Drone receiving address system (mailbox for drone delivery)

[martijn10022]

Dear all,

I've started a new minor in which 7 other students and I will design a smart mailbox for future drone delivery. Before designing such a drone receiving address system, we need to know what the opinion's are from people living in areas that are suitable for drone delivery. We study Aeronautical Engineering so besides all engineering, this project makes us focus on entrepeneurship. We made a survey in which we ask what your thoughts are on drone delivery in your very home. If you have a minute, we'd be happy if you could fill in what you think. Maybe our design will be in your backyard in a few years

Click here for the survey.

Please comment on this thread if you have anything constructive, it'd help alot.

Thank you for your time and enthousiasm

 

[PsyBorg]

This is gonna be a tough one to be positive with a response. Drone delivery here is an evil term as it is currently the number one factor threatening our hobby and what we do.

First and foremost I think to generate any useable responses you need to define your definition of "drone". Our Governments clueless minions have failed in use of that term as it is such a broad coverage of MANY things not all involving flight which is what this community is all about.

I will make a few assumptions here and say your mail delivery drones will be land based and gps guided and or controlled over the massive 5g wifi system being rolled out all over the world. Personally I am against most things that are not under human control. I get that as we grow technically computer aided or AI aided things will move us forward but giving full control over anything is just bad. Simply because there is no grey areas in the decision process. its either yes or no, 1 or 0 with some logic added in to mimic decision making.

Our hobby is being taken away because it is not safe yet everything "Drone" weaseling its way into our domain breaks every rule we ever went by. Thus adding another Drone delivery entity to an already destined to fail thing adds to my opinionated thoughts against any and all things automated.

First there is power requirements to operate all things drone. Battery tech is not where it needs to be to sustain let alone make it cost effective in any way shape or form. Even if it is done with conventional fuels like fossil fuels, solar, or even hydrogen conversion for over land its still not cost effective. Electric vehicles will also in the long run fail to a certain extent as adding all these extra things to an already over stressed power delivery grid not to mention the additional generating plants to feed all the things big corps think will happen is just not sustainable long term.

To address your particular desire to deliver mail you now need to look at how and where your vehicles are going to move about and interact with other traveling entities. How many years have self driving vehicles been under development.. STILL not viable due to infrastructure to accommodate it. Rework of road systems will have to be done to allow for dedicated "automation" lanes. To be honest getting that down to the level needed for the precession of mail delivery is not realistically in reach. You MAY get it down to automated delivery between major routing centers MAYBE even local office to office distribution but box to box level aint happening without MASSIVE and MAJOR infrastructure overhauls outside the technical aspects for automated delivery out of your particular field.

Finally you come to the end user / recipient of these deliveries. People are freaked out over our toys sporadically being used. What makes you or any other drone delivery pipe dreamers think they will openly accept drones driving and flying all over the place specially given the privacy concerns when it comes to cameras and videos in the hands of corporations and governments.

Ill play nice and not even get into the evil aspects of humanity with such powerful and expensive tech like you are working towards. Just wayyy too many outside the discipline factors for these automated services to get off the ground let alone survive long term or be efficient.

From a tech aspect projects like this are interesting and even pretty cool... on a small scale level I'm all about the tinkering and making but still have a semi decent grasp of reality vs taking over the world with what I think of or do. The first thing I think of after forming an idea is not IF I can do something because I know I can do anything I set my mind to task on. Its if I SHOULD do it by weighing the idea against common sense, ethics, logistics, or even down to the simple fact does humanity really need this stuff or am I more concerned with my wallet in the short time I get to walk this planet. 99.999999% of the time the answer is no and I wont even voice my ideas so other less intelligent people can implement it to profiteer off of or even to hurt others.

Good luck with what you do but anything corporate drone level right now probably wont be getting a good reception or response here. You may pull interest on the more technical things you want to develop but for profit "Droney" stuffs that will potentially harm what we do... not so much

 

[Hai-Lee]

Look to the past to get the answers for the future!
when mail delivery systems were first made public there was a need for a dedicated delivery point to be provided and so curbside mail boxes and post office boxes were provided. With drone delivery a set delivery point will also be needed to be provided.

The biggest issue with drone delivery is the proximity of people to the drone at the delivery point. Using current tech the drones are actually no where near intelligent and aware enough to provide a decent level of safety to the general public. Having a drone flying down to ground level in order to effect a delivery is just short of insane!

A delivery system needs speed, accuracy, safety, and security. Whereas speed may not be an issue the other three requirements are going to be difficult to provide reliably with current tech.

For security a delivery platform located away from the streets and footpaths at each delivery address would be required. The platform would need to be elevated and difficult to access for any person who is not the intended recipient.

To speed up the post I would expect that a roof top or window mounted platform would be required with a local WiFi connection to have the delivery address and the delivery verified. The WiFi connection would also give a notification or record, (streamed video), of the details and location of the delivered item.

The use of GPS and local wifi combined with delivery platforms away from the street and elevated above a easily reached height would secure deliveries and allow the drones to fly across the buildings in the area and not down the streets and footpaths hazarding the general population unnecessarily.

Actually the easiest model to follow is the mythical Santa Claus where he flies from rooftop to rooftop dropping the parcels down peoples chimneys. Maybe its time to retire the reindeer?

Just a few thoughts!

Have fun!

 

[mastermalpass]

I never considered quad-copter delivery systems to be that feasible purely due to the limits on what a quad can carry. Pizza Hut played with the idea of it - think about that; right off the bat, they would need a quad big enough that its props aren't blowing straight into a pizza box. Then, the quad needs to be strong enough to carry the payload. The quad will have to be quick about its delivery to ensure the Pizza stays warm, or load it up with insulation, increasing the power demand and likely requiring manual handling to take the Pizza without also taking the insulation.

Perhaps Pizza delivery is a low-hanging fruit. But delivery of other parcels is once again limited to the size and weight of parcel it can carry. Unlike a person with a van, it cannot take a street's worth of any-size parcels to an area and deliver to a string of houses in series. So, it can only deliver smaller, lighter packages unless the quad gets bigger. If the drones get too big, they start presenting the same dangers as a 500 size helicopter and people are going to have complaints about the noise and potential danger.

The CAA forbids flying models within 50 metres of or above buildings and traffic. With a commercial drone license, you can get exceptions to these rules, but from what I've read, you need to contact the CAA with operation plans and get the operation authorised. I don't know if a permit can be acquired where you don't need authorisation every time, but either way, that's another obstacle to setting up. Another CAA reg is that the drone has to stay within line of sight of the operator - they're not allowed to fly off on a mission. I don't know if again, the CAA can be consulted to authorise a mission.

Another issue with delivery by drone is how drones can be attacked and have their payloads plundered without getting an eye (or rather a camera) on the perps. Though, as long as drones stay high and only descend to to a delivery point, they can be safe from most of this potential risk, but I still think insurance costs could be high.

One thing I did consider, was a network of small airports that larger fixed wing RCs can travel between. Planes can carry higher payloads and without having to go direct to delivery addresses, wouldn't run into a lot of the issues a depot-to-door multi-rotor delivery would face. However, these dedicated airports would likely have to be out of town and manned, making them less practical. Again CAA might have an issue with RC planes flying off on missions.

I think that the Person + Van is still the superior delivery medium. And as Deliveroo have shown in the UK; Person + bicycle is a great short distance delivery medium. And the introduction of mass comercial low-altitude traffic, will massively reduce the areas recreational flying will be allowed in.

 

[PsyBorg]

@mastermalpass
Agreed!!! Drone delivery by default WILL and MUST break every rule we ever had to fly by to be effective or proficient at the service. The governments are taking our allotted air space to give to commercial drones for delivery so they have clear air space to be able to break all those rules with the most risk mitigation. Without our gear in their way the chances of a delivery drone actually completing its mission without diverting or aborting would be more cost effective.

For drone delivery to even remotely be cost effective it has to be done in highly populated areas with short flights of low weight. The tech available that I know of has a seriously bad cost to weight ratio and we all know weight is key for efficiency in flight. Unless they came up with mini fission tech to power these things commercial delivery is a fail out of the gate as far as profits.

For us in the USA I will just sit back and enjoy the show once its all in place because there will be so many law suits from injuries in the first few months of its existence they will never dig themselves out of the hole. Wont even go into that new criminal job base of Drone Jacker that will arise. Order a $19 dollar tee shirt, pay $25 dollars for 2 hr delivery shipping cost and get a free delivery drone to strip and sell for parts.

Better yet I cant wait to see all the hickabillies on you tube posting videos of themselves shooting drones flying over their property once they spread out into more suburban areas if it all lasts that long.

All this new regulation has ZERO to do with safety and ALL about money and corruption. The sad part is thru that back door corruption the damage to our hobby is already done and irreversible.