A couple of years ago the big news was that Amazon was preparing to test the use of drones to deliver their goods to your home – a service known as Amazon Prime Air. Sounded great, but the idea quickly ran into a myriad of technical, legal, and operational issues that will take many years to overcome. Thankfully, that has given us time to reimagine the whole process and come up with other alternatives.
As
time has passed, a number of new features and capabilities of drones
may have turned the proposed home delivery idea by Amazon on its
head. Instead of each company developing a fleet of drones to deliver
their products to your home, it now appears more feasible for every
home to have its own drone that will do a wide range of things for
the homeowner, from shopping to home security.
Think
about it! During a typical week, people put together a shopping list
of things to pick up sometime during the week from the local
supermarket or drug store. Then you set aside an hour or two to get
in your car and go buy and pick up the items on your list. Several
times each week you might also go to the drive-in window of a fast
food restaurant to pick up dinner.
Now,
imagine sending your home drone to go do these tasks. Several times a
week your personal ‘smart drone’ will be directed to check your
shopping list, transmit the list to the local supermarket and/or drug
store, then heads over to the ‘fly-in’ platform at the store to
pick up your order, then deliver it back home. When the drone
returns, it will land on its docking station where it will recharge
and also check to see what other instructions you have sent to it.
That’s
just the tip of the iceberg. Now imagine some of the many other tasks
your personal ‘smart drone’ can do for you around your home. It
could be programmed to fly around your home at periodic intervals for
surveillance purposes, e.g. Aire,
Sunflower Labs. It could be
used to check your roof for damage after storms. It could keep an eye
on your children playing outside, and it could … So many
possibilities.
Do
we really need fleets of drones from every company trying to deliver
products to your home? Your personal ‘smart drone’ knows where
your home is, will receive its instructions from your home computer
system, and will do your bidding based on your orders and daily
schedule. It will be interesting to see which approach finally wins
out. Learn more about current ‘delivery
drones’.
Recent Articles
- Walmart Piloting On Demand Drone Delivery Program
- Amazon wins FAA approval for Prime Air drone delivery fleet
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