Inside Google’s Drone-Delivery Program
Both when I read this and when I heard amazon's announcement, I, like most people I see here, thought about the "get whatever I order off the internet to my doorstep, asap" use case--and I think that's still a ways off (because of the 0.01% edge cases, the regulation, etc).<p>But the use case that this article touched on, which to me was a "ah ha! we could do that today" is the case where the sending and receiving parties are more fixed (not just any random person's door), where they could actually build a drone-pad (like a heli-pad, but much more basic), where you could program in all of the specific obstacles on the route (exactly where, if there are electrical lines, what flight pattern to take, etc), and where you could train both the sender and receiver, and cord off the landing area (so you'd never run into the random guy or dog tries to grab the drone problem)<p>examples:<p>* delivery of medical supplies/medicine to a facility in a very remote area where it would not make sense to stock the items there permanently.<p>* very expensive restaurant at a ski resort in the middle of Colorado that gets a drone delivery of fresh seafood from a CA pier every day (an existing business transaction they do anyway that could be done faster, more efficiently than a human operated aircraft)<p>* the delivery of anything else to a ski resort (you have very wealthy people wanting things in a very remote location)<p>* something on top of a cruise ship, for medical items or whatever other thing a passenger really needed while at sea.<p>* something at the Ebola treatment areas right now in Africa.