Zipline - The Future of Delieveries by Drones?

[Opferlamm113]

Summary

In a Video on YT Marc Rober covers Zipline, a company working on drones that helps making crucial medical delieveries in Rwanda possible. The company also works on a drone system for door-to-door delieveries. Is that the future of deliveries to your door?

 

Quotes

Quote

Changing delivery for good.

There’s a new standard for how people order and receive the things they need most. With smart end-to-end logistics and autonomous, instant delivery technology, we’re creating teleportation for the modern world.

 

My thoughts

I loved to see the impact the drone technology has had on the rwandan society. Improving the quality of the health system there and in other african countries.

 

The new drone system could be the solution to the still exisiting problem of how to get the goods to the customer in an ecological and economical way.

 

Sources

https://www.flyzipline.com/

 

[StDragon]

But we like our burritos fat! Gonna need a bigger drone for that Zipline pod.

[acters]

This is something I hoped the Postal service to have done sooner. There is so many people in congress who seek to defund the USPS because it "loses" money, when it is paid by the Taxpayer money, not the services it has.

 

There is so much to unpack with this type of delivery service and its opportunities. From the underground market to last mile deliveries to the reduction of workforce to the congestion of our near ground skies.

[StDragon]

32 minutes ago, acters said:

From the underground market

Street gangs are going to be pissed when they find out about this. Guns and drugs on the fly.

Hey, there's a new mafia marketing slogan for you.

[SorryBella]

2 hours ago, Opferlamm113 said:

I loved to see the impact the drone technology has had on the rwandan society. Improving the quality of the health system there and in other african countries.

And i alongside a lot of economist and engineering genuinely have a massive doubt on the whole system, pretty much calling it rwandan vanity project to cover up their modern societal issues. While that issue is still very much there, it is impressive at how it went from just 1 depot covering 150 miles of rwandan rural forests to the entire nation and trial tests around the world.

 

Im excited as is for the tech back then, now im excited for it as a business.

[acters]

25 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

And i alongside a lot of economist and engineering genuinely have a massive doubt on the whole system, pretty much calling it rwandan vanity project to cover up their modern societal issues. While that issue is still very much there, it is impressive at how it went from just 1 depot covering 150 miles of rwandan rural forests to the entire nation and trial tests around the world.

 

Im excited as is for the tech back then, now im excited for it as a business.

this type of technology does not seem to be efficient at first glance. The biggest advantage is hinted at in the video. It is the traversal of terrain that is not terraformed into an efficient network of roads for simple 2 or 4 wheeled machines to traverse with minimal impact on the ground environment. It is to offload the burden of having roads and local warehousing to be built. There will always be a limit to the amount of resources we may have on this earth. Terraforming it all to roads, and storage warehousing is more costly than centralizing it to fewer locations. air travel faster and cheaper for large scale economies. for smaller communities, ground transportation was fine. I see the drone travel market as a miniaturization of the larger airplane cargo travel as a means of offloading the cost of fast ground travel. We will eventually be allowed to slow down driving to walking. Allowing cultivating of the environment around us instead of shoehorning more roads. Eventually there will be space travel, and becoming capable of air travel and the logistics that come from it will allow humanity to prosper.

[SorryBella]

8 minutes ago, acters said:

It is to offload the burden of having roads and local warehousing to be built. There will always be a limit to the amount of resources we may have on this earth. Terraforming it all to roads, and storage warehousing is more costly than centralizing it to fewer locations.

uhh thats my train of thought too? I shouldve used past tense on that.

 

My issue about it back then was simply the impracticality of the regulation around flying object, and the drone bill of material. But considering that the 90 second turnaround went from just once in a while to always shows that the rate is pretty much expandable given governmental approval. But yeah, i agree with your take. Lets just use space guns to deliver our cargo from geostatic orbit.

 

[acters]

10 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

uhh thats my train of thought too? I shouldve used past tense on that.

 

My issue about it back then was simply the impracticality of the regulation around flying object, and the drone bill of material. But considering that the 90 second turnaround went from just once in a while to always shows that the rate is pretty much expandable given governmental approval. But yeah, i agree with your take. Lets just use space guns to deliver our cargo from geostatic orbit.

 

haha, yeah lets get some space warehouses and manufacturing, so they can shoot a new phone from outer space to my home. the first part of your earlier comment made it sound like you disliked the inefficiencies this type of traveling will have. I welcome the challenge and change it will bring. Though ethics, as you said, will be the biggest hurdle as borders and nations start becoming less of a thing and we unite as one planet. racism is still an issue, I wish I could live long enough to see the world change to a united one. Then once space travel is figured out, we will have nations that control whole planets instead of a portion of land on earth. racism and patriotism will grow from which part of earth to what planet you come from lol

[acters]

1 hour ago, StDragon said:

Street gangs are going to be pissed when they find out about this. Guns and drugs on the fly.

Hey, there's a new mafia marketing slogan for you.

bet there will be some that will integrate it, and some who shun the use of it like a religious belief

[Doobeedoo]

Can't wait to see even higher prices for shipping. But yeah cool for medical supplies though.

[John Reactor]

I don`t know if this service will be a breakthrough in delivery services, but those propellers... Quiet drones? Yes please.

[Heliian]

That video was an advertisement. 

 

The future is dumb. 

[HenrySalayne]

14 hours ago, Opferlamm113 said:

I loved to see the impact the drone technology has had on the rwandan society. Improving the quality of the health system there and in other african countries.

The new drone system could be the solution to the still exisiting problem of how to get the goods to the customer in an ecological and economical way.

This is all pretty cool, but there is no competition yet. The more they scale this operation the more things will go wrong. Mid-air crashes with other drones, dead animals (birds in particular) and eventually human casualties. And they have to be price competitive to the alternatives we have in the future - and with a lot of safety regulation this might be a problem.

If it weren't for safety regulations and pilot licenses, helicopters could have been widely spread transport vehicles for decades.

 

[Quackers101]

when **** gets sent instead of needed resources.

[Opferlamm113]

5 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

This is all pretty cool, but there is no competition yet. The more they scale this operation the more things will go wrong. Mid-air crashes with other drones, dead animals (birds in particular) and eventually human casualties. And they have to be price competitive to the alternatives we have in the future - and with a lot of safety regulation this might be a problem.

If it weren't for safety regulations and pilot licenses, helicopters could have been widely spread transport vehicles for decades.

 

The competition are all other delivery methods that already exist.They showed examples of safety measures in the video. And cars kill animals and people, too. Even with the exisiting safety measures for them.

[HenrySalayne]

3 minutes ago, Opferlamm113 said:

The competition are all other delivery methods that already exist.They showed examples of safety measures in the video. And cars kill animals and people, too. Even with the exisiting safety measures for them.

There competition has not entered the market yet.

When was the last time a rogue car did bring down a passenger airliner? Ohh, right - never...

You would not believe how many things can go wrong if you send thousands and thousands of drones through the sky. When I did a drone show (with 220 drones?) they had to fly over a river that was closed down for traffic. The drones were not allowed to fly anywhere near where people could stand below.

I'm not saying Zipline has a disregard for security, but eventually they will kill someone. And they will interfere with aircraft under VFR conditions.

[JTuyen]

If you guys are interested in learning more about Zipline, I'd highly suggest listening to a podcast called "What's Your Problem?". There's an episode where Zipline was interviewed about their development.

[Opferlamm113]

On 3/20/2023 at 7:31 PM, HenrySalayne said:

There competition has not entered the market yet.

When was the last time a rogue car did bring down a passenger airliner? Ohh, right - never...

You would not believe how many things can go wrong if you send thousands and thousands of drones through the sky. When I did a drone show (with 220 drones?) they had to fly over a river that was closed down for traffic. The drones were not allowed to fly anywhere near where people could stand below.

I'm not saying Zipline has a disregard for security, but eventually they will kill someone. And they will interfere with aircraft under VFR conditions.

You said they have no competetion, all delivery methods compete on certain markets. For the drone delivery in question all other methods of the last step compete with it. With ur argument there would only be one of UPS, DHL, FedEx and so on, but there all comepeting in the same market and exist.

 

Cars can collide with trains and other transport and kill millions of people every year, and they still drive around.

 

You clearly did not watch the video, as I stated before their safety measures are shown in the video. No commercial drone has those safety protocols. Sure people will die because of zipline drone accidents, but people die all the time in traffic accidents.

[HenrySalayne]

7 minutes ago, Opferlamm113 said:

You said they have no competetion, all delivery methods compete on certain markets. For the drone delivery in question all other methods of the last step compete with it. With ur argument there would only be one of UPS, DHL, FedEx and so on, but there all comepeting in the same market and exist.

The competition will be autonomous strollers or other forms of autonomous vehicles, not your friendly neighborhood parcel delivery person. 

13 minutes ago, Opferlamm113 said:

Cars can collide with trains and other transport and kill millions of people every year, and they still drive around.

You clearly did not watch the video, as I stated before their safety measures are shown in the video. No commercial drone has those safety protocols. Sure people will die because of zipline drone accidents, but people die all the time in traffic accidents.

Cars are heavily regulated. Do we have autonomous cars yet? I don't think so. 

And what safety measurements have they shown in the video? A parachute? 

Why do you think they are operating mainly in Rwanda? 

And what about the discrepancies in the technical specs between the video and their homepage? 

 

[Opferlamm113]

On 3/22/2023 at 4:25 PM, HenrySalayne said:

The competition will be autonomous strollers or other forms of autonomous vehicles, not your friendly neighborhood parcel delivery person. 

Cars are heavily regulated. Do we have autonomous cars yet? I don't think so. 

And what safety measurements have they shown in the video? A parachute? 

Why do you think they are operating mainly in Rwanda? 

And what about the discrepancies in the technical specs between the video and their homepage? 

 

All delivery system on the last mile are in competition to each other. And those strollers will be too slow to deliver certain items.

Those drones got FFA approval and Part 135 certification, they are heavily regulated as well.

Do your drones have parachutes? How many commercial available drones have that kind of safety measure?

Because they are testing it there and there is a good market for their product. They fill a gap that traditional delivery systems cannot compete with. Fast delivery of small items in a rural country.

You should ask their marketing departmant or Mark Rober. I would geuss they use an updated more powerful version in the video. Marketing departments are not always the fastest.