Why Walmart And Alphabet Are Beating Amazon In Drone Delivery 

I was recently interviewed for a management position in one of the companies mention. I have many years of experience, even created curriculum for the Part 107 sUAS pilot certificate, built them before they were even called drones in the late 90s, worked at Part 135 operations, etc. I asked for what I felt was a realistic salary but what they offered was not even close for someone that would have the responsibility to be at the other end of the phone call from the FAA incase of an accident. Their mentality was you just a delivery driver, why do you feel you deserve more?

​@@tomconte2847 most rich people don't care about anyone, even themselves other than money. They can never have enough. If you risk your life for them they'll say, "well I hired you to be my bodyguard. You agreed to give your life for me for an agreed amount of money." and won't feel sh!t for you when you die. In their mind, you agreed to die for money. No compassion required at that point. Legally they're right, the law is the law. That's why they take full advantage of that loophole. I don't hate rich people, but I realize most of them are the worst kind of living being humanity has to offer.😮

​@@Reno-Senpai You do understand, that if you are from the US or a wealthy western nation, you are a "rich" person as compared to most other people in the rest of the world. That means your criticisms apply to yourself if applied consistently. Don't dehumanise people, rich people are people just like you are. They have dreams and aspirations just like you do. And they care about people just as much as you do. They are not aliens, they are still human. And the only reason why they are rich, is by helping many people, that is how they became rich in the first place.

Lol, it's made in 'Merica we don't care about your metric system or anything outside of the USA. Anything outside the USA is just there so we have somewhere to use our bombs. The United States accounts for almost 40% of global military expenditures, with its 2022 spend coming to $877 billion. It ain't for sitting there looking pretty we want to use it so we have to make more for our economy.

You mean like how BBC mentions imperial units? You're watching another countries broadcast not everything is about you

@@shatterpointgames BBC should mention imperial units if they have a significant American audience. And it's not a cable broadcast where viewers are segregated by country.

And it would be nice the other way around. But here we are.

Amazon too.

@Ikbeneengeit I was saying the very same thing as the video was explaining how AMAZON is going about their process.

That doesn't strike me as true. Nothing about the pathing that Amazon's competitors employ is more or less niche than what Amazon itself would do. That is to say, the only niche that I can see here would be regulatory, not technical, since the other companies focused on regulatory environments (small towns, overseas) that allowed them to get actual flight hours under their belt. Whereas Amazon was content with an evidently worse approach of trying to fight the regulatory forest head on, trying to cut through it instead of using and building on already open paths.

​@@tonyjaburu2277 hgv g Ffcbg h

​@@tonyjaburu2277by r

I guess eventually if one of the other companies succeed they’ll straight out buy it.

Zipline exploits free labor from their applicants. Their business model also no longer matched their mission statement

Yeah they are the ones who seem to be doing the best. Delivering blood, and other life saving medicine was brilliant. People online forget that many people live far from any large hospital that has things in stock. I don't see the market for them if they can't get the cost down. What market requires them really? Grocery stores for sure do not. If a company could replace deliverer drivers? That would be amazing. Maybe a pizza place could rent a drone to deliver for them for instance. People were like yeah ill be getting groceries with them. Yeah no you aren't unless your grocery shopping list is tiny as hell since they don't carry much. Like you do require your expensive luxury item ASAP? Probably not. I wouldn't trust a drone for my new smart phone or prescription medicine.

It's amazing how Mark Rober's video shows Zipline consistently saving lives in Rwanda with their drones.

It’s not a drone, it’s a uav, it flies and follows the same rules as a real aircraft, the foundation was already set in stone

Everything has to work together

And I wish these drones used wheels so that every house/building had to be accessible not just by them but also humans on wheelchairs, bikes, etc. This would also solve the problems with noise pollution and people worrying about drones spying on them.

Amazing how quick people are to add more laws and take away freedom.

Thank you for this usefull information.

Great investment idea.

Who is this insurance for? Drone crashes should be 0. FAA won't approve it if it can't do that. There may be a possible crash but not nearly enough to put insurance.

@@ayoubthegreat FAA already regulates commercial flights currently and yet crashes still happen. The point is accidents do happen no matter the laws, regulations, inspections, preparations and so on. It will never be zero. Considering the market potential of drone delivery a lot more companies not just amazon will be flying drones in the sky in the future. Drone ari traffic will increase over time. The insurance will be made by insurance companies being creative with their products like the car insurances they are offering right now. For example. Insurances for your parked car, a shed, a greenhouse. being hit by a falling drone. If you are a farmer a fire on your crops caused by a drone. Your dogs managed to jump and caught the drone and got injured. Or you simply just walking or standing then suddenly a drone fell on your head.

Bro nobody is going to successfully shoot down a drone moving at 60 mph a couple hundred feet in the air.

@@themcdougalbugle will the drone always fly at that speed while delivering packages? While drone air traffic increases will the drones and other company drones fly at that constant speed?

ranch dressing is available in every small corner store

They need customer service reps who watch the weather every minute

Imagine you bought a $2,000 camera and it was dropped from a height of 60-70 ft to your porch. If your camera doesn’t turn on, you’ll know why. What’s scary is that even if it turns and takes pics fine, but after 90 days(camera warranty) the pics don’t come out right or camera doesn’t turn on.😂 If the drone lands to drop your package, then all is good though I bet we hear of drones go missing.😂

I think Amazon should give customers option on how they want their items delivered…either by drones or typical truck. Maybe incentivize drone delivery’s with customers by offering discount coupons for future purchases

@@inquisitvem6723 Companies like Zipline don't just drop it from 60 feet, thats dangerous and FAA wont approve that; they lower down a line and it releases it from less than a foot.

Thanks Mr. Obvious.

Probably some couple dozen meters above the roof line of any given area. So, different between cities / city centers, suburbs, rural, etc.

In what way, can I ask? Unless you're talking hackers getting into the camera systems? Since any video is used for the drone navigation...not anyone having access to it?

They will steal the drones themselves. A lot of mean and evil people out there.

You don't see that metal shield

I see it differently. Imagine you bought a $2,000 camera and it was dropped from a height of60-70 ft to your porch. If your camera doesn’t turn on, you’ll know why. What’s scary is that even if it turns and takes pics fine, but after 90 days(camera warranty) the pics don’t come out right or camera doesn’t turn on.😂

If drones do land to drop off packages then that will work, but you have to believe some customers will try to steal the drone itself.😂

My friend just said if he buys a Leica camera, he won’t buy one from Amazon if they start doing drone deliveries. He isn’t taking that kind of risk for a 10k camera. I told him if he can be at home when the drone makes the delivery, he can catch it to be safe. 😂

every amazon employee is like that

Seems like such a simple solution...they have to have at least considered this right??

DJI is outlawed from the US

What is your take on the mention of needing good batteries? Wonder if there is something there, that could be planet friendly...and efficient...

Hello, how can we access this? Our team is building a delivery drone and we need quiet propellers. Thank you!

​@@christianmoreno7390 MIT Technology Licensing Office, Toroidal Propeller.

@@christianmoreno7390 www.ll.mit.edu/sites/default/files/other/doc/2022-09/TVO_Technology_Highlight_41_Toroidal_Propeller.pdf

I'm assuming that you're talking about the overhyped toroidal propellers. Those have been shown to not be nearly as efficient or quiet as the MIT team that developed them claimed. Basic tri-blade propellers still outperform them. As for noise cancelling, it just doesn't work that way. Active noise canceling works for a single listener, so you can cancel propeller noise by wearing ANC headphones, because it is possible to analyze the sound waves at a specific point in space and generate their negative, but it's largely impossible to eliminate sound all around a noise source, because you'd need to analyze the sound waves at every point around the source which is not only ridiculously computationally intensive, but canceling the source noise for any observer around the drone would be the thermodynamic equivalent of running the blades in reverse, which would double the power consumption of your drone, slashing its range in half. Realistically, the only thing that can be done is to work on the blade profile to try and spread the energy over a wide spectrum and attempt to move most of it to the frequencies humans are less sensitive to.

@@dsp4392 I'm sorry but you seem to be suffering from a condition known as the Dunning-Kruger effect. In fact there are many approaches to noise cancelation besides what you mention. A combination of these methods could be used to achieve an 80% noise reduction of the propellers of a drone without significantly increasing the cost of the drones to manufacture. For example, a drone manufacturer could use quieter propellers and noise-reducing enclosures to reduce noise by 60%. The remaining 20% of noise reduction could be achieved using software to control the noise level. This can be done two ways, one is by simply reducing the speed of the propellers when traveling near populated areas or below certain elevations. Obviously the drone would travel slower but would produce less noise as a result. Additionally the pitch of the blades could be controlled via software also to help reduce noise at the cost of only a small amount of efficiency. Again only necessary when the drone is flying near people. Simply put there are many methods to reducing and canceling noise besides "putting in ANC headphones". While this is a viable form of active noise cancelling so is tuning the blades and speeds on the fly. I'm sure you will attempt to argue some technicality that "this isn't really noise canceling as some noise remains". However the rest of the scientific community does not agree that noise canceling must be absolute. We can cancel some of the noise actively, some of its passively as with the propeller guards, and some will remain, but at a level much less intrusive to most listeners. As for the toroidal design mentioned earlier, I have not personally tested the design. A friend of mine, he is only a hobbyist, not an engineer, did make a set of 3D printed propellers for his quad copter based on the design after I told him about it. I have not compared any trust, or power usage data, but with the new blades it flies as well as it did with traditional blades and it is much less noisy. So at least that much about the design seems to be true and that's just off some home made 3D printed ones.

Good luck with that. There are probably already planes that fly over or near your house already without you knowing it. 😆 Also, you did know that land rights don't extend into the sky, right?

Not a stupid question, but i think of a few ways to solve it; 1) camera is able to identify based on the surroundings 2) it can fly high enough that it would not matter in the first place 3) At least for powerlines, since they are permanent, that region could be mapped as a now fly zone on the software But there are many issue to be solved and issues to be found as well

What about multi-layer underground high-speed rail (maybe via pipe or maglev or something?) instead of passenger train or bigger cargo, it is used for small to medium packages but may be that's too complicated or expensive to implement this is just some alternatives ideas and I think much more viable in the far future or near future? than drones covering the sky and it may also could travel inside the building?

You fly away above them

Larger drones with more range for remote areas and capacity for multiple parcels may be more sensible in the long run when this type of delivery becomes more accepted, this one delivery per flight thing is quite inefficient. As for delivery method, for plenty of things dropping stuff from a few meters so the drone did not get attacked by your pet is plausible, I would not want 2500$ Carl Zeiss binoculars to be delivered this way, that's for sure, but you won't have the issue of delivery drone crane cable getting stuck, thus leaving delivery drone as a pet toy once batteries run out...

IKR? Packages are usually meant to handle a 1m drop and these guys are yeeting boxes from outer space as if they were extraplanetary probes.

You said it. The why is that drone deliveries are quicker and they are autonomous, so you can wait for it at home instead of having to worry about the package being returned ("no one was there"), or package theft, or having to pick it up from a neighbour. Also, drones are electric. Most delivery vehicles still aren't. And delivery vehicles block roads. Drones don't.

@@Yutani_Crayven That's true, although if we're talking large scale deliveries, I don't see these drones replacing the trucks. The trucks are becoming electric faster than drone systems are being rolled out, so that's not a shift, and so long as there is no immediate rush, a truck will always be a more efficient delivery method, setting out with dozens of packages at a time, rather than just one at a time. Yes, they take road space, but drones take up air space, and if you took every package delivered in a city in a given day and had them all being delivered by drones, you would have thousands of drones swarming back and forth all day.

They're potentially the self-checkouts of delivery. Huge development and unit costs, more hassle for the customer, doesn't handle edge cases well, _but_ you don't have to pay a human. We'll see if it works out.

@@jwlarocque Personally, I love self-checkouts, though my local grocery has recently made theirs more of a hassle to use.

@@jwlarocque Think food deliveries. Faster, cheaper, more efficient. The current use case Is DoorDash & UberEats, which is just a rip off. Imagine paying $10 for a $9 burrito instead of $26 for a $9 burrito. If the urgency for the product is there, the demand will be there. Drone delivery will revolutionize delivery

They already use self driving cars for the same.

I wonder if dominoes and papa John's will be around after facing the inevitable lawsuits after the inevitable accidents

no

true those drone killers the secret service use you know some kid is going to make one in his garage and shoot one down over the freeway causing a massive car crash.

Stinger use heat signal to lock on. Why bother using stinger missile when just used an normal rifle to shoot it down

@@khanhnguyen-tt3ff it is totally unsafe to point a gun into the air and shoot, innocent people can die, look up Shannon's Law in AZ

yeah and using stinger is much safer lol

The problem is "I WANT IT NOW NOW NOW!" 😆 It's the "NOW" generation. And you get to charge them outrageous prices to deliver nearly instantly, and they will just put it on their credit card. (Because "I WANT IT NOW".) 😆 Drones will have a delivery time from a warehouse that's less than an hour, instead of half a day.

you missed the part of the video where they said it can be more efficient in more rural/less dense areas for a drone to deliver vs a driver going all the way out to deliver a single small delivery

Greaaaaat, so instead of unsightly highways clogged with traffic we can all look up at the sky with our cuppa morning Joe, wondering where all the birds have gone while streams of consumerism trail across the sky.

Ummm THOSE ARE LIPO Batteries . Look up Lipo fires. I fly those hobby quad-copters he mentioned, the angry bees. Fun hobby. But you have to be very wary of Lipo batteries. A Lipo fire aint no joke ! And that was a BIG ASS Battery !

Well , when you look on the bright side at least drones don't have to be tipped.

Zipline have made it common in Africa for years. Others (except Amazon) are making strides in the US/Australia, etc. It won't work well in cities, to be sure, but that is a place where delivery is least expensive per Kg delivered.

​​​@@AlanTheBeast100 They made it common for high valued items like blood that AND medicine need to be there ASAP where the supply is short. It is niche basically... Great for bumpkin towns across the US where the nearest hospital is a few hours away or your town doctor needs certain medication ASAP. For average consumer items? We will see... Definitely not worth it for groceries or it won't be cheaper than what we have now. Do you really need a phone ASAP? Willing to pay 10$ for some eggs and milk instead of going to the nearest convenient store... The capacity is the issue. I would like to be wrong but it seems niche to me economically. Edit - resteruants we will see. Hear it is still much cheaper for a dedicated driver.

@@dianapennepacker6854 As stated - it's not meant for high density areas; OTOH, delivering a 1 Kg package in the countryside is expensive by truck (fuel, manpower, time ...). So drones are attractive for such. A niche that saves money and can be scaled makes sense. In the US, esp. flyover states, there are hundreds of opportunities for "final mile" delivery centres that would pay off.

Planned drop. Planned padding inside the box. If they planned for every delivery driver to drop from 2 ft and added enough padding inside to accommodate for that, it wouldn't be a problem.

@@fitybux4664 Great, even more packaging to recycle or throw away because the drone delivery system is badly designed. I prefer Zipline's approach of using a delivery droid to precisely lower the package while the actual drone stays in the air.

@@yvan2563 Zipline is the one that has that red box with all the packaging. That was their v1 system, still in use in Africa. The droid based system has a shorter range. (They will have more of them in the US to compensate for that.)

I'd think it would be much more than a ground based electric vehicle. A ground based vehicle has the efficiency of a single efficient route through a neighborhood to deliver hundreds of packages. A drone would have to make hundreds of trips, even if it weighs much less. Also, it is more energy expensive to fly than to drive.

@@fitybux4664 I think so as well BUT we might be wrong. They should have gone into some numbers.

the ridiculous Chinook helicopter can "only" carry 10 tons, imagine thousands of "drones" flying with 30 tons above your head meanwhile making you deaf

Then you might have to wait longer or pay more for your delivery to be done by ground transportation. If you see problems with drones where you live, then it's obviously not the first place drones will be used.

smoking hopium again?

Bruh, as soon as it caries a person it's not a "drone" it's a manned aircraft. Of which we've had thousands of different designs.

This already exists. There was a time when you had to pick up packages from the post office. People didn't like it. That's why markets moved away from that.

One of those drone companies started in Rwanda. They deliver medical supplies, blood, anti venom, antibiotics, ect.

I was referring to african drone companies started by African founder. Zipline started in Rwanda but it is a U.S company and their IP reside in the U.S