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Amazon's drone delivery program is the joke it always sounded like. (news.yahoo.com)

submitted 1 year ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Only one item can be delivered at a time. It can’t weigh more than 5 pounds. It can’t be too big. It can’t be something breakable, since the drone drops it from 12 feet. The drones can’t fly when it is too hot or too windy or too rainy.

You need to be home to put out the landing target and to make sure that a porch pirate doesn’t make off with your item or that it doesn’t roll into the street (which happened once to Lord and Silverman). But your car can’t be in the driveway. Letting the drone land in the backyard would avoid some of these problems, but not if there are trees.

Amazon has also warned customers that drone delivery is unavailable during periods of high demand for drone delivery.

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[–] buzziebee@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've seen videos of a firm doing interesting stuff with bigger "mothership" drones that hover much higher and then lower a much smaller drone like thing on a cable to place the parcel on the ground. They can hit pretty precise targets and can maneuver around more obstacles than bigger drones can.

All that needs to happen is for the tech to advance to the point where it's cheaper to do x% of their deliveries via automated drones than it would cost to have delivery drivers do it and they'll start doing it. Saving millions(billions?) by say halving the number of human operated delivery trucks will make it a no brainer for them.

[–] Natanael 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are the mothership drones blimp types?

[–] buzziebee@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Oh they weren't that big, though maybe you could have a super mothership carrier style thing one day lol.

Turns out it was on a Mark Rober video where I saw the drones. Made by zipline who've been doing interesting things with emergency drone deliveries in Rwanda for years and have a lot of backing.

https://youtu.be/DOWDNBu9DkU?si=pe3Cp5uW7wWqOT7T