Drones: Deliverymen of the Future

 

 

Purchasing groceries from brick-and-mortar retailers – or even ordering a delivery that finds its way to your door via a guy on a bike or in a car – is on its way to becoming passé.  If Internet behemoths such as Amazon and Google have their way, drones may soon drop off your groceries, too. Not the drones that the military uses, of course – the delivery drones in development are more like remote-control helicopters. But when it comes to changing the way we think about logistics, they are certainly more than playthings.

A company called Darwin Aerospace is working on airborne food delivery via a so-called “Burrito Bomber.” Domino’s Pizza has piloted a “DomiDrone” to helicopter its pies across town. Another pizza chain, Francesco’s, has done the same in Mumbai. So far, neither of those efforts has had any tangible results beyond publicity, but two of the largest employers of delivery personnel, UPS and FedEx, have also said they are researching the use of drones. The most important development in the drone delivery space, however, is that both Amazon and Google are pouring millions, perhaps ultimately billions, of dollars into drone development. Amazon subsidiary PrimeAir, for example, says it aims “to get packages into customers’ hands in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial vehicles.”

Ultimately, one goal of drone research is automation – replacing the deliveryman with a robot. But as Google’s Project Wing shows, the battle is really about logistics. “Throughout history there have been a series of innovations that have each taken a huge chunk out of the friction of moving things around,” says Astro Teller, who leads Google’s drone operations and boasts the impressive official title, “Captain of Moonshots.” “Project Wing aspires to remove another big chunk of that remaining friction.” Google sees possibilities in everything from air-lifting defibrillators to heart attack victims, to flying dog food to a cattle station in the Australian Outback. In short, says Credit Suisse Senior Equity Analyst Uwe Neumann, “Google wants to transform the way people receive products.”

Drone delivery still faces two major hurdles: obtaining regulatory approvals and avoiding crashes. Neumann reckons that commercial operations will not commence for at least a few more years. Still, in Silicon Valley, drones are starting to be seen as a “killer app.” Chris Anderson, CEO of 3D Robotics and founder of DIY Drones, compares their potential to that of personal computers back in the 1970s, with today’s amateur unmanned flying enthusiasts playing a role similar to that of the legendary Homebrew Computer Club, whose members included Apple’s Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs and  helped usher in the age of the personal computer.

Smartphones will play an important role in drone development. “The average person today carries in his pocket technology that just a decade ago, the President of the United States could only have dreamed of,” says Zackary Schildhorn, whose firm Lux Capital has funded various drone ventures. The cameras, processors, gyroscopes and other components a drone needs to function are now available at scale “at a cost of pennies,” Anderson says. “We can offer what used to be military-grade technology from parts bought at the local Radio Shack.” He expects drones offered by his company, 3D Robotics, to fall from a cost of some $1,000 each to around $100 over the next few years. Key to this decline is not the cost of the “platform” – the wings, rotors and flying gear. Rather it is the controls and the sensors, says Matthew Pobloske, President of Sensintel, a drone-maker formerly owned by aerospace/defence giant BAE Systems. The future of drones, he says, is not only about delivery, but “about putting sensors into the air.”

Indeed, delivery services are only one of many possible uses for unmanned flight. Anderson and others foresee a great future for drones in farming (monitoring and spraying crops), but note that the devices will likely be used in many ways that no one currently foresees. “We’ll see apps emerge that we never imagined, just as we have with PCs and smart phones,” Schildhorn says. The fact that major tech players such as Amazon and Google are dedicating serious resources into developing the technology hint at a bright future. After all, these companies have already radically changed life as we know it – they may well do it again.