SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Three stories all looking at how deliveries might be made in the near future:
Google Drone Deliveries by 2017, While Skype Founders' Bots Keep Down to Earth
Google has put a tentative date on deliveries by drone:
Search giant Google has announced a date for the launch of its drone delivery service. Called Project Wing, the initiative aims to be delivering goods to consumers using the robot aircraft sometime in 2017. The announcement came from David Vos, the project leader for the delivery service. Online retailers such as Amazon, Alibaba and others are also experimenting with drone delivery. "Our goal is to have commercial business up and running in 2017," said Mr Vos during a speech at an air traffic control convention being held in Washington.
Meanwhile, Skype's co-founders are working on a more grounded approach:
Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis are poised to unleash a fleet of trundling robodelivery vehicles, promising to get up to two bags of groceries to your door within 30 minutes.
Starship Technologies' bots, which are capable of delivering up to 5km from a central hub at a leisurely 6km/h, have all the bells and whistles you'd expect from the ultra modern alternative to the delivery boy's bicycle – low carbon footprint, autonomous operation, obstacle avoidance capability, mobile app tracking, and so forth.
The blurb explains:
Starship's robots can drive intelligently on the sidewalks at pedestrian speeds. They know their location and can navigate their way through an area with perfect precision all whilst seamlessly merging with pedestrian traffic. The robots can detect obstacles, adjust speed or stop and safely cross the streets.
Additionally, Starship's robots are monitored by human operators who can, at any time, take control over the device and view the world through the robot's eyes, communicating with people around it if necessary.
Australia Post Could Soon be Delivering Packages with Drones
Australia Post is trialling the use of drones for package deliveries as early as next year. The drones, which will cost $10,000 each, will allow packages up to 2kg to be delivered over 25km with the possibility of transporting 10kg on the discussion table.
“It meets all of the flying requirements, has backup engines, gps co-ordinates, so we can put it right on their patio,” Chief executive Ahmed Fahour told the AFR.
“It’s the thin edge of trying to demonstrate that when you think of Australia Post – they’re innovative. We’re hopefully trying to show with the lockers [for parcel pick up], the app, that we are innovative.”
The drone trials will be a new 21st century addition to the national postal service who has in recent years, faced logistical issues such as delayed services despite installing $500 million worth of "state-of-the-art" parcel sorting machines in Sydney and Melbourne last year.
(Score: 2) by schad on Wednesday November 04 2015, @05:49PM
About two months ago, to get our passports.
I don't talk to our current one. She chain-smokes in her truck, and I quit recently enough that it's tough to be around that. I've waved to her a few times but she doesn't wave back (though she may not see me). Didn't talk to the previous one much, but she always left packages not by our front door but right up against our garage door. One package was destroyed by being backed over. Two others were destroyed by rain (they were left out all weekend because we can't see there from inside the house). We also had more than a few illegible bills because she always left our mailbox open. On windy days nontrivial amounts of rain would blow in there.
That's not been my experience. As best I can remember, there's always been some problem that required the worker to go into the back for 5-15 minutes in order to resolve. The reason varied but there was always something.
As I implied but didn't say outright, the plural of anecdote isn't data. I'm not really trying to say that the USPS is universally shit. What I'm trying to do is explain why some people say that it sucks. It's not because we're ultra-rich, or opposed to equality, or want it to go bankrupt, or hate unions. It's because we've had genuinely terrible experiences. In my case, my experiences have been exclusively terrible. Out of the several dozen nontrivial interactions I've had with the USPS, they have all been bad. Levels of bad that had me literally shaking with anger, in more than a few instances.
tl;dr -- Your original comment was one big straw man, and I set out to show it.