from the what-about-snow,-rain,-heat,-or-gloom-of-night? dept.
Drone Delivery Is Live Today, And It's 90% Cheaper Than Car-Based Services:
Amazon may be failing to deliver on its promises of drone delivery programs. But a home-grown Irish company is running live autonomous drone delivery right now in Galway, Ireland, has licenses to take it across the European Union, and is poised to — at the right moment — take its tech and knowhow across the Atlantic.
To Canada, at least.
Regulation in the U.S. is too far behind the times.
"We're delivering coffees," Manna CEO Bobby Healy told me in a recent episode of the TechFirst podcast. "We're delivering burgers and fries. We're delivering ice cream, broccoli, melon, you name it, we're delivering it. And it arrives perfect, you know, piping hot coffee, foam intact, little design on top of the foam still intact."
Manna is doing 2,000 to 3,000 flights a day using fully autonomous suitcase-sized drones that fly at 50 miles an hour — that's 80 km/hour in Ireland — at an altitude of 150 to 200 feet. Near your home, it'll scan the area with lidar and radar to find a safe spot, descend, drop off your delivery, and whiz back for its next pick-up.
[...] Each drone runs seven or eight deliveries an hour, and there's a huge advantage over an Uber Eats or Skip The Dishes style car delivery.
[...] "In the USA today, it's costing between $6 and $9 base cost to a platform to move product, to get product from restaurant to the store — or to the house," Healy says. "So think that key KPI, one person, roughly two orders per hour. One Manna personnel can do 20 deliveries per hour ... simple number, right? So our cost is one tenth the cost of using the road. It's literally that simple."
[...] it allows a tiny bookstore or pizza parlor in semi-rural Ireland to have a better delivery guarantee than global supergiant Amazon.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:04PM (40 children)
The U.S. is way too entrenched. We need to get rid of USPS mailbox monopolies so that anyone can deliver mail into what should be MY mailbox (it shouldn't belong to the federal government).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:06PM (18 children)
If anyone disagrees with me they should be free to determine who is allowed and not allowed to deliver mail into what should be their mailbox. They should not be allowed to impose their disagreement onto what should be my mailbox (it shouldn't belong to the federal government). I should be allowed to choose who can deliver mail into what should be my mailbox.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:56PM (13 children)
1. Individuals and private companies like FedEx put stuff in my mailbox all the tome so not sure what you're going on about.
2. As for the federal government's role in this endeavor the Constitution of the United States of America is pretty explicit:
Article I, Section 8: The Congress Shall have power "To establish Post Offices and post Roads" [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:11PM (7 children)
LOL. Some people spend a lot of time arguing about their rights, which aren't in the Constitution, and complaining about the unconstitutionality of the stuff that is in the Constitution!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:24PM (6 children)
I don't have to agree with everything in the constitution
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:32PM (4 children)
Well, yes. You do. That's the point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday August 19 2021, @10:21PM (3 children)
Hardly. You're legally bound to obey it, but that doesn't mean you have to agree with it, and we've got 27 amendments proving that people have been disagreeing with its then-current state right from the beginning.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @02:22AM (2 children)
A citizen is not legally bound by the Constitution, only the government is.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday August 20 2021, @05:46AM (1 child)
In theory. In practice the government does whatever it thinks it can get away with.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 21 2021, @07:45AM
...as written in the Constitution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:44PM
You don't have to agree with everything, but you have to abide by everything. You don't pick and choose which things you will abide by, notwithstanding what the Republicans say.
You can, however, change what is in the Constitution. It tells you how to do that, right in the Constitution.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:23PM
What country are you from? It's illegal for them to put stuff in your mailbox in the U.S., they can get in trouble (you can google it).
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:46PM (1 child)
They're not supposed to be putting things in those mailboxes. The building I live in has locked mailboxes and only the resident and the letter carrier have keys to it. Whether or not it should be the case to bar them from access, there are a number of issues that arise from people other than approved postal employees putting things into people's mailboxes. Not the least of which is that you don't have any idea whether they're stealing mail while putting something in there and that some people have mail slots which lead directly inside and that technically the home owner owns the mailbox, so if somebody puts contraband in there, they would technically be guilty of possession.
Ultimately, other organizations aren't typically interested in delivering things that are small enough to fit in most cases. Yes, they do, occasionally get paid to deliver letter sized envelopes, but the build of the shipping done via UPS, FedEx and the rest are larger boxes.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @01:28AM
"some people have mail slots which lead directly inside and that technically the home owner owns the mailbox"
No, even mail slots that go directly inside the house are now owned by the federal government. Way way way back people tried to get around the mailbox monopoly laws by putting mail slots in their doors but later on that was also deemed to be owned by the federal government as well. It's really not acceptable.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 19 2021, @10:14PM (1 child)
FedEx uses your mailbox?
From 2010 - https://about.usps.com/news/state-releases/tx/2010/tx_2010_0909.htm [usps.com]
Maybe something has changed in the last decade?
https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Mailbox-The-Basics [usps.com]
It appears that you can still have a newspaper delivery box attached to your mailbox supports, if it meets these guidelines (bottom of FAQ)
As near as I can determine, your FedEx delivery guy is breaking the law if he puts stuff in your mailbox.
Note that I am not approving or disapproving of the law, I'm just interested in what the law says.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @10:48PM
(original poster) ... there are nuanced caveats and whatnot but I didn't want to get too detailed.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday August 19 2021, @10:34PM (3 children)
If you have a problem with the federal government regulating the receptacle they deliver your mail to, then you're free to install a delivery box that anyone can use. Just don't expect the mailman to use it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Kymation on Friday August 20 2021, @12:48AM (1 child)
I have a receptacle that anyone can use, installed next to the front door. I got it for packages that are too large for my mailbox. My postal carrier has no problem with using it, and FedEx and UPS use it as well. The only issue that I have found is that I sometimes have to tell new drivers to use it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 20 2021, @02:09AM
Yep, I've had similar a few times in my life always in smaller towns, don't know how it would go over with the mailmen in the city.
I guess I was thinking more if you don't have a regulation compliant mailbox, don't expect the mailman to deliver - I'm not sure they'll even let you sign up for service. "Please use this other more convenient box instead" is a much smaller ask. It might be technically violating their rules, but who's really going to care?
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday August 21 2021, @10:02AM
I don't know how common it was in other areas, but it used to be common enough where I lived when I was young: On the pole next to the street, there was both the mailbox for the postmen and a similar sized box for newspaper delivery. Each was clearly marked.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:12PM (14 children)
This is a great idea if you're living in downtown Metropolis. Not so much when you're in Hicksville. Because it's heaps more profitable to deliver where people are tightly packed and your delivery boy can deliver on foot however many packages he can carry, while you almost need a plane to deliver that lone package sensibly to some remote farm at the outskirts of a godforsaken town in the middle of nowhere.
In other words, be prepared that you won't get anything delivered unless you're living in a large city. Because it simply isn't profitable to carry your Amazon bag out into the wilderness.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DrkShadow on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:39PM (7 children)
Actually, lets turn that around. It's great if you're living in Hicksville, TN! Just imagine: you don't have to contend with crap roads, potholes, dirt roads, lack of street signs to get to your place -- and all the round-about-ness that makes navigation difficult. It's a straight shot through the air!
From the article,
They're already doing semi-rural, and that's a selling point. Let this go rural, from a central distribution point, a straight-shot through the air for 20 minutes to rural wherever-you-want-to-be, and 20 minutes back. They say 7-8 deliveries an hour, so it can run for an hour straight. Your delivery will cost them 60-90c, maybe, times 7-8 (number of deliveries per hour -- since you're taking up an hour), as opposed to $15-30 to deliver to the middle of nowhere (if you can even get delivery). Probably the electricity is much cheaper than 60-90 * 7-8, probably like 50c + 10c*7. Each delivery presumably has to be loaded up by an employee, and maybe that's where the most of the cost comes from.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by HiThere on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:50PM (4 children)
I've got a strong suspicion that both rural and metropolitan deliveries will have different constraints than do "semi-rural" deliveries. If the drone needs to travle 20 miles to make the delivery, you get a most one round-trip/hour. If the address is in the middle of a high-rise, you have a very hard time getting the drone to their door. I suspect that there are other problems which are even worse (attacks by eagles high-jacking the hamburgers?). It should work well in suburban settings, though, and that's probably where a lot of the business is.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MIRV888 on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:22PM (3 children)
Here in Louisville were have families of red tail hawks about the city. They are extremely territorial and will defend it. They hunt drones too. The thing is the hawks are way better fliers and incredible predators. For instance, from altitude 200'-500' they always attack out of the sun. If you don't have a spotter you are gonna be in for a rude surprise. I have been knocked out of the air 3 times with 25-30 attacks. Point being predatory birds will be an issue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:38PM (2 children)
There must be a size where the birds go, meh fuck this, and fly the other way.
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Thursday August 19 2021, @11:45PM (1 child)
Yes, there must be.
Oh no! The Star Destroyer has entered atmosphere to carry out its drone delivery! :-)
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Friday August 20 2021, @02:36AM
I'm sure there is a 'too big to f*ck with' size, but bigger birds will scale. Eagles aren't scared of much in the air.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:54PM
It really depends. I expect that in the future much of the mail will be delivered by a combination of robotic mailtrucks and drones. Around here, I know of a few places where it can be a right pain to get things delivered due to inaccessible parking and the mailbox may even be on the opposite side of the street without parking. Being able to have an autonomous truck drive nearby and park at the closest safe place to pullover while a drone delivers the actual package would allow those mailboxes to be placed where people don't have to risk being hit by traffic. Some of the worst ones I've seen are nowhere near a crosswalk, marked or unmarked.
I would also expect that rural areas would see most of the mailboxes moved further away from the street to avoid issues with vandalism and being demolished if a car loses control.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:59PM
The thing is that nobody is going to deliver through the air to you. If you could either base your business where you fly 10 yards on average for a delivery and can do 100 deliveries an hour, or base it where you have to fly 10 miles for the average delivery and can do maybe 10, which one will you opt for?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:34PM (3 children)
There are two sides to that coin. Rural deliveries may have to be priced higher than the suburbs, because the drones have to travel further for each delivery. But, the obverse is, it costs me a lot more to run to Pizza Hut than it costs people in the suburbs. Maybe it costs you $1.50 to drive 1.5 miles to your pizza parlor, but it costs me $5.00 to $15.00 to make a similar trip. If someone charges me $3.00 for a drone delivery, I've saved gas money, as well as the travel time. What's more, the pizza probably arrives at my house much fresher, because there is no speed limit 75 feet up in the air, nor is there congestion, nor does the drone have to follow the roadway. (Depending on which nearby town I order from, the drone will travel 5% less distance, up to 25% less distance than I would have driven.)
I can see that the multi-billion dollar corporations are going to overlook rural delivery. That leaves room for small businesses and startups who can do the math for rural delivery services.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:57PM
I wouldn't expect this to be of much use in most rural areas. Most of them already have their mailboxes near to either the highway or a communal drop off point. This would be more likely to be used for situations where they're having to deliver the mail via horseback due to the lack of road. Yes, it does happen, but it's definitely not the norm.
Eventually, I'd expect it to be more about being able to deliver essential supplies when the roads are completely shut due to issues like excessive ice on the road or downed trees.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @04:18PM (1 child)
Interesting use of the term "obverse." I've never seen it used that way before. Nice.
Anyway, what you say is true. However, it also overlooks a detail, which is why big companies tend to ignore rural. Logistically it is very hard. You can build "1" thing and serve a single concentrated city. You need to build "100" things to serve a large rural area. It's the exact same reason you need to drive the 5-10 miles to get to the pizza parlor in the first place.
So while it's true that any given person will be more profitable, that additional profit may not be enough to cover the additional overhead cost of infrastructure and operations.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Saturday August 21 2021, @07:31AM
Drones are getting real cheap from a manufacturing point of view. It's plastic, 4 motors, a circuit board with integrated motor control / power, the battery, and whatever apparatus they rig for holding said product. GPS locating is impressive. Mine usually land withing 3' in 'phone home' mode.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @01:25AM (1 child)
IIRC, the USPS doesn't cover all locations and UPS/fedex would deliver to those locations too if you paid them enough. Why should I have to subsidize for someone that wants to live in the middle of the desert or the middle of nowhere.
Also, in countries that mailbox monopolies were abolished it never turned out to be the doomsday scenario that mailbox monopoly supporters claimed it would be.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Saturday August 21 2021, @06:23AM
Actually, I believe that the reverse is true.
Both UPS and FedEx now have integrated mail solutions. Depending on the service type (i.e. the quality of delivery paid for by the shipper) their low end shipments will actually look at the cost of the last mile delivery. If they determine that it is cheaper to have the post office deliver the package than it is for them to pay a driver, they will deliver the package to the post office and let the USPS finish the delivery. It can be far cheaper to have a UPS driver drop off a dozen packages at a rural post office and pay them to deliver it than it is to have that same driver spend all day driving a few hundred miles to delivery those same packages. The service is actually beneficial for them with some packages in an urban environment too.
And for the record...
I do not know if there are exceptions to this rule... but the post office will not deliver to houses on privately owned roads. I have seen some of these private roads in some areas a few miles from my house. However, in those cases, the post office has a set of multiple mailboxes set up next to the entrance to the private road and will deliver to those mailboxes instead of going down the private road.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:29PM (3 children)
Hey! A state actor is trying out a new script!! Neato.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 5, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:37PM
DeJoy is now posting AC here on SoylentNews?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @02:35AM
Hey! A retard is on the internet! Ha ha ha.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Saturday August 21 2021, @07:33AM
It's constitutionally mandated. You have about as much chance of amending that as removing the 2nd.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 19 2021, @08:19PM
What prevents you installing a "delivery box" right beside your mailbox? The cool things about a delivery box are, you can lock/unlock them electronically. You can specify the unlock combination for the box when you give delivery instructions. Some/most of those boxes have anchoring features that are far better than your mailbox sitting on top of a stick pushed into the dirt. If you like, you can place that delivery box on a porch, or some other sheltered spot, out of the weather. (Who wants to fumble with a key pad in the pouring rain?) All of this helps to defeat porch pirates, who can always help themselves to packages dropped beneath your mailbox, or tossed into the yard, or even sitting on your porch.
If you live in an apartment building with 120 mailbox slots in the foyer, delivery boxes may not work out for you. I love mine!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @01:39AM
So I'm going to post some information
"The mailbox monopoly in the US is a somewhat unique animal. Few, if any, foreign posts ever had a monopoly over the mailbox, and most posts over the past decade have been moving to new liberalization or privatization models. The EU, for example, began a transformation of its member country posts in the late 1990s, with most monopolies around carriage of mail ended by 2010.
Although never an apples-to-apples comparison with the mail delivery environment in the US — which is the world’s largest post in terms of volume and delivery territory — it is an interesting study to look at how foreign posts have transitioned out of their monopolies. One panelist at the PostalVision mailbox monopoly event noted that many of the “fears” people had about opening the postal monopoly (which are similar to concerns expressed in the US) never came to fruition."
https://mailingsystemstechnology.com/article-4145-The-Mailbox-Monopoly-Conundrum.html [mailingsystemstechnology.com]
The fear mongers kept on claiming "if we abolish these monopolies it'll be the end of the world" blah blah blah. As predictable, that never happened.
The U.S. is still a backwards system when it comes to this. My mailbox and my mail door slot should belong to ME, not the federal government. I should decide who gets to deliver and who doesn't get to deliver to it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by datapharmer on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:21PM (3 children)
What do you suppose accounts for it being .4672 km/h slower in Ireland? Is it a timezone thing or maybe due to unique friction properties of the Emerald Isles?
On a more serious note, I'm curious how they were able to get the price point for the drones to $0 so they can do a direct comparison between a delivery driver that provides their own car and "Manna personnel" that gets paid the same hourly but uses (presumably) a company owned drone. Something doesn't add up here with their "key KPI."
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:34PM (1 child)
That's the error in the assumptions. From the article,
There is no hourly employee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:46PM
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:42PM
Oh come on now, really? What accounts for the Irish being slower than the rest of us? Maybe its the Whiskey. Maybe its the latitude. Maybe its the attitude. Nothing remains quite the same.
Regardless, it is now fact, and this article will be referenced by people for generations as they cite this during arguments. Bummer for the Irish.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:39PM (7 children)
So, great, my caramel soy latte is sitting in the middle of the expressway? Only flat clear spot nearby?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:44PM
Here's the hot new purchase for the 2020s homeowner. [homedepot.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 19 2021, @07:47PM (5 children)
The danger would seem to be when it is drone hunting season. That is a thing in uncivilized parts of the US.
Fact: We get heavier as we age due to more information in our heads. When no more will fit it accumulates as fat.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @09:07PM (2 children)
Shoot guns and get a free pizza? That's a good night out in 1/2 the country.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday August 20 2021, @05:56AM (1 child)
Dang it! Vegan non-cheese pizza again.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 23 2021, @01:35PM
The uncivilized parts of the US do not need to shoot down drones to get free pizza. They already can get free road pizza any day.
Fact: We get heavier as we age due to more information in our heads. When no more will fit it accumulates as fat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 19 2021, @09:17PM
It's always drone hunting season just like it's always sign hunting season. Bagged a six-point stop sign the other day.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Saturday August 21 2021, @07:35AM
So 'Murica outside the cities?
You are not wrong.