Name: Drone Delivery Was Supposed to be the Future. What Went Wrong?
Uploaded: 2022-02-17T09:44:05.000Z
Duration: 18 min 40 s
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關係子句

In 2013, Jeff Bezos introduced the world to a concept that promised to revolutionize delivery.

“[00:00:20] Charlie Rose: Bezos kept telling us that he had a big surprise, something he

進階被動語態

wanted to unveil for the first time [...] Bezos: but there's no reason they can't be used

Within a matter of years autonomous drones would engulf cities, sweeping across skies,

delivering packages to front yards just thirty minutes after their order.

The announcement floored Charlie Rose and America alike—grabbing headlines for weeks

and setting off fiery debates over just how disruptive the disruptive technology would

Drones would offer urban and suburban consumers a clean, quick, convenient delivery option

for food, medicine, or whatever else five-pounds-or-less without burning fossil fuels, without getting

stuck in traffic, without making them wait.

The idea felt far-fetched, it was exciting, it was the future arriving in front of our

very eyes, and it signaled that the race to take delivery drones to market was on. 

By the time Amazon landed its first package, Zipline was already delivering medical supplies

in Rwanda, SkyDrop had flown a 7-Eleven slurpee and a Dominos pizza straight to consumers,

and Google's Project Wing had air dropped burritos to hungry college kids.

A wave of startups sent their maiden drone deliveries skyward to much media fanfare while

major parcel couriers—DHL, UPS, FedEx—substantiated the hype by partnering with the budding tech

companies set to help solve their last mile problems.

Inventors, investors, eccentric billionaires, and the world's biggest companies were all

Anything, anywhere, anytime: the dark days of Doordash and two-day delivery were over;

the drone delivery era was coming… or so it seemed. 

It's now 2022 and save for the smallest fraction of a percent of people, it's not

automated drones dropping off your small packages and food orders.

Pizzas aren't falling from the sky, they're showing up in the hands of a highschooler.

Burritos aren't delicately dropped on your lawn from above, they're left on your doorstep

Your Amazon order won't show up in thirty minutes, it probably won't even show up

The world 60 Minutes introduced in 2013, the world that felt closer and closer to reality

with every inaugural delivery, just isn't here. 

Fundamentally, the fast delivery niche still exists.

The last mile still accounts for around 40% of parcel shipping costs, roads are still

increasingly clogged with traffic, green shipping alternatives are still desperately needed,

and consumers still want products as cheap and as fast as possible.

Outside of a few specific locations, drone delivery has yet to take off—and in those

few specific locations, it's hardly more than a proof of concept.

Certainly, delays are understood—expected even—when it comes to the acceptance of

Delayed acceptance though, is at very most only part of the story. 

In 2021, Amazon fired staff and closed its Prime Air offices in the UK.

From the former center of Amazon's drone project emerged stories of mismanagement and

disarray: employees drank beers at their desks, managers were given no direction, executives

ignored the stalling division aside from the occasional pizza party.

While the company responded to these reports with a statement affirming its continued investment

in drone delivery, Amazon hasn't released any promotional material for the project since

2016 and Prime Air's website doesn't seem to have been updated in years.

The most generous possible interpretation is that Amazon's project is definitively

While Amazon remains quiet on their future intentions, DHL announced in summer 2021 that

it was officially abandoning its parcelcopter project nearly eight years after it's maiden

So, two of the most important drone delivery companies put their programs on ice, few companies

are getting the investment they used to, and no company has yet realized the imminent future

of widespread operations laid out a decade ago.

So, what went so wrong with drone delivery? 

Well, this is Phoenix—a sprawling desert metropolis home to 5 million people.

On first glance, Phoenix seems the perfect candidate for a drone delivery service: its

year-round sunny, dry, still climate would make for easy, reliable flight conditions;

its autonomous innovation friendly city and state governments would welcome them with

open arms; and its sprawling, low-density neighborhoods would make for countless hungry

and impatient residents lacking walkable dining and shopping options.

Surely, a drone delivery company could come in, connect any house with any product within

minutes, and demand would immediately outstrip supply, right? 

Connecting any house with a drone delivery provider doesn't quite work because in the

center of the city, right here, is Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

In order to assure the safety of arriving and departing aircraft at the busy hub, the

FAA restricts the use of drones within this area.

So, a Phoenix drone delivery service probably just couldn't operate here… and here,

in the restricted airspace around Luke Air Force Base… and here, around Phoenix Goodyear

Airport… and here, and here, and here, here, and here.

It's not entirely impossible to operate drones within restricted airspace, but, from

a legal perspective, it ranges from somewhat to extremely difficult—enough that it probably

wouldn't be worth pursuing for a drone delivery company, at least at the start. 

The rest of Phoenix, though, is fair game… to an extent.

You see, drones need somewhere to deliver to, and it's got to be safe.

When the concept was first introduced, the vision typically presented was of a drone

flying down, landing on one's lawn, releasing its delivery, then taking off and flying away.

Drone delivery is a novel technology and, like any novel technology, the public views

it with an air of distrust—the worst thing the industry could do is prove that distrust

warranted with a series of high-profile accidents at launch.

The first instance of a delivery drone injuring a customer will inevitably ignite a media

firestorm, which could lead to a legislative clampdown, so manufacturers naturally must

Delivery drones must act autonomously to be cost competitive, and autonomous operations

require computer vision and artificial intelligence able to reliably identify a clear landing

Determining whether someone is behind or infront of a window, noticing when a dog is running

towards the drone, knowing what's a pool and what's dry ground—these are all challenging

for a computer to tackle on its own, and so attaining perfection proves rather difficult. 

Therefore, whereas the logistics field generally considers the last mile of delivery the most

difficult—once the economies of scale are gone—drone delivery is a last mile solution

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Drone Delivery Was Supposed to be the Future. What Went Wrong?

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