Aerial Delivery Drones

Today is a nice, warm, early winter day in north central Texas. So I am working on our front porch, which means I get a front seat view of the many, many deliveries being made to my neighborhood by aerial drones from the Walmart store about 2 miles away.

Our local Walmart has been offering aerial drone delivery since August, using drones from an outfit called Zipline.

Technologically, I am intrigued, as my education and working career were around technology. Technology is interesting, even if it’s technology I am not interested in using personally.

The drone flies at about 300 feet above ground. Apparently, in the drone delivery “app” (on your phone, of course), the customer chooses which of one or more pre-mapped possible delivery spots in their yard they prefer the drone to use. The drone hovers above the delivery spot and lowers a delivery pod from the drone’s fuselage to the ground. The pod is attached to the drone by a line. After the pod opens to release its contents on the ground, the line is retracted to reel the pod back to the drone.

The drones used here are airplane-shaped. They have five propellers each (two on each wing and one on the tail), plus one propeller on the pod. (I assume the latter is for stabilizing the pod during delivery in a wind.) As I understand it, the drone and delivery pod together weigh about 80 pounds. The drone has a payload capacity of about eight pounds.

The docking station at the store is quite the structure. There are docks for about sixteen drones.

The drones operate autonomously. There is apparently one person who generally monitors all the drones flying at a time. Today I got to see two drones arrive in rapid succession at what was either a single delivery location or two delivery locations very close to each other (our lots around here are not very large). This all challenges the drones' collision avoidance capabilities. I was interested to see the second-to-arrive drone abruptly stop short of its eventual delivery location and hover for a minute or so until the first drone finished its delivery and left the area. Then the second drone moved to almost exactly where the first drone had been, and deployed its pod. Autonomous operation in three-dimensional airspace has got to be a lot more complicated than functioning on two-dimensional ground space.

For now there is no extra charge to the customer for drone delivery. I assume Walmart and Zipline are running a trial period to figure out how the service might be used in the wider world, while also getting customers hooked on the service. The service is currently limited to a radius of about 2.5 - 3 miles from the store. The company says the drones can deliver up to ten miles, but their licensing permissions here are limited. No one has said what the delivery fee will be once they start charging (which I assume they will at some time).

I have my doubts about the value proposition of instant delivery. Of course, I have my doubts about the value proposition for delivery in general for anything I can find locally, as I like to see it before buying. And if I’m buying from Walmart something I’m familiar enough with to buy online, it’s probably part of a larger household restocking purchase of many things that wouldn't fit in an aerial drone. The most useful application of drone delivery I've heard about was when one of my neighbors, who was quite ill, had prescription medication delivered so she didn’t have to leave her house in that condition.

I wonder about the increase in mechanical things in the air. The drones are quiet, but not silent. At times, the air is filled with quite the buzzing noise, especially when several drones are making deliveries in rapid succession around the neighborhood. They are quieter than a small airplane flying overhead, so I don’t hear them if I’m inside the house with the windows closed. But if I’m on the porch or the patio, they are noticeable.

We have so far had one of the delivery drones crash in our neighborhood when a 40-mph gust of wind caught it after it made its delivery. Fortunately, it crashed into a part of someone’s yard against a fence and did not damage any people, pets, or cars. Yet that crash got some of the neighbors a little concerned about the safety of such things flying around.

But, from the frequency of the drone delivery flights over my house, I gather many people have a different view of the instant delivery value proposition than I do. If Zipline and Walmart wanted real-world experience with aerial drone delivery, my neighborhood is providing it!

People have gotten rather accustomed to figuratively snapping their fingers and having a desired thing in their hands almost instantly. Not that long ago, you had to be extremely wealthy with a staff of servants to provide you with that ability. Now pretty much anybody can have that level of service, as long as they are willing to pay a delivery fee that is usually larger than someone like myself willing to pay. But instant aerial drone delivery is yet another in a long line of things and services previously reserved for the extremely wealthy that became available to almost everyone.