This article was published in December 2013. The UK media has just got hold of the subject as if it has never been discussed before.
I’m in favour of gadgets – I always have been. But only ones that make any sense.
Getting a mobile phone made sense when they first reached a sensible size back in the early 90s. And getting a digital camera made sense when they first reached a sensible price point (also 90s). Getting a computer made sense – firstly, one of the original home computers (late 70s/ early 80s), then a PC (late 80s) once it started to assert itself. Even getting an electronic doorbell kit made sense in 1977 – OK, I’m stretching that one a bit (the original non-electronic ones had a solenoid in them with a central core which acted as a hammer. When you pressed the door button the core would be displaced to strike a metal plate to give a “ding”, and a spring would send it back to hit another plate to give the “dong” when you released the button).
There’s a lot of technology that doesn’t make sense, though, and which only appeals to children and Doctor Who fans. It includes things like Google Glass, Google Self-driving cars, and smart watches. I’ll stick my neck out and say that these will never catch on – no matter how much Google spams the media with stories about how they will.
But now we have another one – I think Amazon is trying to snatch some of the limelight back from Google when it comes to stretching the limits of reason. This article – somewhat unsurprisingly on a games website, though it is covered in other news sources – reports that Amazon is planning to use drone octocopters to deliver packages to customers.
Now, while I am sure that the Doctor Who fans out there will think it’s a brilliant idea – and it is, if you come from the planet Vulcan or are captain of the Battlestar Galactica – there are numerous real world issues to deal with down here on Earth. You can start by watching the promo video below:
Amazon reckons the drone can deliver packages weighing up to around 2¼ kg. I love the way that they clarify this for those whose DNA only contains a single helix:
[it] won’t work for larger and bulkier products, of course, like kayaks and tablesaws.
And TVs. And computers. And a lot of other things that people are likely to want.
Let’s go a little deeper into the reality of the matter. You can already get hobby quadcopters like the Parrot AR Drone. If you look seriously into buying one (all right, I admit it. I have been thinking of getting one purely for the fun value) one of the first things you would investigate after seeing and recovering from the price is flight time and range – how long do you get in the air from a single battery charge, and how far away can it fly before you lose control? Very quickly, your plans to enter the world of James Bond falter when you discover that flight time is up to 15 minutes – or half an hour if you buy the super-duper power pack – combined with a virtual tether of about 50 metres in open space. If you’re anything like me, you then start imagining what’s going to happen if the power runs out or control is lost while your drone is still airborne – and you then check out the wide availability of spare parts plus YouTube videos of how to replace the propellers, the main cross member, the main circuit board, and so on (i.e. it crashes and gets broken a lot). Of course, this assumes that you can retrieve it from the tree it’s lodged in, the roof it’s on, or the middle of the road it’s smashed into before someone runs over it. Or that you can even find it (you’ll undoubtedly have fitted it with a location beacon).
Now, I can’t see how Amazon has managed to get much beyond these technical limitations when you look at the size of its octocopter. It might be a bit bigger, but that means it needs more power because it is heavier (and it has eight motors to power plus a bigger payload). And when you consider that Amazon’s nearest fulfilment centre to me is in Doncaster, any droid would have to fly about 45 miles. Even at an average speed of 10mph that means it would have to be airborne for around 9 hours (assuming it had to get back to base after it dropped the package). The solution to the distance – autonomous navigation via GPS – just means a greater initial weight, and is firmly in Google’s driverless car territory.
That brings us to the small matter of trees, overhead telephone and power cables, lamp posts, wind, rain, snow. I don’t think GPS allows for all those – people in the USA might be able to land a helicopter in their back yard, but many UK streets have a blanket of wires radiating out from telephone poles, and going to individual houses. Many UK gardens have no clear landing zone due to small size, overhanging trees, washing lines, rusting cars and other crap, and so on.
Initially, the service is targeted at American audiences, and although I don’t want to stereotype anyone or anything, in a place where gun ownership is almost mandatory, small commercial drones automatically fall into the same group as rats and pigeons. Some nutter with a gun and a paranoid delusion about Amazon and it’s “spy planes” is bound to take one down sooner rather than later.
So although it is a good idea on paper, I think the technology and the practicalities will stop it happening for the foreseeable future. A bit like computers that can think – they’ve been on about that since the 60s, with every successive generation claiming it will be “soon”. Yet we’re no nearer having one.
Note that such deliveries in the UK are going to have to involve a very select group of people and properties.