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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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[–] Chozo@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Assuming you live in any moderately-developed area, yeah this is kind of a useless service. But I can see this being very useful for people who need things delivered to remote or otherwise hard-to-access places where a delivery vehicle can't easily get to. Until the cost of maintaining a drone fleet drops substantially, I don't see it being more feasible than the standard delivery van service for most people, not for a while at least.

[–] gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So in this scenario an Amazon driver is driving near a remote, hard to access location that a truck can't get to, loading a package onto a drone, and then waiting for it to fly to your hermit shack and back? If your area isn't moderately developed you're probably not going to have an Amazon drone hub within range.

[–] Chozo@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not now, but in theory the tech will continue to evolve. Drones will continue getting better ranges as battery tech improves.

It likely won't be something that reaches widespread adoption any time soon. But in time, I could see this being a very useful service.

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

We’ve kind of hit a brick wall on the battery front, I wouldn’t expect much improvement in that arena

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Solid state batteries could provide another boost in capacity. Other than that, drones don't need to be quadcopter style only, gliders can reduce battery load significantly (and you could even make a hybrid that can switch to quad mode for precise flight)

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Non-fixed wing drones don't have much range.