Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says I
Speaker 1: am the modern man. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocodon,
Speaker 1: and uh I'm Joe McCormick. Well, I just found on
Speaker 1: Amazon I can buy four and fifty two grams of
Speaker 1: liquid mercury from some seller called Gallium Source LLC. It's
Speaker 1: pure and uh, it's nine dollars. So that's a really
Speaker 1: good deal. Pretty good deal on liquid mercury. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: need to get this a SAP like. I don't want
Speaker 1: to wait for shipping, and I don't want to pay
Speaker 1: the shipping costs. I want it here in about thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: I hesitate to ask why you want the mercury. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to think deniability. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to ask it's it's liquid mercury was useful for all
Speaker 1: kinds of things, all kinds of poisonous, poisonous things. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: then I'm glad that I'm leaving the office within half
Speaker 1: an hour. But I will tell you how you can
Speaker 1: get this done, all right, How you can get from
Speaker 1: Amazon in half an hour. Do they have like, um, now,
Speaker 1: can you you pay extra to have somebody bring it
Speaker 1: to you on a sport motorcycle zooming weaving through traffic?
Speaker 1: Not not quite not quite that, not here in Atlanta. No,
Speaker 1: do they put it in a catapult and get it
Speaker 1: to your in the within thirty five you're considering that
Speaker 1: we're right across the street from the Terminus complex, you
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't even get to clear that building. That's a problem, though,
Speaker 1: I don't know which direction actually the nearest Amazon fulfillment
Speaker 1: center is. I assume they have the mercury there already. Well.
Speaker 1: Catapulting not recommended for liquid mercury. Yeah, sure couldn't. I
Speaker 1: couldn't lose a single gram of it I need if
Speaker 1: you're if you're really, if you really needed in half
Speaker 1: an hour. I'm sorry to say that right now, we
Speaker 1: don't have a solution for you. But Amazon is working
Speaker 1: on it. Last Yeah, they've got this thing that they've proposed.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, whoa, whoa, they're working on they're working
Speaker 1: on it thirty minutes. Not just mercury, though, I don't
Speaker 1: want to give you the the implication that they're only
Speaker 1: working on mostly I would say books and DVDs, things
Speaker 1: that weigh less than five pounds, right, but four grams
Speaker 1: mercury that's like a pound. So it's fine, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: let's back up. What is going on here? Okay, thirty
Speaker 1: minute delivery. Do you know, do you know what a
Speaker 1: drone is? Yeah, I'm not talking about Yeah, that's also true.
Speaker 1: It's also what you know bagpipers do often when they're
Speaker 1: talking about their bagpipes and say military weapon that is
Speaker 1: flies around and doesn't have any people in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not just a military weapon. That is an
Speaker 1: example of a drone. Yes. So it turns out that
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here are specific subset of unmanned
Speaker 1: aerial vehicles. They're usually either semi autonomous that well, they
Speaker 1: can be completely piloted by humans. They can be semi autonomous,
Speaker 1: or they could be fully autonomous. It all depends on
Speaker 1: the model, but we're generally talking about these smaller devices
Speaker 1: that are unmanned aerial vehicles that can do various things.
Speaker 1: And what Amazon is proposing is building a fleet of
Speaker 1: these unmanned aerial vehicles that can carry payloads of five
Speaker 1: pounds or lighter and deliver them to locations within ten
Speaker 1: miles of a fulfillment center within half an hour of
Speaker 1: you ordering that item, which sounds pretty phenomenal. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: before we get into Amazon's approach, let's talk about the
Speaker 1: idea of using drones for delivery in the first place.
Speaker 1: It's not Amazon is not the first company to propose
Speaker 1: doing this. Oh, certainly not. It is currently happening. Well,
Speaker 1: is it currently happening or is it kind of shot
Speaker 1: kind of shot happening. You know, China has been looking.
Speaker 1: There are two countries actually where it's happening on a
Speaker 1: small basis, and small being that neither place is using
Speaker 1: them on a rollout as wide as Amazon would, And
Speaker 1: China is one of those nations. Australia is another. And
Speaker 1: you can see some publicity stunts in other places around
Speaker 1: the world. Yeah, and in China they don't have that
Speaker 1: many regulations about this kind of thing. A business can
Speaker 1: just talk to its local government about whether or not
Speaker 1: it's chill to fly you know, cake or or whatever
Speaker 1: they want from out to the you know, cities around them.
Speaker 1: Australia is the same way. I mean here in the
Speaker 1: United States, we've got the f A A and they have. Um, well,
Speaker 1: we'll get into some complications with the f a A
Speaker 1: in a bit, but another In short, you can't just
Speaker 1: launch literally or figuratively a drone delivery business in the
Speaker 1: US without some approval process. I knew the government would
Speaker 1: be gumming up the works. I'm getting my mercury as
Speaker 1: fast as possible. Yeah. Yeah, as though there have been
Speaker 1: a couple of publicity stunts with like, um, there was
Speaker 1: a there was a dry cleaner in Philadelphia. Yeah, actually
Speaker 1: that that dry cleaner. It's kind of funny. They were
Speaker 1: showing off this very tiny drone. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you actually saw the video, but the drone is like
Speaker 1: super small. It's really just it wasn't even really a
Speaker 1: drone in the sense of anything that was semi autonomous
Speaker 1: or it was remote control. It required two people to operate,
Speaker 1: and it required a spotter and a pilot. So when
Speaker 1: you get into the point that not only did it
Speaker 1: require a spotter and a pilot, but it also could
Speaker 1: only carry one pound worth of stuff, which is essentially
Speaker 1: a shirt, then you couldn't really use it to deliver
Speaker 1: dry cleaning on a meaningful basis in the in the
Speaker 1: the service area of that dry cleaners. On the plus side,
Speaker 1: anything that's wet when it's leaves is dry by the
Speaker 1: time it arrives. Well, it's dry cleaning. Why would it
Speaker 1: be wet, So it's got the word dry in the
Speaker 1: name of the service. Perhaps more importantly, Um, there is
Speaker 1: a tacocopter in San Francisco. Well, there's a potential, there's
Speaker 1: a potential burrito bomber. I really want these to exist.
Speaker 1: I mean, I really seriously want these to exist. But
Speaker 1: right now they're they're they're having some issues. But before
Speaker 1: we get into all that, the the cleaners, it's interesting,
Speaker 1: it's a man, a young cleaner which was in Philadelphia. Um,
Speaker 1: like I said, it was a tiny little quad rotor
Speaker 1: drone that not even a drone, but a little it's
Speaker 1: almost like a remote controlled helicopter at that stage where
Speaker 1: it required two people to operate. So obviously, from an
Speaker 1: economical standpoint, from a practicality standpoint, there is no reason
Speaker 1: to do this because the amount of manpower required to
Speaker 1: deliver one shirt is more than what it would take
Speaker 1: if you just hired a driver to do it. So
Speaker 1: or hired a walker. Really yeah, even a walker. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's one of those things that clearly this
Speaker 1: was something that could get a lot of buzz in
Speaker 1: more ways than one, because the drone was loud, but
Speaker 1: it would get a lot of attention and therefore drum
Speaker 1: up some some customer service type stuff for this particular
Speaker 1: dry cleaner right there. They want to get some business
Speaker 1: out of this. So it was more of a marketing stunt,
Speaker 1: I would say, than any kind of meaningful delivery service.
Speaker 1: I would argue, the same thing is true for something else.
Speaker 1: This this, by the way, that story broke in June
Speaker 1: of I believe another story that broke that same month
Speaker 1: June was that the Domino's Company in the United Kingdom
Speaker 1: used a drone to deliver pizzas in a essentially a
Speaker 1: concept video. So I think the weirdest, most unfortunately comic
Speaker 1: death ever would be killed by falling pizza. It would
Speaker 1: that would have to be a well, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: say that would have to be a lot of pizza,
Speaker 1: because I guess if it were lots of toppings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you have a very virulent gluten allergy, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sharing. You can't absorb gluten through the skin. However,
Speaker 1: you would have to have your mouth open while you
Speaker 1: were staring at the sky and have swallowed all that pizza,
Speaker 1: which you must admit would be really unfortunately, would be
Speaker 1: a terrible way to die. I do admit if you
Speaker 1: were smothered by pizza, that would not be pleasant. But
Speaker 1: that's we're getting a little far from the point here.
Speaker 1: That what I was going to say is that, again,
Speaker 1: this was more or less a marketing stunt. It didn't
Speaker 1: there was no specific plan to put this in place,
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing that in order to do
Speaker 1: this they would have to to obey a lot of
Speaker 1: different rules that are still kind of being formed as
Speaker 1: we speak. But as far as marketing stunts go, nice work.
Speaker 1: I mean it attention and immediately people were asking the
Speaker 1: United States divisions of Domino's Pizza, like you plan on
Speaker 1: doing that here? And they said no, that was their inset,
Speaker 1: very it was very upfront. Yeah. Well, the thing about
Speaker 1: that is it's it's silly now, but you know, in
Speaker 1: a few years I could see that happening. Well, the
Speaker 1: the issue I have right now is that both of
Speaker 1: the ones we just talked about, the cleaners and the
Speaker 1: one with the pizza, required there to be a human
Speaker 1: pilot and essentially maintain line of sight with drones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at that point, if you have to have line of
Speaker 1: sight with the drone to be able to control it
Speaker 1: and you're piloting it, it's essentially an RC helicopter or
Speaker 1: or airplane something along those. It's not truly a drone. Now,
Speaker 1: what Amazon is proposing is something that is much different.
Speaker 1: It would not be uh, some a remote controlled vehicle
Speaker 1: that uh that a person, a pilot and a spotter
Speaker 1: would have to follow. Right. It would use cameras and GPS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would. And you you might have a single person,
Speaker 1: a supervisor, overseeing maybe thirty or forty of these things altogether.
Speaker 1: And so you would have multiple supervisors at each fulfillment center.
Speaker 1: Because I don't know if you know this, but Amazon
Speaker 1: fills a lot of orders. So and according to Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 1: who's the CEO of Amazon, around eight of those orders
Speaker 1: are five pounds or lighter. So that means most of
Speaker 1: the stuff people get on Amazon could in theory, be
Speaker 1: delivered by these drones that are supposed to have a
Speaker 1: payload capacity of about five pounds. Now that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that everything that's five pounds are less could be delivered
Speaker 1: because some of it's gonna be bulky. For instance, not
Speaker 1: that long ago, I bought paper towels on Amazon because
Speaker 1: I was running low and Amanta. I didn't have to
Speaker 1: go out in Atlanta and buy them, and the less
Speaker 1: interaction I have with other human beings the better. So
Speaker 1: anyway I ordered, I ordered them on Amazon to have
Speaker 1: them delivered well. The package weighed less than five pounds,
Speaker 1: but it also was much more bulky than what a
Speaker 1: book or DVD would be. I would imagine that your
Speaker 1: average drone would have difficulty flying around with that. For
Speaker 1: one thing, the air resistance would be much higher. So
Speaker 1: if there were any kind of wind resistance at all,
Speaker 1: like if if the winds were blowing at any kind
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, gusty level, I bet that that
Speaker 1: drone will have a real hard time getting those paper
Speaker 1: towels to me in half an hour. Hopefully I will
Speaker 1: never have an experience where I'm like, I need sixteen
Speaker 1: rolls of paper towels within thirty minutes or I Am
Speaker 1: going to freak out. That would be a bad day.
Speaker 1: I've had those days in the past, though, but luckily
Speaker 1: I've had the paper towels on hand. No i'd imagine
Speaker 1: that there will be in addition to weight limitations, there
Speaker 1: be dimension I'm sure there will be, and also, I
Speaker 1: mean there's also the limitation of distance. They are supposed
Speaker 1: to have a ten mile radius of delivery distance from
Speaker 1: a fulfillment center, of which there are currently nineties six.
Speaker 1: So if you don't live within ten miles of one
Speaker 1: of those ninety six fulfillment centers, you won't be getting
Speaker 1: any deliveries from drones in the first place, because you'll
Speaker 1: you'll live too far. Uh. Let's talk for a second, though,
Speaker 1: why would we even go with using drones in the
Speaker 1: first place. I mean, Convenience obviously is one. If you
Speaker 1: wanted to get a specific thing within half an hour
Speaker 1: and you're like, I cannot possibly wait until tomorrow for
Speaker 1: overnight shipping, or or maybe you're like, you know, none
Speaker 1: of the stores that are near me actually carry this
Speaker 1: in their stock, but it's on Amazon. If they have
Speaker 1: it at the fulfillment center, that I can get in
Speaker 1: half an hour, Obviously, that's convenient. But what about other reasons? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't have an answer on price, but
Speaker 1: I do have a question, you know, and it would
Speaker 1: this in the long run be cheaper. It seems like
Speaker 1: initially would be more expensive because you'd be adding new technology,
Speaker 1: coming infrastructure. I'm imagining that the price point on that
Speaker 1: would be actually a lot more overnight shipping, right at
Speaker 1: least at least initially. At least initially. Now in the
Speaker 1: long term, I can see how it might actually be cheaper.
Speaker 1: Requires less human labor, less fuel. You know, you just
Speaker 1: charged like an electric motor. However, these are powered I
Speaker 1: assume electric, yes, well no only that, but or I
Speaker 1: assume electric too, I should say, because the details are
Speaker 1: pretty I would think that a tiny diesel engine on
Speaker 1: that kind of thing would really not be what you're
Speaker 1: looking like. Yeah, I imagine so the I mean, some
Speaker 1: some r C type aircraft do run on fuel and
Speaker 1: not just electricity. So that's why I'm like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm probably electric motors, but we I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: I would I would guess electric, mostly because they've talked
Speaker 1: about the problems with battery life. But we'll get into
Speaker 1: that too in a minute. But another another thing that
Speaker 1: I was going to say is that when you're talking
Speaker 1: about shipping, Amazon isn't the one who ships everything from
Speaker 1: door to door. It's not an Amazon driver who drives
Speaker 1: up and delivers your Amazon product. They're they're contracting with
Speaker 1: other companies in order to get stuff sent, or they're
Speaker 1: you know, paying a per package fee to have stuff sent,
Speaker 1: especially if you are like an Amazon Prime member and
Speaker 1: you have shipping covered like two day shipping covered in
Speaker 1: your in your agreement. So I'd imagine if someone like
Speaker 1: Amazon is uniquely positioned to negotiate shipping prices with the
Speaker 1: major carriers. I'm sure, I'm sure the but you know,
Speaker 1: you think about the costs of maintaining a shipping fleet
Speaker 1: or just even maintaining the infrastructure to get stuff to
Speaker 1: the trucks, and you know you have to pay people
Speaker 1: to do all that kind of stuff. If you're able
Speaker 1: to streamline that, then that would cut down potentially on costs. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if these drones were able to be, say, electrically powered,
Speaker 1: I would think that might have some kind of carbon emissions.
Speaker 1: I packed right. Yeah. And the announcement that Jeff Bezos made,
Speaker 1: he was talking about it being um a lot greener
Speaker 1: than current shipping options are, and and shipping options, if
Speaker 1: I may be depressing statistics girl, um kind of scary
Speaker 1: right now? Okay, so so according to carbon fund dot org,
Speaker 1: which takes a whole bunch of data from a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different places, it's it's a it's a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty legit estimate. I think they look at air cargo, truck, cargo, train, cargo,
Speaker 1: and freight and UM. According to them, uh C freight
Speaker 1: which is which is at the low end of the scale,
Speaker 1: creates some like like zero point zero four eight krams
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide emissions per ton of cargo shipped a mile. Okay,
Speaker 1: UM train freight about half that amount, but truck creates
Speaker 1: about six times more an air cargo thirty two times
Speaker 1: as much as C freight UM some one point five
Speaker 1: kilos per ton mile, which which means that if you're
Speaker 1: shipping something from let's say Atlanta to Los Angeles, UM
Speaker 1: that's about two thousand miles, you can create as much
Speaker 1: as three metric tons of emissions for a single ton
Speaker 1: of cargo during that trip UM, which you know, for
Speaker 1: for reference, the world average as of UH per person
Speaker 1: per year was about five metric tons UM. So that's
Speaker 1: a lot. So yeah, if you could come up with
Speaker 1: a way of at least taking that last mile out
Speaker 1: of it, which you know, it sounds like it's a
Speaker 1: small amount, but that every little bit can make a difference.
Speaker 1: Now again, since we're talking about electric motors, we have
Speaker 1: to say this every time. It all depends on where
Speaker 1: you get your electricity. Right, it's not free, We're not
Speaker 1: getting it from the air. It's not like generally electricity
Speaker 1: is going to be less of a problem than say,
Speaker 1: burning gasoline. Right, as long as assuming you're not getting
Speaker 1: your all your electricity from some coal plant that had
Speaker 1: to step up production by d and fifty or so
Speaker 1: because of your army of drones. I mean, obviously, once
Speaker 1: we finally build those Tesla towers, we'll all have free energy.
Speaker 1: Because he was infallible, there might have been some snark there.
Speaker 1: But assuming that you're getting your electricity from a place
Speaker 1: that is as doing, it's best to have at least
Speaker 1: some green practices in place. I would imagine that the
Speaker 1: carbon footprint issue would mean that, yeah, using drones makes sense.
Speaker 1: You're going to produce less are fewer uh greenhouse gas emissions,
Speaker 1: and it will be a smaller carbon footprint. Now, there
Speaker 1: are some other challenges besides the idea of well does
Speaker 1: this make financial sense? For example, right now, from what
Speaker 1: I understand, there aren't really batteries out there that have
Speaker 1: the kind of life that would be required for a
Speaker 1: drone to be able to carry a five pound payload
Speaker 1: in addition to the weight of the drone itself ten miles,
Speaker 1: drop it off and fly back ten miles. Most of
Speaker 1: the drones that are in the general class that Bezos
Speaker 1: is talking about, he's talking about octo rotor drone, which
Speaker 1: means it has eight rotors. You know, a lot of
Speaker 1: the ones we see, I have our quad rotors, but
Speaker 1: this one have twice as many, so it's twice as good.
Speaker 1: Most of the ones I've read about. The distance that
Speaker 1: most of these can travels about a mile before they
Speaker 1: start to have their battery drain pretty heavily, and they
Speaker 1: can fly for about fifteen minutes. Now they say that
Speaker 1: they would get your your delivery to you within half
Speaker 1: an hour, keep in mind that that's everything from processing
Speaker 1: the delivery, pulling it from the warehouse, putting it on
Speaker 1: a conveyor belt where it would travel down the conveyor
Speaker 1: belt to the drone that's going to deliver it to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to put in for the record that I
Speaker 1: cannot get wings from the place two miles away from
Speaker 1: my house in less than half an hour, so they
Speaker 1: can't fly. So they've already removed the wings, so there's
Speaker 1: no flying anymore. Now in this case, the drone would
Speaker 1: be flying over to I do, I do. Hey, I
Speaker 1: just spent an entire week with my family. And if
Speaker 1: you think I'm bad, you should listen to my dad talk.
Speaker 1: So I've I'm full up on terrible puns and jokes,
Speaker 1: but anyway, and I love my dad and anyway, they
Speaker 1: they It seems really optimistic right now to say that
Speaker 1: a drone would be capable of doing what Bezos is
Speaker 1: saying they will do, to be able to carry a
Speaker 1: five pound payload at a maximum of ten miles and
Speaker 1: return on one single charge of battery. Now it may
Speaker 1: be that they will have multiple batteries and will actually
Speaker 1: do live battery switching in a single flight, which would help.
Speaker 1: But you've got to think, how would you be able
Speaker 1: to build these drones so that they could make these trips,
Speaker 1: return and then recharge fast enough so that they would
Speaker 1: be ready for another trip before much longer. Because if
Speaker 1: you've got an army of I don't know, two hundred drones,
Speaker 1: let's say, for one particular fulfillment center, and it's a
Speaker 1: really heavy day because in cyber on Cyber Monday, Amazon
Speaker 1: was getting three hundred order requests per minute. Now that
Speaker 1: was the company, you know, nationwide, but even so, that
Speaker 1: means those fulfillment centers are really, really busy. So assuming
Speaker 1: that this was in place in four or five years,
Speaker 1: when Amazon says that this is a possibility, how would
Speaker 1: they be able to not only make sure that these
Speaker 1: drones could get to where they were going, but recharge
Speaker 1: fast enough to meet the demand that continuously comes in.
Speaker 1: And I don't I don't have a question and answer
Speaker 1: for that question. I mean, you can have rapid recharge
Speaker 1: batteries and they do recharge pretty quickly, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty heavty demand on power to be able
Speaker 1: to carry five pounds through the air, preferably at an
Speaker 1: altitude where people aren't going to be messing with it.
Speaker 1: Because that's another concern, is that what happens when you
Speaker 1: get people looking in the air and seeing a uh,
Speaker 1: essentially yeah, or they're just thinking, I bet that thing
Speaker 1: is carrying something nice. I would like something nice. I'm
Speaker 1: going to knock that thing out of the air. And
Speaker 1: get something nice. So instead of fell off the back
Speaker 1: of a truck, it's going to be this fell off
Speaker 1: a drone. I never paint them to look like question
Speaker 1: blocks and Mario, it's it's a bad it's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: This is one of some things that have been talked
Speaker 1: about as a genuine concern as people are interfering or
Speaker 1: people hacking the system so that they could have things
Speaker 1: delivered to their house and to where they're supposed to go,
Speaker 1: or even when someone gets a delivery and goes like,
Speaker 1: oh look I got a free drone with this, I'm
Speaker 1: going to play with it now. So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of there are a lot of concerns here and
Speaker 1: and so part of this there's a Pixar movie just
Speaker 1: begging to be made. So but these are legitmic concerns,
Speaker 1: and so one of the answers are potential answers, maybe
Speaker 1: that they will fly at altitudes where it won't be
Speaker 1: obvious that there's a drone flying by, but that means
Speaker 1: they're flying pretty high, which requires even more energy to
Speaker 1: get to that altitude and maintain it, especially if it
Speaker 1: happens to be a windy type of area and be
Speaker 1: able to get to where they're going and drop them off.
Speaker 1: Another challenge, how do they know what's on the ground
Speaker 1: so that when they deliver it, they're delivering it safely
Speaker 1: without damaging a person or their property, because most of
Speaker 1: these are going to have ways of seeing their surroundings
Speaker 1: in the air, but not necessarily what's on the ground. Um.
Speaker 1: I'd see that though, is more of a scaling and
Speaker 1: implementation problem because as we've seen with like Google's autonomous cars,
Speaker 1: it's doable. I mean you can use like l DAR
Speaker 1: or something like that to to pretty accurately map your
Speaker 1: surroundings in a way that you really understand what's nearby.
Speaker 1: And that kind of sensory technology is probably also another
Speaker 1: five to ten years off, yeah, because you there are
Speaker 1: systems that exist. The problem is getting them to the
Speaker 1: point where they will fit on a drone and not
Speaker 1: cause even more of a of a problem with weight
Speaker 1: for the drone to be able to do what's supposed
Speaker 1: to do. So yeah, and maybe five years it will
Speaker 1: be prohibitively expensive. It's another issue, right although you know,
Speaker 1: if people are willing to pay what's it like bucks
Speaker 1: to have something overnight shipped to you, then so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's three times, but what is what is
Speaker 1: the price of shipping? Yeah, this this project doesn't have
Speaker 1: a price on it yet, but they do. They call
Speaker 1: it Amazon Prime Air. So you would assume that this
Speaker 1: is another either subscription based service or possibly it's a
Speaker 1: per order surcharge if you decide to have that added on.
Speaker 1: So you get streaming video, two day delivery, and drones potentially.
Speaker 1: But there are other challenges to overcome. So we've talked
Speaker 1: you know, there's technical challenges, and we've talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about that. There's some practical challenges, like how do
Speaker 1: you get the drones to travel through isn't it illegal?
Speaker 1: That I was going to get to, Yeah, the governmental
Speaker 1: issues here in the United States in particular, it's it's
Speaker 1: a tricky situation because it hasn't it's so new, just
Speaker 1: like a lot of new technologies, it's so new that
Speaker 1: it outstrips what our laws cover, right It's and it's
Speaker 1: basically only hobbyists who are doing it on a on
Speaker 1: a private level right now. I mean, which is fine,
Speaker 1: like the like you want to you want to fly
Speaker 1: your little helicopter, as long as you do it at
Speaker 1: four ranch. Yeah, and and it's basically mostly legal for
Speaker 1: some three hundred or so public agencies that can use them.
Speaker 1: I mean in addition to the military. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: at low altitudes and away from airports, so things like
Speaker 1: fire departments, police departments, schools, there's some facilities. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: fire department use it drone for search and rescue. Yeah
Speaker 1: really Also I mean also it gets a really like
Speaker 1: there are times where a drone needs to get you know,
Speaker 1: they need to get a look at where the hot
Speaker 1: spot is in a building and they may not be
Speaker 1: able to reach it directly from the ground. It helps
Speaker 1: out a lot. Yeah, Okay, it's not just like it
Speaker 1: flies around looking for fires there. It's usually used after
Speaker 1: a fire has been identified as being in progress. Yes,
Speaker 1: But as of twelve, the government had a lot of
Speaker 1: the f A A UM sixty three point four billion
Speaker 1: dollars to modernize the US traffic control system UM billion billion,
Speaker 1: lots of dollars UM. It's it's called the Next Gen program,
Speaker 1: and it's it's being used to kind of update like
Speaker 1: airport controls and include more GPS based stuff into into
Speaker 1: all airplanes and into air traffic controlling. Which seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, that's that's I have a GPS and
Speaker 1: my phone, So why doesn't the entire air traffic control
Speaker 1: system used? And that's because it's a big system and
Speaker 1: very expensive, right, and it's made up of lots of
Speaker 1: different pieces. Right. It's not like it's not like everybody
Speaker 1: uses the exact same equipment across all different types of
Speaker 1: aircraft exactly. It's it's so difficult to coordinate that they
Speaker 1: don't even have a full plan as of right now
Speaker 1: when we are recording this podcast, and they are supposed
Speaker 1: to publish one by the end of well, and there's
Speaker 1: well a draft at a draft of it by the
Speaker 1: end Congress has given the f a A a man
Speaker 1: date to come up with rules for u a v
Speaker 1: s for both private and commercial use by the end
Speaker 1: of So that's why Bezos is saying four to five years,
Speaker 1: because we don't even know yet if it's ever going
Speaker 1: to be legal for companies to use drones in a
Speaker 1: professional sense besides some case by case basis. Technically there
Speaker 1: are just two types of u a v s that
Speaker 1: the FAA has licensed for commercial use. Uh, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like you know, drones per higher in the United States,
Speaker 1: and so those two are the institution scan Eagle from
Speaker 1: Boeing and the Puma from Arrow Environment Incorporated, both of
Speaker 1: which come at the measly price of one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per unit. So they are obviously much more expensive
Speaker 1: than the kind of drones you can get, like like
Speaker 1: the Parrot drone where you can control that with your
Speaker 1: your smartphone. Is it's that's a that's a consumer device
Speaker 1: that anyone could go out and buy and operate and
Speaker 1: play with. These drones are obviously meant for much more
Speaker 1: heavier use, but even these are not being used widely.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're really expensive. A lot of the uses
Speaker 1: I've seen for, or at least the the potentially uses
Speaker 1: I've seen for drones are in agricultural UM applications, things
Speaker 1: like spreading fertilizer that kind of stuff UM. And there
Speaker 1: are farmers who are using drones to do that. Technically,
Speaker 1: most of them are doing it illegally because they haven't
Speaker 1: received licensing from the f a A to do it.
Speaker 1: But it's also one of those things that doesn't tend
Speaker 1: to get UM enforced. Now that being said, if there
Speaker 1: were ever a catastrophic accident with a drone, you can
Speaker 1: bet that that would put a lot more attention on it,
Speaker 1: and we've had some near misses, haven't we. Uh Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't uh drone crash in New York and almost
Speaker 1: hit somebody earlier this year. Yeah, it collected with the building,
Speaker 1: I think, and then then kind of felt and almost
Speaker 1: hit a pedestrians right ten feet away from somebody, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of scary. Yeah. I remember having a similar
Speaker 1: experience once where a sheet of ice fell off a
Speaker 1: building in Chicago, and I felt that really, Chicago should
Speaker 1: outlaw ice. I think that most of Chicago agrees with Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Um. Now, of course, here's the thing
Speaker 1: I'd say, because I actually trust autonomous drivers better than
Speaker 1: human drivers, I'd only really be worried about the safety
Speaker 1: issues of of drone crashes early in the implementation, before
Speaker 1: people have warned the kinks out. Once we've got good
Speaker 1: autonomous drivers for drones, I'd probably trust them more than
Speaker 1: I would, you know, the ones that are piloted by people.
Speaker 1: And see, the thing here is that the f a
Speaker 1: A may feel exactly the same way, and maybe part
Speaker 1: of what they're going to look at is ways of
Speaker 1: having having various drone producers demonstrate the safety of their
Speaker 1: products by maybe navigating through an obstacle course or going
Speaker 1: through some other form of testing. Maybe they'll even be
Speaker 1: a third party testing entity that will put these things
Speaker 1: through the paces to make sure that they can go
Speaker 1: into full widespread commercial use. Or maybe the f a
Speaker 1: A says, you know what, this is just too big
Speaker 1: of a headache and the convenience is not going to
Speaker 1: be outweighed by the potential disaster. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: of things like even a really good autonomous vehicle I
Speaker 1: wonder can navigate through things like a neighborhood where there
Speaker 1: might be a lot of power lines. That kind of
Speaker 1: makes me a little nervous. There are certain things that
Speaker 1: could interfere there. I mean, even electromagnetic interference could be
Speaker 1: an issue. I just google delivery truck crash, and I
Speaker 1: got four hours ago from CBS Local Miami delivery truck
Speaker 1: crashes into Miami home. I mean, obviously it is it
Speaker 1: is currently a problem, right there is still sure, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there and there is. And the problem is you can't
Speaker 1: do to cooke reasoning where you say, because this happens
Speaker 1: this other thing, you know, just because you don't put
Speaker 1: this restriction on this type you shouldn't put this restriction
Speaker 1: on this other. No, no, no, I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: drones shouldn't have extensive safety vetting. I'm just saying like
Speaker 1: one couldn't expect them to be one because entropy. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: and and also you know, I think that as the
Speaker 1: infrastructure of this Internet of things kind of improves so
Speaker 1: that we get more of a you know, smart roads
Speaker 1: and smart more you know, better power that involves so
Speaker 1: many power lines for example. Things things that allow us
Speaker 1: to have an infrastructure where everything talks with one another
Speaker 1: as opposed to potentially interfering with one another, then you
Speaker 1: have the potential to do some amazing stuff. Not just
Speaker 1: get your mercury in half an hour so that you
Speaker 1: can go on your mad poisoning way, but all sorts
Speaker 1: of different things. Okay, folks at home, I don't actually
Speaker 1: want to poison anybody. I would never. I mean, mercury
Speaker 1: is a very very cool element, very very very cool.
Speaker 1: Uh dangerous, I'd say, Actually, I can imagine a much
Speaker 1: more practical use of when I might want to have
Speaker 1: something delivered within thirty minutes. Uh, I've had this experience before.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have. You start cooking dinner and you're making
Speaker 1: something really involved, and then you realize you don't have
Speaker 1: an ingredient. Yeah. I I go through the entire range
Speaker 1: of infomercial over emotional responses when that happens to me.
Speaker 1: Frustration and then anger and then saddening down into tears
Speaker 1: and then just the shrug. Yeah no, but it's really frustrating.
Speaker 1: So you get home from the grocery store, you start
Speaker 1: chopping all your vegetables. You realize, like, I forgot to
Speaker 1: get chili powder, and I don't have any. But if
Speaker 1: you could get some to your house delivered in less
Speaker 1: than thirty minutes while you're still doing all the other
Speaker 1: stuff you need to do, well, Okay, I mean that's
Speaker 1: that's a big frustration, saver. I'm just gonna turn that
Speaker 1: around on here, Joe. I'm just imagining a drone raining
Speaker 1: down chili powder across a suspecting city with children just crying,
Speaker 1: coated in chili Pelder. Okay, why do you hate the children, Joe?
Speaker 1: I would love to get I would rather have chili
Speaker 1: powder dropped on me than have a pizza dropped on me. Well,
Speaker 1: that's because he's constantly are staring into the air with
Speaker 1: your mouth open you're gonna get smothered by that pizza Joe,
Speaker 1: whereas you might just sneeze from the chili pelder um.
Speaker 1: Oh maybe with with less potentially smothering um concepts. I
Speaker 1: I can, I can, And this is where my anxiety lies.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what if you're if you're getting dressed to
Speaker 1: go out somewhere and you realize, oh, I just put
Speaker 1: a run in my tights. I'm sure that you guys
Speaker 1: have this happen all the time. You'd be surprised, Lauren,
Speaker 1: I am in theaters it has actually happened to me. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could be getting ready to go to work in
Speaker 1: the morning and you just realize, like, I don't own
Speaker 1: any underwear how in my one good shirt interview and well,
Speaker 1: and oh, well I have done that. I've stained my
Speaker 1: clothes right before I needed to go out. Or for
Speaker 1: me like I can imagine getting to I can saying well,
Speaker 1: it would be great if I could have something delivered
Speaker 1: here because on my way to work, I'm a pedestrian, right,
Speaker 1: so I have a nice long walk in the mornings.
Speaker 1: There has been a time where I've walked to uh
Speaker 1: to the train station and it's on a rainy day
Speaker 1: and I get one of those like I'm almost at
Speaker 1: the train station and that's when the driver drives with
Speaker 1: the big puddle and I get splashed. And I wish
Speaker 1: I had another shirt at at work because I am
Speaker 1: a mile away from my home and I could walk back, change,
Speaker 1: come back out. But one, I would possibly have the
Speaker 1: same thing happened to me twice, and two I would
Speaker 1: be late to work. So if I had some way
Speaker 1: of doing this where I could have it delivered discreetly
Speaker 1: into the office building, so I could at least change
Speaker 1: here and not look like I don't know which clothes
Speaker 1: are clean and which clothes are dirty in my house,
Speaker 1: that I guess the question is could you find a
Speaker 1: shirt cheap enough to justify that transaction? You know what?
Speaker 1: There are times where you just look at yourself and
Speaker 1: you're willing to pay any price. But let me let
Speaker 1: me tell you how. This is exactly the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought of when I when I heard about this,
Speaker 1: this particular service. And it's the kind of thing where,
Speaker 1: you know, we sometimes think about what would you need
Speaker 1: to what would you want so badly that you'd have
Speaker 1: to have it in half an hour? Well, if I
Speaker 1: were let's say from it may not be the case
Speaker 1: in four to five years, but let's say in four
Speaker 1: to five years, i'm playing on I finally decide to
Speaker 1: buy an Xbox One or PlayStation four, because I haven't
Speaker 1: bought one yet. And the reason I haven't bought one
Speaker 1: is because there aren't any games out for either system
Speaker 1: that really appealed to me. I'm sure that in four
Speaker 1: to five years you will have purchased one of them,
Speaker 1: at least probably, But let's just assume for some reason
Speaker 1: that I have held off that long. I actually held
Speaker 1: off about that long for the Xbox three sixty, so
Speaker 1: it's and I held out even longer for the PlayStation three.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that maybe I have one of them
Speaker 1: but I don't have the other. But finally enough games
Speaker 1: have come out where I'm like, I've got to have
Speaker 1: this console now, And I go out and I buy
Speaker 1: the console, and then I buy a couple of games,
Speaker 1: and I come back and then I read about this
Speaker 1: one game that came out three years ago that I
Speaker 1: don't have that I would love to have, And you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't have the download speed to download it
Speaker 1: within half an hour, But if I order it off Amazon.
Speaker 1: I could have a drone drop it off in half
Speaker 1: an hour and I've got it right then and there Now,
Speaker 1: any upcoming game, I could order ahead of time and
Speaker 1: have it delivered the day that it comes out. But
Speaker 1: if I order, you know, something that's been out for
Speaker 1: a while, and it gets there in half an hour,
Speaker 1: and then I'm able to satisfy my impulse buying needs. Also,
Speaker 1: we're all thinking about this from from a very privileged place.
Speaker 1: There are lots of people who are not able to
Speaker 1: go out and run the kind of errands that that
Speaker 1: we are on a daily basis, and think about, you know,
Speaker 1: if if if they have an emergency and need to
Speaker 1: have something kind of immediately. I mean, there are delivery
Speaker 1: services around most major metropolitan areas these days that can
Speaker 1: get you a lot of different things. But but those
Speaker 1: Amazon fulfillment centers certainly have more than your corner drug store.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, especially if it's going to be cheaper than
Speaker 1: say a delivery service. If you have mobility problems, that
Speaker 1: could be a huge help to you. Oh yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: there are there are some some applications for folks that
Speaker 1: would be way more meaningful than the relatively sill any stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's it's again, it comes down for
Speaker 1: most of us, it comes down as something that just
Speaker 1: it's added convenience. Also, there is something of a cool
Speaker 1: factor to think of my my stuff was delivered to
Speaker 1: me by a robot. I mean that's kind of nifty's
Speaker 1: with robot Yeah, pretty much robot apocalypse not cool at
Speaker 1: all Without robots. You can get a robot delivered by
Speaker 1: a robot, yeah, you could. You could get a robot delivered,
Speaker 1: like if you had your roombot delivered. I don't know
Speaker 1: how heavy rumors are though, imagine we might have to
Speaker 1: wait for the next generation of drones before that happens.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because the f a A Is going
Speaker 1: to have to look at larger drones in the future
Speaker 1: right now, Uh legislation or not even legislation, but rules
Speaker 1: that they are supposed to publish. Uh, those will only
Speaker 1: cover these light U a v s. So these smaller
Speaker 1: U a v s will be covered by that, But
Speaker 1: anything larger that would be capable of carrying something, you know,
Speaker 1: heavier than five or ten pounds, We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: wait a while before the government catches up to telling us,
Speaker 1: you know, how those can and can't be used. They
Speaker 1: may end up being too large to be practical for
Speaker 1: any sort of consumer use, but maybe it's something that
Speaker 1: is used, uh for something like a fire department or
Speaker 1: police department, you know, in a in a more more
Speaker 1: versatile case than just spotting hot spots or or looking
Speaker 1: for survivors of disaster or something along those lines. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see if Amazon can do this. I
Speaker 1: will say one thing. By going on on sixty minutes
Speaker 1: and talking about this, Jeff Bezo has got a lot
Speaker 1: of attention towards Amazon just before Cyber Monday. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was one of the more clever things that I mean.
Speaker 1: I mean, He's done a lot of clever things, but
Speaker 1: that was And so by by talking about this, you know,
Speaker 1: he also got people just interested in Amazon Prime, which
Speaker 1: is a service that a lot of people subscribe to,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, maybe getting even more people always
Speaker 1: can yep, yep, you know, you always want to grow
Speaker 1: that business. So it's it was a very savvy move
Speaker 1: on part. Even if we never see a drone fly,
Speaker 1: it was a savvy move by Bezos to do that. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's possible that this won't turn out the way
Speaker 1: Bezos hopes, maybe because if there's a you know, just
Speaker 1: a fundamental problem with batteries, maybe because the government never
Speaker 1: allows it. But we'll have to wait and see. And
Speaker 1: either way, I'm really glad that he did. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if it was a pure publicity stunt that nothing
Speaker 1: comes out of I I really want the general public
Speaker 1: to have more of a concept that drones are not
Speaker 1: just this scary military application, that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: really awesome stuff that can be done with them. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'd say even if it was more publicity stunt
Speaker 1: than an announcement of like a real project that he
Speaker 1: plans to implement. I mean, there's no essential technological barrier
Speaker 1: to this, and it's in the public consciousness. It just
Speaker 1: seems like a thing that is more or less inevitable.
Speaker 1: The question is when and yet to what extent? Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: because I mean it may turn out that there there's
Speaker 1: a very limited, uh implementation of this kind of technology,
Speaker 1: or maybe it'll mean that within twenty years our skies
Speaker 1: are gonna look kind of like Coruscant and uh, one
Speaker 1: of those prequels I don't like to talk about. All Right, Well, um,
Speaker 1: this kind of wraps up our discussion about Amazon's approach
Speaker 1: and just the idea of using drums to deliver stuff
Speaker 1: in the first place. If you guys found this conversation interesting,
Speaker 1: you should definitely go to FW thinking dot com. That's
Speaker 1: our website where we've got blog posts and videos and
Speaker 1: other episodes of the podcast that you can check out.
Speaker 1: Lots of interesting stuff there, and of course if you
Speaker 1: want to talk about drones or maybe you are a drune,
Speaker 1: you should get in touch with us. We're on various
Speaker 1: social media outlets like Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter are
Speaker 1: handled there is FW thinking, and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this topic in
Speaker 1: the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com. Brought
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