December 24, 2013 • 26 mins
Imagine ordering something from Amazon and having it arrive at your home just 30 minutes later. But this wouldn't be carried by a stressed-out, human-run delivery service -- instead, Amazon would use a fleet of drones to deliver goods all around your city. Will this actually happen? Would you want Amazon's drone fleet in your neighborhood? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house Stuff works dot Com. I welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott Bend and I'm Ben Bowling.
Then we've got a topic today that is pretty um timely,
I guess, right, yeah, and this is actually can we
(00:22):
say this is a listeners suggestion? I don't know. If
I call her a listener, probably probably doesn't listen. Ever,
that's when actually comes from my wife. My wife suggested
that we talked about the Amazon drones because they've been
in the news recently. Yeah, and what a good idea
to talk about because picture this, come with us to
(00:43):
the weird future, um, where in you can go online
to Amazon where a lot of people shop already, right right,
that's a crazy shopping experience there. Yeah, Let's say you
live in a city like New York, San Francisco, Chicago,
Atlanta or whatever, and you order something and what it
and automated drone flies that thing from Amazon's factor or
(01:04):
warehouse to your doorstep in thirty minutes or less. All right,
this has got a lot of people kind of freaking out,
doesn't it. Yeah, I'm one of them. You're one of them? Really?
Now tell me just tell me briefly. I mean, you
don't have to go into too much detail here, but
I don't understand what the fear is with with the
drone delivering something to your doorstep. Okay, to be absolutely
honest and succinct, right now, the laws of the United
(01:28):
States prohibit this kind of activity, and I think they
should because having having an automated drone fly around UM
equipped with monitoring UH monitoring devices or ability to do
that to me could be an invasion privacy depending on
(01:51):
who you are, where you're at. But do they have
monitoring capability? I mean right now, I don't think that
they do. Of course, the ones that they show us
aren't going to have that right right right now, they won't,
but they'll they'll have to to be able to function successfully.
So here's the like, just the general focus of this
whole thing. If if someone is not aware of what
this is really and I mean you mentioned basically what
it is, how quickly it happens right even you click um,
(02:13):
you know the Prime air selection on Amazon as they
call it, it was just kind of a dummy name.
I guess, yeah. Video, the concept video came out, But
we need to talk about the device, right, yeah, I guess.
I mean it's just you the click, the primary thing,
and you know, the the uh, the the networking system
within the factory. You know, it gets the box to
where it needs to go, the the exact item that
(02:34):
needs to be shipped out of course, as it always does,
you know that, like they do now. Really it's just
the the the warehousing operates just as efficiently as it
does now. Then somebody puts it onto a roller of
some kind that rolls, you know, the box rolls down
the uh, the rolling system out towards the door. This
is the way the marketing video right a little bit
(02:55):
uh rose to well, I guess, but I mean they
have to show how it works, you know, absolutely rely
on here in the pre development stages, I guess. Right.
So then the drone clips onto this box and it
just flies out the door and that's it, right, it's gone.
And this drone, yeah, that's exactly where it's got. This
drone is what you would call an octocopter the way
it's depicted. Uh, it's an octocopter with a um. The
(03:19):
box that it's carrying is about ten inches longer so
and the rotors that it has are probably about point
one two meters uh each. Now I'm getting these numbers
off an excellent estimation on the physics of the octocopter. Uh.
There are some things we need to know about this.
(03:40):
It could probably carry about five pounds or two point
three kilos. That seems reasonable, right, right, it does. But
this also means that it can't ship everything. So you
can't get your you know, new wardrobe dresser unless take car,
unless they employ a fleet of octocopters to pick that
up and carry for you. You dream big, and that's
what I like about uh. And it's not gonna ever
(04:03):
be for um. It's not likely that this would ever
be for the entire world or the United States because
can you imagine trying to get something to Montana or
to another sparsely populated area. I guess so, but I
thought that's exactly what these things are for. They fly
on coordinates, right, so you you give them the exact
coordinates to where they need to go, and they take
(04:25):
it there. Now, that could be a drop off zone.
It could be like, you know, a post office for
an entire um, an entire village you know that's very remote.
You could drop it off, you know, just at the
post office and then and be under way. You don't
have to go to every single location, that's true. They
have a range of about ten miles. And you know,
I'm not trying to say that, you know, this is
a great thing and it should happen or anything like that,
(04:45):
but I'm saying that there's a you know, for every
every question or problem, there's always an answer. But also
for every you know, answer, there's always a couple of
questions that come up as well. You know, that's a
very fair thing, and I think that it's good for
us to get get that stuff out at top of
the show, because I understand I'm a self aware person.
My paranoia is showing. Okay, So so what basically do
(05:08):
you think could go wrong? I mean, what what could
go wrong with the system like this? And then and why?
I mean, I mean you've already kind of told us
a little bit about some of the dislikes or why
why they wouldn't like it, But what do you think
could go wrong with something like this? Uh? Number one,
going back to our long standing conversation about flying cars,
we're adding a whole new dimension in which accidents can occur. Uh. So,
(05:31):
things can things can drop out of the air the malfunction.
And if you look at the technology for the drones
that they would be using right now, then their proximity
sensors and stuff are not that great. The failure rate
for autonomous drones is surprisingly higher than it should be. Second, uh,
(05:52):
how easy is it to steal something? How easy is it,
for instance, for someone to hijack the code of a drone?
And then how of it um land in you know,
their their front door or their front porch. And then
again how uh, how how many hours? I'm not gonna
say days, Scott, how many hours do you think this
(06:14):
sort of service would be in operation before some yet
Yahoo started just shooting drones out of the sky. I
would say a matter of minutes I would think would happen.
But I see things like weather and like rain and snow,
and obstacles like you know, like birds and branches and
people and things like that maybe to be big problems. Um,
of course they're gonna be lost drones and lost packages
(06:35):
like you mentioned. Um you know, some either intentional or
not intentional, something that you know just delivered to the
wrong place. Yeah. Now I'm saying this to be a curmudgeon,
I guess, but you I do think that something like
this is kind of inevitable. Um to your point, A
guy named Ronald Arkin, who's the director of the Mobile
Robot Laboratory down here at Georgia Tech, pointed out that
(07:00):
this thing really could work. He said, as long as
the weather is nice. So, you know, and most of
the region right now, most of the United States right now,
we're having some big storms. We're having a lot of
big winter storms. There's no way these things are gonna
fly through that. So there'll be a lot of times
when delivery simply isn't available. I guess if they're going
to do this now, you mentioned THEFT, I think that's
a big one. And hacking, of course, you know that, uh,
(07:22):
you know, there's no one really And this has brought
up several times by a lot of different people because
I've looked at a lot of critiques of this whole thing,
and a lot of people say that, you know, no
matter how great the system is, you know, how how
advanced it is, you're gonna find somebody who is is
going to be able to hack into that system. They're
going to be able to, you know, maybe make some
(07:43):
kind of a I don't know, an adjustment to the
delivery route and that you know, it may be delivered
to the house next door and then the owner never
knows it's there. So it's easy for someone just sitting
a park car and go pick up a pick up
a package. Well, there's no delivery system in between two
kind of um and this is what everybody says. There's
no one to really blame. I guess in between, so
(08:04):
like between Amazon and the customer right now, there's a middleman.
There's the UPS, or there's FedEx or you know, the U. S.
Postal Service, whoever it is. So there's no change of
custody exactly. There's no one to say that, yes, I
met with the owner, handed them the package, they signed
for it, here's their signature. There's no or even if
it's just dropping it off the front desk, you know,
someone says as part of their job accountability, they say, yes,
(08:25):
I deliver that package and I placed it on the
on the northwest corner of their front porch at at
three pm today. There's no one to be able to
say that these drones simply will return empty and that's it,
the end of story. I mean, you know they supposedly
have gone to the right place, but no one's really sure.
And then there could be this whole what they call
gaming the system, I guess, and that somebody could order
something and then say it was never delivered. Was so
(08:48):
you know, there's also that point you could have to
take into it to consideration, and I'm sure they've thought
about that as well. But with with all these negative
factors being pointed out, we do have this a that
it is amazing that this is happening. And there's two
important things to note. First, the guy in charge of this,
Jeff Bezos, CEO, founder of Amazon, may have an ulterior
(09:11):
motive which I would love to get through in a
little bit, and you know about this. And second, Amazon
is by no means the only company with this idea.
There are competitors, but I want to point this south though.
Now now they the timing of this announcement was really strange,
right it was. You know, we have the thing called
Cyber Monday, right, so there's Thanksgiving and then there's Black Friday,
(09:32):
which is a big shopping day, which is right after Thanksgiving,
and then there's Cyber Monday now, which is the following Monday.
This announcement came on Sixty Minutes, which is a popular
television show. UM the announcement with this video, this, this
supposed example of this actually happening came about on the
eve of Cyber Monday. It came out on Saturday or
Sunday night rather just before Cyber Monday. So they're getting
(09:56):
a lot of pr for this thing, a lot of publicity,
getting in the headline exact, getting a lot of headlines,
and people are saying, well, the timing of this is
really unusual. Why would they do it right then? Why
would they say, you know, this is coming up about
in Was it just something to draw up excitement for
the holiday season? Was it a a an intentional move
to maybe make uh the U S Postal Service or
(10:16):
or um UPS or the or the FedEx people say
wait a minute, maybe we're not as necessary in this
whole chain of chain of delivery as we thought we were.
And well, one interesting thing that's come about after this
was only one day later the U UPS came out
with a another video, like a kind of a video
(10:38):
retort I guess, to say, well, you know what, we
are also work in our own drone systems, so um,
you know we have that same type of delivery, and
here's an here's an example, and they had an example.
Right then it's like within twenty four hours, here's two
companies that are saying we're gonna do drone delivery. But
then there's another group of people are saying, is this
even real? This may be a PR stunt. Yeah, and
(10:59):
that's a that's a question. An interesting story about this
famous Amazon promo for the drones is that it was
not filmed in the States because it would be illegal
to film it here. UM then and the idea that
they have these um other people get it in like
the Australian company's zoo count I think their name is UH.
(11:20):
They want to deliver textbooks via drone uh DHL. Another
handler wants to use drones and limited areas UM looking
and they're looking specifically Germany, and Germany also has some
UH and and there are others and there are companies
that are that are using it for delivery medicines and
supplies and things like that in developing nations where it's
(11:40):
where there aren't necessarily roads that go through. So you know,
there's a lot of really good applications of this thing.
If it's real and and also I mean not to
say that Amazon isn't a great use for it, but
I mean this is just for somebody wants to push
a button and have something immediately. Yeah, and uh, it's
interesting to think as well about what kind of cold
wool or maybe brewing between Amazon, FedEx and UPS because
(12:05):
they have a they have right now a symbiotic or
maybe codependent relationship. And I've read commentary where people say, well,
clearly UPS already had this up their sleeve, and this
is sort of their warning exactly. And this is this
is the interesting thing is that they rely on each
other so heavily. I mean, I mean Amazon can't make
(12:26):
it right now without UPS and FedEx, and so they're
really dependent on them. But when they do something like this,
when they say we're kind of developing our own delivery
system that's going to cut you out in a lot
of cases of this, then you know, as you can imagine,
UPS and FedEx respond with something like well, a you know,
a video of another drone doing the same type of
thing that you know as our system or something like that,
(12:48):
or they may say, um, you know, we've we've got
our own delivery system that we're working on that. You know,
it's very very similar, and we're gonna leak that out
as well, and then that maybe entice people away from
your product. And right that, you know, we can we
can do this just as quickly. Now. The here's the
fascinating thing to me about this is that this could
(13:10):
actually work. If this is since here, if this is
not what we sometimes call vaporware. Um, you know that
that great technological innovation that's always ten years away every year. Uh,
if if this actually does have concrete results, if it
does happen between or um, which I think is the
(13:33):
range Jeff gave I think when they said they may
start doing it right and um, obviously I'm close enough
to the CEO of Amazon to call him Jeff of course, right,
Uh so Jeff and I were talking now I'm kidding. Uh.
The thing is that if this could work, it would
be amazing, Are you kidding? Like the idea, just the
idea that we could be able to send aid to
(13:57):
people to me is much more in Erstein than the
idea that you could have you know, star trek into
darkness within thirty minutes. I mean, you can already do
that via an online ordering. So maybe that's not of
the best. The idea that you could already get your
holiday sampler cheese and crackers. There we go. That's a
good one. Yeah, But you know what, I agree with
(14:19):
you though. There there are many more, as you said before,
a lot more noble purposes for something like this. And
and if the system really works, if you can, if
you can develop a system that that is reliable and
it functions correctly and it has proven to be accurate, um,
then you know, why not use it for something like that.
I think that's a perfect use for it. Before we
go on to talk about some of the other points
(14:41):
we want to hit with Amazon, I have to tell you, man,
let's get back to the future of the Amazon drones.
And you know, we've talked about the drones quite a
bit here, and we understand that, you know, it's it's
it may have been kind of a in a in
a way, a pr stunt, a little bit of publicity stunt.
I think they're really thinking about it. I really do.
I think that there's a thought going on that we're
(15:02):
gonna try to change some of these rules and regulations
and try to try to make this go right. If
the laws can work, this will happen. But there is
a there's another threat, I guess another another um another
way to say, maybe threat is a strong word, but innovation,
but in an innovation in the way that Amazon is
dealing with the process of shipping. And you know that
right now we mentioned that they've got that real close
(15:24):
high end with ups and fed X and the postal
service and everything. Well, it's because they don't have their
own trucks, they don't have their own delivery system. And
the thing is they're starting to become a shipping company
in another region, another market, and that would be something
called Amazon Fresh. Amazon Fresh. Now these are Amazon owned
(15:47):
trucks that are doing something which um, doing something that
might sound a little bit too high end or maybe new,
but it's actually very old. Ideas will find, yeah, very old.
They are delivering groceries to your door and taking the
container back along with you know, any Amazon returns you
(16:08):
need to make and don't want to mail. Uh. And
this reminds you and I were talking about this off
the air. Um. For some people, this would seem to
be a very new concept. But for you and I,
what it make you think of, Well, it made me
think of like the milkman or something like that, right,
I mean the old time milkman that would come around
and would deliver milk, or would deliver butter or any
kind of dairy goods. I mean, cottage, cheese, ice cream,
(16:30):
whatever it happened to be that you ordered, and you know,
they take the empty bottles back with them, and you
know it really was just kind of business as usual
for washing out and refill them. But they did this
for a long long time. And you know, grocery delivery
services aren't anything new as well, but they've been done
typically on a much smaller scale. You know, you you
facts in your order. This is how old this is.
You facts in your order to someone. And now I'm
(16:51):
sure sure you can email, but you send in your
order to somebody. They go to the story, they pick
it up, and they bring it right at your house,
and you know they're Chevy, Chevette or whatever they happen
to drive. Um. Maybe some of some of these companies have,
you know, they had their own vehicles, but nothing on
the the uh, the scale that we're talking about. For Amazon,
Fresh Right and some other grocery delivery services have attempted
(17:11):
to roll out, have even gathered capital and even launched
for a while, but weren't quite able to get the
equation right because they didn't already have the built in
market that Amazon does with all of its users. I mean,
it's very smart that they have Amazon Prime. You know,
I used to think Amazon Prime would save me money.
I realize it's just the way to get me to
(17:32):
spend not know how much money I'm spending. That's probably
a good way to think about it. There's always there's
always an angle, right, there's always a rub. Well, it's
a business, you know, they're not there to give me
free stuff. And that's the rub. That's the that's the
rub and d But that's a great idea that owning
their own trucks. Uh, this is this is going to
be rolled out uh in San Francisco first, right, Well,
(17:53):
they're already doing this alright, it's already underway, and it's
it's a small time venture at this point comparatively, and
when compare them to uh, you know, ups or fed
X or whoever you want to talk about, um, they're
they're really really small compared to that. But it's happening.
And the thing is that you know, the reality of
this whole thing is that it's it's a lot easier
to accomplish right now than drone delivery would be, right,
(18:15):
And so they're doing this, they're they're they're delivering groceries,
you know, on one way into into the neighborhood. And
then let's say that your neighbor has an iPad that
you know, it's faulty, that they picked up from Amazon
and they want to ship it back while they just
they you know, box it up, and then the guy
that delivered the broccoli next door is going to pick
up the iPad on the way out of the neighborhood.
And it's very very efficient. It's you know, they can
(18:37):
they can plan routes in the way that you know
that they're able to drop off and pick up items,
you know, even one by one, you know, drop off one,
pick up one, drop off one, pick up one, or
you know, half a truck and then pick up half
a truck worth. And and this is going to eliminate
a lot of um the return type process that goes
on between Amazon and fed X, or Amazon and ups
(18:59):
or Amazon and the postal service. And that's a big,
big part right now what happens. And they might even
be able to put out Kiosk or brick and mortar
kind of locations where it would just be your Amazon
drop point, which is an amazing idea. I mean, that's
that's so simple for them, right, I mean, to box
up something and just leave it and know that it's
taken care of. You know that the Amazon guy is
(19:20):
gonna be by there at three o'clock and at five
o'clock and at seven o'clock every day. How perfect is that?
I mean, it seems really really simple. And again they've
got this kind of this this I don't know, it's
a it's a relationship that they're being really really careful
with with fed X and with ups and they're trying
trying to delicately broach this because once you say we're
in the shipping game on our own, you may step
(19:43):
on someone's toes at fed X and they're gonna be
very upset with you, and it's going to change your
relationship forever. It would have disastrous consequence. It's really at
this point if if FedEx decided, you know, well, you
can't fire me. I quit, Yeah, definitely, And and FedEx,
like they said in this in this article that I
was reading about it, it it said, you know the little
thing with you know, the drone, the drone situation when
(20:04):
they when they debut their drone video on sixty minutes
on Saturday, and then on I'm sorry on Sunday, and
then on Monday, you know, Ups comes out with their
drone video and says, well, we can do that too.
It's kind of this don't mess with us, um message
that they're saying. It's a cold war. It really is.
It's a that's a good way to put it's a
cold war between them and one thing. I know that
I've said the stuff about drones legality a couple of
(20:27):
times since podcast. Technically, here is how a drone can
legally operate in the United States. Has to be under
four feet above the ground, has to be in a
line of sight. The Amazon drones, these octocopters would have
to be neither. If for this to work, there would
have to be some sort of change in the law. Now,
(20:50):
there is one reason, even though I'm you know, I'm paranoid,
and you ask me if I was further or again it,
and I said it was again it, um, there is
one thing that would change the equation for me, Scott.
That would be my kryptonite, which is pizza. If there
is a pizza delivery method that is efficient enough, if
they can take this Domino's rule. Um, because we have
(21:11):
this thing, and we have Domino's Pizza here in the
States right and in uh a while back, because you
and I are getting older now, Domino's Pizza had this promise,
you know, thirty minutes or less. Warrior Pizza is free.
And uh, if I could get that kind of arrangement
with Amazon Prime, if there's like an Amazon Pizza Prime,
then I would be on board for anybody in town.
(21:32):
I can't anybody. Oh that would be great, it wouldn't it.
I mean any location many pizza thirty minutes or less. Yeah,
that's amazing. That would be And Uh. The thing is
that I think Amazon has made some stunning innovations in
there in almost anything they've touched, you know, they've they've
changed the creatively changed the way they do it. The
(21:53):
question is this hardware, this drone stuff, how will this work?
Because it's taking place at the same time that there's
already a huge conversation about drones in the United States
and the world exactly, and they're not any kind of
stranger to investing in infrastructure either because they've got this
warehouse robotics system that they invested in. It paid something
like seven hundred and seventy five million dollars for that
(22:15):
for that Kiva for that, Yeah, Kiva, that's it for
this warehousing system that um just last year I think,
and it was it was a big deal. I mean it,
but it really streamlined the whole process and it's it's
making things even better. And they're constantly doing stuff like that,
and this drone idea is just maybe one more application
of that. Yeah. So at this point, um, we're going
to have to come back to update this one. We
(22:37):
can tell everybody listening that we found the following things.
Just to sum it up, there may be ulterior motives
with the announcements. We're not saying it's disingenuous. We are
saying that maybe it might be a two birds of
one stone thing as far as pr and announcements cope. Uh. Second,
logistically this could work. They're legally it cannot right now. Yeah,
(23:00):
but things change. I mean that's the That's the thing
is that you know, they've got a lot of money
to throw around, They've got a lot of power right now,
and uh, and I think that you know, that's something
that we're gonna have to really watch because I bet,
I bet anything, there's gonna be some pushing to make
these drone rules change here that you know, the four
foot rule, the line of sight rule, all that stuff
is gonna be be altered in some way to maybe
(23:20):
make this work, just like people are talking about altering
the rules for the hyper League loop or something. Yeah, exactly.
And then I have a question for you as we
close out, what's that? What do you think about this?
For it? Or again? I think I think it's a
great idea. I don't see any problem with it at all.
I mean, if people want to pay an extra forty
bucks or whatever, I don't even know if they've said
any price, but if it's if it's a lot of money,
I'm sure there will be a lot of money instantly
(23:43):
just for the accessibility. But um, I think that if
people want to do this, why not. I mean it's
kind of a it's it's a it's a novelty, of course,
I mean it'll be I mean, you know you're gonna
be out there watching this thing deliver it. You're not
just gonna let it happen and then go out and
find it later. I mean, you're doing it to to
see it happen. I think in a lot of cases,
you know, like of course I wanted drone to deliver
that to mete out. How cool would that be, you know,
(24:05):
to see this thing coming down the street and then
stopping at my house and leaving it and then just
taking off. That's really cool. But I don't see any
kind of nefarias used for it, like, um, like taking
photos of people or anything like that. I don't. I
don't think that that's going to happen. I'm just I'm
surprised because, um, I didn't know that this would be
the side you come down on with it, because it
seems like it combines violations of privacy with something like
(24:27):
flying cars. But I'm not asked to strap into this
and then fly around with other people. This is a
mindless drone going about its business, and supposedly they're not
going to collide and you know, crash down on my
head or anything like that. But that's not good. I mean,
let's say you're swimming around your swiming pool in the
backyard and then a drone falls out of the sky.
That's that's not good for Well, they're fairly light, Okay,
(24:48):
does that make it better now? It really doesn't, because
you're talking about something that's falling from five feet above, right,
So I think are compromised. Then is that the first
thing you and I will order from these Amazon drones
on air Prime is going to be a set of helmets? Right?
That's probably a good idea because you said a five
five pound limit, I think, and plus the box that
they come in, and you know, so these things could
(25:09):
be dropping some serious weight from the sky if if
if anything were to happening collisions or you know, bird
strikes which happened to even airplanes. I mean that's with
people in them, with with navigation systems, with uh you know,
fully functioning navigation systems, and they can see these you know,
the flocks of birds and they still hit birds. Yeah,
and there's a lag and stuff like that, I guess.
(25:29):
So yeah, I mean there's a lot of concerns with
trees and and signs and all kinds of stuff like that,
and people that have built you know, kind of crazy porches.
You know that you have to kind of enter from
different directions, wrap around every situation. Is different. But also
one thing we know that it is always a rule,
is that when things are in their infancy, like this
program is, nothing is going to be completely perfect. So
(25:52):
we're going to have to come back and update this.
And we'd like to hear from you. What do you
think about the Amazon drone for it or again it
and why? You can tell us on car Stuff hsw
at Facebook and Twitter. You can also check out our
awesome new website, car Stuff Show dot com where I
(26:13):
might just get on a soapbox about drones and uh.
You can tell us your stories directly. Just send us
an email. We're car stuff at Discovery dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, this at
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot
(26:35):
com
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house Stuff works dot Com. I welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott Bend and I'm Ben Bowling.
Then we've got a topic today that is pretty um timely,
I guess, right, yeah, and this is actually can we
(00:22):
say this is a listeners suggestion? I don't know. If
I call her a listener, probably probably doesn't listen. Ever,
that's when actually comes from my wife. My wife suggested
that we talked about the Amazon drones because they've been
in the news recently. Yeah, and what a good idea
to talk about because picture this, come with us to
(00:43):
the weird future, um, where in you can go online
to Amazon where a lot of people shop already, right right,
that's a crazy shopping experience there. Yeah, Let's say you
live in a city like New York, San Francisco, Chicago,
Atlanta or whatever, and you order something and what it
and automated drone flies that thing from Amazon's factor or
(01:04):
warehouse to your doorstep in thirty minutes or less. All right,
this has got a lot of people kind of freaking out,
doesn't it. Yeah, I'm one of them. You're one of them? Really?
Now tell me just tell me briefly. I mean, you
don't have to go into too much detail here, but
I don't understand what the fear is with with the
drone delivering something to your doorstep. Okay, to be absolutely
honest and succinct, right now, the laws of the United
(01:28):
States prohibit this kind of activity, and I think they
should because having having an automated drone fly around UM
equipped with monitoring UH monitoring devices or ability to do
that to me could be an invasion privacy depending on
(01:51):
who you are, where you're at. But do they have
monitoring capability? I mean right now, I don't think that
they do. Of course, the ones that they show us
aren't going to have that right right right now, they won't,
but they'll they'll have to to be able to function successfully.
So here's the like, just the general focus of this
whole thing. If if someone is not aware of what
this is really and I mean you mentioned basically what
it is, how quickly it happens right even you click um,
(02:13):
you know the Prime air selection on Amazon as they
call it, it was just kind of a dummy name.
I guess, yeah. Video, the concept video came out, But
we need to talk about the device, right, yeah, I guess.
I mean it's just you the click, the primary thing,
and you know, the the uh, the the networking system
within the factory. You know, it gets the box to
where it needs to go, the the exact item that
(02:34):
needs to be shipped out of course, as it always does,
you know that, like they do now. Really it's just
the the the warehousing operates just as efficiently as it
does now. Then somebody puts it onto a roller of
some kind that rolls, you know, the box rolls down
the uh, the rolling system out towards the door. This
is the way the marketing video right a little bit
(02:55):
uh rose to well, I guess, but I mean they
have to show how it works, you know, absolutely rely
on here in the pre development stages, I guess. Right.
So then the drone clips onto this box and it
just flies out the door and that's it, right, it's gone.
And this drone, yeah, that's exactly where it's got. This
drone is what you would call an octocopter the way
it's depicted. Uh, it's an octocopter with a um. The
(03:19):
box that it's carrying is about ten inches longer so
and the rotors that it has are probably about point
one two meters uh each. Now I'm getting these numbers
off an excellent estimation on the physics of the octocopter. Uh.
There are some things we need to know about this.
(03:40):
It could probably carry about five pounds or two point
three kilos. That seems reasonable, right, right, it does. But
this also means that it can't ship everything. So you
can't get your you know, new wardrobe dresser unless take car,
unless they employ a fleet of octocopters to pick that
up and carry for you. You dream big, and that's
what I like about uh. And it's not gonna ever
(04:03):
be for um. It's not likely that this would ever
be for the entire world or the United States because
can you imagine trying to get something to Montana or
to another sparsely populated area. I guess so, but I
thought that's exactly what these things are for. They fly
on coordinates, right, so you you give them the exact
coordinates to where they need to go, and they take
(04:25):
it there. Now, that could be a drop off zone.
It could be like, you know, a post office for
an entire um, an entire village you know that's very remote.
You could drop it off, you know, just at the
post office and then and be under way. You don't
have to go to every single location, that's true. They
have a range of about ten miles. And you know,
I'm not trying to say that, you know, this is
a great thing and it should happen or anything like that,
(04:45):
but I'm saying that there's a you know, for every
every question or problem, there's always an answer. But also
for every you know, answer, there's always a couple of
questions that come up as well. You know, that's a
very fair thing, and I think that it's good for
us to get get that stuff out at top of
the show, because I understand I'm a self aware person.
My paranoia is showing. Okay, So so what basically do
(05:08):
you think could go wrong? I mean, what what could
go wrong with the system like this? And then and why?
I mean, I mean you've already kind of told us
a little bit about some of the dislikes or why
why they wouldn't like it, But what do you think
could go wrong with something like this? Uh? Number one,
going back to our long standing conversation about flying cars,
we're adding a whole new dimension in which accidents can occur. Uh. So,
(05:31):
things can things can drop out of the air the malfunction.
And if you look at the technology for the drones
that they would be using right now, then their proximity
sensors and stuff are not that great. The failure rate
for autonomous drones is surprisingly higher than it should be. Second, uh,
(05:52):
how easy is it to steal something? How easy is it,
for instance, for someone to hijack the code of a drone?
And then how of it um land in you know,
their their front door or their front porch. And then
again how uh, how how many hours? I'm not gonna
say days, Scott, how many hours do you think this
(06:14):
sort of service would be in operation before some yet
Yahoo started just shooting drones out of the sky. I
would say a matter of minutes I would think would happen.
But I see things like weather and like rain and snow,
and obstacles like you know, like birds and branches and
people and things like that maybe to be big problems. Um,
of course they're gonna be lost drones and lost packages
(06:35):
like you mentioned. Um you know, some either intentional or
not intentional, something that you know just delivered to the
wrong place. Yeah. Now I'm saying this to be a curmudgeon,
I guess, but you I do think that something like
this is kind of inevitable. Um to your point, A
guy named Ronald Arkin, who's the director of the Mobile
Robot Laboratory down here at Georgia Tech, pointed out that
(07:00):
this thing really could work. He said, as long as
the weather is nice. So, you know, and most of
the region right now, most of the United States right now,
we're having some big storms. We're having a lot of
big winter storms. There's no way these things are gonna
fly through that. So there'll be a lot of times
when delivery simply isn't available. I guess if they're going
to do this now, you mentioned THEFT, I think that's
a big one. And hacking, of course, you know that, uh,
(07:22):
you know, there's no one really And this has brought
up several times by a lot of different people because
I've looked at a lot of critiques of this whole thing,
and a lot of people say that, you know, no
matter how great the system is, you know, how how
advanced it is, you're gonna find somebody who is is
going to be able to hack into that system. They're
going to be able to, you know, maybe make some
(07:43):
kind of a I don't know, an adjustment to the
delivery route and that you know, it may be delivered
to the house next door and then the owner never
knows it's there. So it's easy for someone just sitting
a park car and go pick up a pick up
a package. Well, there's no delivery system in between two
kind of um and this is what everybody says. There's
no one to really blame. I guess in between, so
(08:04):
like between Amazon and the customer right now, there's a middleman.
There's the UPS, or there's FedEx or you know, the U. S.
Postal Service, whoever it is. So there's no change of
custody exactly. There's no one to say that, yes, I
met with the owner, handed them the package, they signed
for it, here's their signature. There's no or even if
it's just dropping it off the front desk, you know,
someone says as part of their job accountability, they say, yes,
(08:25):
I deliver that package and I placed it on the
on the northwest corner of their front porch at at
three pm today. There's no one to be able to
say that these drones simply will return empty and that's it,
the end of story. I mean, you know they supposedly
have gone to the right place, but no one's really sure.
And then there could be this whole what they call
gaming the system, I guess, and that somebody could order
something and then say it was never delivered. Was so
(08:48):
you know, there's also that point you could have to
take into it to consideration, and I'm sure they've thought
about that as well. But with with all these negative
factors being pointed out, we do have this a that
it is amazing that this is happening. And there's two
important things to note. First, the guy in charge of this,
Jeff Bezos, CEO, founder of Amazon, may have an ulterior
(09:11):
motive which I would love to get through in a
little bit, and you know about this. And second, Amazon
is by no means the only company with this idea.
There are competitors, but I want to point this south though.
Now now they the timing of this announcement was really strange,
right it was. You know, we have the thing called
Cyber Monday, right, so there's Thanksgiving and then there's Black Friday,
(09:32):
which is a big shopping day, which is right after Thanksgiving,
and then there's Cyber Monday now, which is the following Monday.
This announcement came on Sixty Minutes, which is a popular
television show. UM the announcement with this video, this, this
supposed example of this actually happening came about on the
eve of Cyber Monday. It came out on Saturday or
Sunday night rather just before Cyber Monday. So they're getting
(09:56):
a lot of pr for this thing, a lot of publicity,
getting in the headline exact, getting a lot of headlines,
and people are saying, well, the timing of this is
really unusual. Why would they do it right then? Why
would they say, you know, this is coming up about
in Was it just something to draw up excitement for
the holiday season? Was it a a an intentional move
to maybe make uh the U S Postal Service or
(10:16):
or um UPS or the or the FedEx people say
wait a minute, maybe we're not as necessary in this
whole chain of chain of delivery as we thought we were.
And well, one interesting thing that's come about after this
was only one day later the U UPS came out
with a another video, like a kind of a video
(10:38):
retort I guess, to say, well, you know what, we
are also work in our own drone systems, so um,
you know we have that same type of delivery, and
here's an here's an example, and they had an example.
Right then it's like within twenty four hours, here's two
companies that are saying we're gonna do drone delivery. But
then there's another group of people are saying, is this
even real? This may be a PR stunt. Yeah, and
(10:59):
that's a that's a question. An interesting story about this
famous Amazon promo for the drones is that it was
not filmed in the States because it would be illegal
to film it here. UM then and the idea that
they have these um other people get it in like
the Australian company's zoo count I think their name is UH.
(11:20):
They want to deliver textbooks via drone uh DHL. Another
handler wants to use drones and limited areas UM looking
and they're looking specifically Germany, and Germany also has some
UH and and there are others and there are companies
that are that are using it for delivery medicines and
supplies and things like that in developing nations where it's
(11:40):
where there aren't necessarily roads that go through. So you know,
there's a lot of really good applications of this thing.
If it's real and and also I mean not to
say that Amazon isn't a great use for it, but
I mean this is just for somebody wants to push
a button and have something immediately. Yeah, and uh, it's
interesting to think as well about what kind of cold
wool or maybe brewing between Amazon, FedEx and UPS because
(12:05):
they have a they have right now a symbiotic or
maybe codependent relationship. And I've read commentary where people say, well,
clearly UPS already had this up their sleeve, and this
is sort of their warning exactly. And this is this
is the interesting thing is that they rely on each
other so heavily. I mean, I mean Amazon can't make
(12:26):
it right now without UPS and FedEx, and so they're
really dependent on them. But when they do something like this,
when they say we're kind of developing our own delivery
system that's going to cut you out in a lot
of cases of this, then you know, as you can imagine,
UPS and FedEx respond with something like well, a you know,
a video of another drone doing the same type of
thing that you know as our system or something like that,
(12:48):
or they may say, um, you know, we've we've got
our own delivery system that we're working on that. You know,
it's very very similar, and we're gonna leak that out
as well, and then that maybe entice people away from
your product. And right that, you know, we can we
can do this just as quickly. Now. The here's the
fascinating thing to me about this is that this could
(13:10):
actually work. If this is since here, if this is
not what we sometimes call vaporware. Um, you know that
that great technological innovation that's always ten years away every year. Uh,
if if this actually does have concrete results, if it
does happen between or um, which I think is the
(13:33):
range Jeff gave I think when they said they may
start doing it right and um, obviously I'm close enough
to the CEO of Amazon to call him Jeff of course, right,
Uh so Jeff and I were talking now I'm kidding. Uh.
The thing is that if this could work, it would
be amazing, Are you kidding? Like the idea, just the
idea that we could be able to send aid to
(13:57):
people to me is much more in Erstein than the
idea that you could have you know, star trek into
darkness within thirty minutes. I mean, you can already do
that via an online ordering. So maybe that's not of
the best. The idea that you could already get your
holiday sampler cheese and crackers. There we go. That's a
good one. Yeah, But you know what, I agree with
(14:19):
you though. There there are many more, as you said before,
a lot more noble purposes for something like this. And
and if the system really works, if you can, if
you can develop a system that that is reliable and
it functions correctly and it has proven to be accurate, um,
then you know, why not use it for something like that.
I think that's a perfect use for it. Before we
go on to talk about some of the other points
(14:41):
we want to hit with Amazon, I have to tell you, man,
let's get back to the future of the Amazon drones.
And you know, we've talked about the drones quite a
bit here, and we understand that, you know, it's it's
it may have been kind of a in a in
a way, a pr stunt, a little bit of publicity stunt.
I think they're really thinking about it. I really do.
I think that there's a thought going on that we're
(15:02):
gonna try to change some of these rules and regulations
and try to try to make this go right. If
the laws can work, this will happen. But there is
a there's another threat, I guess another another um another
way to say, maybe threat is a strong word, but innovation,
but in an innovation in the way that Amazon is
dealing with the process of shipping. And you know that
right now we mentioned that they've got that real close
(15:24):
high end with ups and fed X and the postal
service and everything. Well, it's because they don't have their
own trucks, they don't have their own delivery system. And
the thing is they're starting to become a shipping company
in another region, another market, and that would be something
called Amazon Fresh. Amazon Fresh. Now these are Amazon owned
(15:47):
trucks that are doing something which um, doing something that
might sound a little bit too high end or maybe new,
but it's actually very old. Ideas will find, yeah, very old.
They are delivering groceries to your door and taking the
container back along with you know, any Amazon returns you
(16:08):
need to make and don't want to mail. Uh. And
this reminds you and I were talking about this off
the air. Um. For some people, this would seem to
be a very new concept. But for you and I,
what it make you think of, Well, it made me
think of like the milkman or something like that, right,
I mean the old time milkman that would come around
and would deliver milk, or would deliver butter or any
kind of dairy goods. I mean, cottage, cheese, ice cream,
(16:30):
whatever it happened to be that you ordered, and you know,
they take the empty bottles back with them, and you
know it really was just kind of business as usual
for washing out and refill them. But they did this
for a long long time. And you know, grocery delivery
services aren't anything new as well, but they've been done
typically on a much smaller scale. You know, you you
facts in your order. This is how old this is.
You facts in your order to someone. And now I'm
(16:51):
sure sure you can email, but you send in your
order to somebody. They go to the story, they pick
it up, and they bring it right at your house,
and you know they're Chevy, Chevette or whatever they happen
to drive. Um. Maybe some of some of these companies have,
you know, they had their own vehicles, but nothing on
the the uh, the scale that we're talking about. For Amazon,
Fresh Right and some other grocery delivery services have attempted
(17:11):
to roll out, have even gathered capital and even launched
for a while, but weren't quite able to get the
equation right because they didn't already have the built in
market that Amazon does with all of its users. I mean,
it's very smart that they have Amazon Prime. You know,
I used to think Amazon Prime would save me money.
I realize it's just the way to get me to
(17:32):
spend not know how much money I'm spending. That's probably
a good way to think about it. There's always there's
always an angle, right, there's always a rub. Well, it's
a business, you know, they're not there to give me
free stuff. And that's the rub. That's the that's the
rub and d But that's a great idea that owning
their own trucks. Uh, this is this is going to
be rolled out uh in San Francisco first, right, Well,
(17:53):
they're already doing this alright, it's already underway, and it's
it's a small time venture at this point comparatively, and
when compare them to uh, you know, ups or fed
X or whoever you want to talk about, um, they're
they're really really small compared to that. But it's happening.
And the thing is that you know, the reality of
this whole thing is that it's it's a lot easier
to accomplish right now than drone delivery would be, right,
(18:15):
And so they're doing this, they're they're they're delivering groceries,
you know, on one way into into the neighborhood. And
then let's say that your neighbor has an iPad that
you know, it's faulty, that they picked up from Amazon
and they want to ship it back while they just
they you know, box it up, and then the guy
that delivered the broccoli next door is going to pick
up the iPad on the way out of the neighborhood.
And it's very very efficient. It's you know, they can
(18:37):
they can plan routes in the way that you know
that they're able to drop off and pick up items,
you know, even one by one, you know, drop off one,
pick up one, drop off one, pick up one, or
you know, half a truck and then pick up half
a truck worth. And and this is going to eliminate
a lot of um the return type process that goes
on between Amazon and fed X, or Amazon and ups
(18:59):
or Amazon and the postal service. And that's a big,
big part right now what happens. And they might even
be able to put out Kiosk or brick and mortar
kind of locations where it would just be your Amazon
drop point, which is an amazing idea. I mean, that's
that's so simple for them, right, I mean, to box
up something and just leave it and know that it's
taken care of. You know that the Amazon guy is
(19:20):
gonna be by there at three o'clock and at five
o'clock and at seven o'clock every day. How perfect is that?
I mean, it seems really really simple. And again they've
got this kind of this this I don't know, it's
a it's a relationship that they're being really really careful
with with fed X and with ups and they're trying
trying to delicately broach this because once you say we're
in the shipping game on our own, you may step
(19:43):
on someone's toes at fed X and they're gonna be
very upset with you, and it's going to change your
relationship forever. It would have disastrous consequence. It's really at
this point if if FedEx decided, you know, well, you
can't fire me. I quit, Yeah, definitely, And and FedEx,
like they said in this in this article that I
was reading about it, it it said, you know the little
thing with you know, the drone, the drone situation when
(20:04):
they when they debut their drone video on sixty minutes
on Saturday, and then on I'm sorry on Sunday, and
then on Monday, you know, Ups comes out with their
drone video and says, well, we can do that too.
It's kind of this don't mess with us, um message
that they're saying. It's a cold war. It really is.
It's a that's a good way to put it's a
cold war between them and one thing. I know that
I've said the stuff about drones legality a couple of
(20:27):
times since podcast. Technically, here is how a drone can
legally operate in the United States. Has to be under
four feet above the ground, has to be in a
line of sight. The Amazon drones, these octocopters would have
to be neither. If for this to work, there would
have to be some sort of change in the law. Now,
(20:50):
there is one reason, even though I'm you know, I'm paranoid,
and you ask me if I was further or again it,
and I said it was again it, um, there is
one thing that would change the equation for me, Scott.
That would be my kryptonite, which is pizza. If there
is a pizza delivery method that is efficient enough, if
they can take this Domino's rule. Um, because we have
(21:11):
this thing, and we have Domino's Pizza here in the
States right and in uh a while back, because you
and I are getting older now, Domino's Pizza had this promise,
you know, thirty minutes or less. Warrior Pizza is free.
And uh, if I could get that kind of arrangement
with Amazon Prime, if there's like an Amazon Pizza Prime,
then I would be on board for anybody in town.
(21:32):
I can't anybody. Oh that would be great, it wouldn't it.
I mean any location many pizza thirty minutes or less. Yeah,
that's amazing. That would be And Uh. The thing is
that I think Amazon has made some stunning innovations in
there in almost anything they've touched, you know, they've they've
changed the creatively changed the way they do it. The
(21:53):
question is this hardware, this drone stuff, how will this work?
Because it's taking place at the same time that there's
already a huge conversation about drones in the United States
and the world exactly, and they're not any kind of
stranger to investing in infrastructure either because they've got this
warehouse robotics system that they invested in. It paid something
like seven hundred and seventy five million dollars for that
(22:15):
for that Kiva for that, Yeah, Kiva, that's it for
this warehousing system that um just last year I think,
and it was it was a big deal. I mean it,
but it really streamlined the whole process and it's it's
making things even better. And they're constantly doing stuff like that,
and this drone idea is just maybe one more application
of that. Yeah. So at this point, um, we're going
to have to come back to update this one. We
(22:37):
can tell everybody listening that we found the following things.
Just to sum it up, there may be ulterior motives
with the announcements. We're not saying it's disingenuous. We are
saying that maybe it might be a two birds of
one stone thing as far as pr and announcements cope. Uh. Second,
logistically this could work. They're legally it cannot right now. Yeah,
(23:00):
but things change. I mean that's the That's the thing
is that you know, they've got a lot of money
to throw around, They've got a lot of power right now,
and uh, and I think that you know, that's something
that we're gonna have to really watch because I bet,
I bet anything, there's gonna be some pushing to make
these drone rules change here that you know, the four
foot rule, the line of sight rule, all that stuff
is gonna be be altered in some way to maybe
(23:20):
make this work, just like people are talking about altering
the rules for the hyper League loop or something. Yeah, exactly.
And then I have a question for you as we
close out, what's that? What do you think about this?
For it? Or again? I think I think it's a
great idea. I don't see any problem with it at all.
I mean, if people want to pay an extra forty
bucks or whatever, I don't even know if they've said
any price, but if it's if it's a lot of money,
I'm sure there will be a lot of money instantly
(23:43):
just for the accessibility. But um, I think that if
people want to do this, why not. I mean it's
kind of a it's it's a it's a novelty, of course,
I mean it'll be I mean, you know you're gonna
be out there watching this thing deliver it. You're not
just gonna let it happen and then go out and
find it later. I mean, you're doing it to to
see it happen. I think in a lot of cases,
you know, like of course I wanted drone to deliver
that to mete out. How cool would that be, you know,
(24:05):
to see this thing coming down the street and then
stopping at my house and leaving it and then just
taking off. That's really cool. But I don't see any
kind of nefarias used for it, like, um, like taking
photos of people or anything like that. I don't. I
don't think that that's going to happen. I'm just I'm
surprised because, um, I didn't know that this would be
the side you come down on with it, because it
seems like it combines violations of privacy with something like
(24:27):
flying cars. But I'm not asked to strap into this
and then fly around with other people. This is a
mindless drone going about its business, and supposedly they're not
going to collide and you know, crash down on my
head or anything like that. But that's not good. I mean,
let's say you're swimming around your swiming pool in the
backyard and then a drone falls out of the sky.
That's that's not good for Well, they're fairly light, Okay,
(24:48):
does that make it better now? It really doesn't, because
you're talking about something that's falling from five feet above, right,
So I think are compromised. Then is that the first
thing you and I will order from these Amazon drones
on air Prime is going to be a set of helmets? Right?
That's probably a good idea because you said a five
five pound limit, I think, and plus the box that
they come in, and you know, so these things could
(25:09):
be dropping some serious weight from the sky if if
if anything were to happening collisions or you know, bird
strikes which happened to even airplanes. I mean that's with
people in them, with with navigation systems, with uh you know,
fully functioning navigation systems, and they can see these you know,
the flocks of birds and they still hit birds. Yeah,
and there's a lag and stuff like that, I guess.
(25:29):
So yeah, I mean there's a lot of concerns with
trees and and signs and all kinds of stuff like that,
and people that have built you know, kind of crazy porches.
You know that you have to kind of enter from
different directions, wrap around every situation. Is different. But also
one thing we know that it is always a rule,
is that when things are in their infancy, like this
program is, nothing is going to be completely perfect. So
(25:52):
we're going to have to come back and update this.
And we'd like to hear from you. What do you
think about the Amazon drone for it or again it
and why? You can tell us on car Stuff hsw
at Facebook and Twitter. You can also check out our
awesome new website, car Stuff Show dot com where I
(26:13):
might just get on a soapbox about drones and uh.
You can tell us your stories directly. Just send us
an email. We're car stuff at Discovery dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, this at
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot
(26:35):
com
CarStuff News
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Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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