Drone Shop Drop Stop Blues

I was reading an MiT Technology article on Ocado's super-automated warehouse (h/t Renaissance Chambara) and after all the description of the robot warehouse it talked about logistics and the use of robot vans for delivery. (For non UK people, Ocado picks the food at its warehouse and then delivers to your door via a fleet of vans).

Now we use Ocado and similar, as do many suburban Londoners, as the time to drive and shop in London's traffic makes it very convenient and at c £3 per delivery, it actually almost costs in vs taking the car - or at least I and many others are happy to pay the extra cost for the saved time and hassle.

But when I started to think about Robot vans negotiating London's narrow and traffic choked suburban streets, and then doing a robo-delivery to the countless different front of house arrangements - gate / drive / stairs / entry / stairs (a lot of people use Ocado et al so the driver can take their heavy shopping up several flights of stairs to their apartment), I came to the conclusion that this was all going to be a long, long way off and the article was just doing the usual techno-hype crapdance at that point. I also then understood exactly why Amazon was interested in drones - heck, if they can fly contraband to prisoners they can deliver to Nth floor apartments (maybe in the future all apartments will have dronepads bolted on)

But then I started to think about payloads and flight costs and quickly realised that drones are probably only ever going to deliver light, high value items, and grocery shopping probably isn't in that category, because it's heavy and relatively low value.

Now no consultant can go for long without a trusty 2 x 2 matrix, so sure enough, there is one at the top of the page to illustrate the point - in essence the only drone delivery space is light and valuable (top left) as:

(ii) Payload limits - to lift heavy stuff you need big drones, but they themselves are heavy and thus will be too dangerous to have whizzing around suburban skies Right now there is a 20kg weight limit (drone plus payload) outside of safe spaces but that's because there are so few drones. A weight of just a few kilograms dropping out the skies can seriously hurt someone, so this weight limit will come down over time in populated areas, and that limits payload so your typical Ocado shop will need a LOT of smaller drones each carrying their kilo or so of goods. (Think of your weekly shop, break it into c 1 kg / 2 pound lots, and then think of the number of drones needed)

(i) If the item isn't valuable it won't pay the cost of the flight. There are 3 cost factors at work here:

- Drones that can do this sort of delivery are heli-drones, ie they have no ability to fly using wings - every inch they move up and along is driven by the propellors, its the most high cost way to drive a flying object

- The payload will be limited so there won't be the multiple drop off points on a route, ie they will need to do far more drone-miles from warehouse to customer per package, which further pushes up costs.

- Furthermore, to carry the average shop will need a LOT of these smaller, safer drones and they will have to move as a swarm, so delivery will have extra queuing time, where drones have to hover airborne awaiting their turn to drop the goods - and you can't turn the motor off as you do with a van (and that's ignoring the question of whether multiple flocks of 40 or so drones will ever be allowed to go buzzing round the suburbs

Here comes the weekly shop....



Somehow, I don't think the optimal solution is flying the 40 or so drones small enough to be safe in a big flock from out of town warehouse some 20+ miles away on a fly/drop/return flightplan.

Next step will probably be someone suggesting giant dirigibles flying above the suburbs as mobile van-hives with drones buzzing to and fro from them, but all this does is reduce drone to/from flight and replace it with a dirigible flight cost. The weight/value equation will still cut in, big time.

(Update - it appears Amazon have patented the blimp-drone thing - that was quick, I only wrote about it this morning....)