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posted by janrinok on Wednesday November 04 2015, @11:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the robots-versus-drones dept.

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

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/australia-post-could-soon-be-delivering-packages-with-drones-2015-10

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 04 2015, @07:00PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 04 2015, @07:00PM (#258464)

    OK, so basically no complaining about anything.

    About the locals, specifically.

    The world wide 2nd shift call center in Australia for enterprise Cisco router support at least used to be pretty awesome (maybe it still is, I donno), and there is some point in discussing that in a world wide forum because every enterprise customer with a support contact over 7 figures or whatever my previous employer was, would talk to the same guys in .au, so its logical to debate and compare.

    I guess the best cell phone analogy would be if the whole planet gets the same India call center for billing problems, then its worthwhile for the whole planet to discuss it.

    because the worldwide standard for cell radios gets screwed up by ... mountains

    See there you go. The closest thing to a real mountain is at least 800 miles from where I live. Its just not worth discussing on a world wide forum.

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