate signatures from humans, determining access requirements for new locations, finding and successfully navigating staircases, escalators, and elevators, and a dozens of other tasks that are years away and not prioritized in current research.

[svachalek]

Your first paragraph is fairly easily solved with data. When self driving cars are common, there will no doubt be police databases with information about detours and parking etc. Given that, they will do a much better job than humans trying to find and read signs.

The other parts of delivery are more of a problem. But remember at one time we thought it was necessary to have humans pump gas, operate elevators, and dispense cash. Those tasks were only partially automated, but sufficiently enough that the rest of the job was dumped onto the customer.

[yoster]

You are limiting your thinking to one type of solution. You also forgot the one thing that will trump all this, the human mind. A criminal mind would easily be able to rip off all the goods in a situation with driver-less cars.

[glenra]

That is a movie-plot threat; you're being silly. Vehicles can stream audio and video and GPS tracking data to dispatchers who would know where and how the car got broken into and could dispatch security. The cars don't need windshields and can be hardened to making breaking in more difficult. With cameras and GPS tracking in all the other cars in the area, not to mention surveillance drones and police helicopters, getting away clean is likely to be tricky.

[yoster]

Actually, you are being silly. You have never been in "the hood" then where cops take forever to get there. Ever been to L.A., NYC, etc.? All that stuff cost extra money to equip a vehicle. Cameras can't do much with someone that has a bandana and shades on. You think the police will actually dispatch a helicopter for a driver-less vehicle? You sound like YOU have been watching too many movies. The cost to run drones in the air would end up being astronomical. I hope you are not being serious....

[glenra]

You are postulating a group that is willing to hijack an unmanned truck in order to steal the goods being delivered and doesn't mind the risk of being seen because they "have a bandana and shades on". Question: What is so special about an unmanned truck given that circumstance? Wouldn't it be at least as easy for a group like that to hijack a manned truck? Why don't the same gangs pull a gun on the UPS guy and take all his stuff? That would be in some ways easier than taking stuff from an unmanned delivery van. The unmanned van can go into lockdown mode and doesn't have a driver who can be threatened to make him give up the key to the back.

The cost for any private party to send up their own monitor drones is coming down very quickly and will likely be insignificant by the time unmanned delivery vehicles are common. If one unmanned delivery car sends out a distress signal, other unmanned delivery cars in the area could release drones monitored by a local security firm to go see what's happening, follow the bad guys, and tell the cops exactly where they went.

The sort of drones I'm talking about might look like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4

(You can already get copters of that sort with at least a 10 minute battery range for a mere few hundred bucks.)

[yoster]

Who said anything about hijacking a truck? This is called grab and go. You obviously have never heard of shoplifting or beer runs. This would be a crime of opportunity which happens all the time with or without surveillance. You have gone off the deep end if you think those drones are practical for security use. A 10 minute battery range is laughable.

[3825]

Google might have to license Microsoft's "avoid ghetto" patent and then just blacklist certain areas. No grocery deliveries for Gotham City!

[breadtk]

Self-driving cars could free up delivery drivers to do other things, such as sorting packages for the next drop-off location. I can't how many times I've seen a FedEx/UPS driver parked and trying to sort through boxes for a particular stop.

[jamesbritt]

Very good observations. I wonder, though, if self-driving can work for moving items from a warehouse to "close enough" such that some smaller local service can carry it that last mile.