Drone Delivery is Still a Thing

I kind of thought we were over this drone delivery concept. In 2013, big name companies promised to revolutionize home delivery with the deployment of delivery drones. Amazon could fulfill orders in the same day for right-sized products. A Dominos pizza flew straight from the oven to your front door. Other enterprising individuals used them to smuggle drugs into a prison.

The suspected hazards from widespread drone delivery use are clear. How do we ensure civilian safety while cargo-carrying drones buzz overhead? How does the drone land for a delivery with four dangerous rotors? How does airspace become regulated on the delivery drone scale? What happens to a drone that breaks down in midair? Will people accept the constant buzzing of quadcopters carrying who-knows-what over their houses? Are they the most efficient use of resources for delivering irrelevant commodities? Will people steal drones to harvest parts and scrap metal, or redirect them to steal cargo?

Despite these problems, some of which ultimately led to the FAA banning the use drones (for now) for Amazon delivery, the concept won't go away. Some non-profit organizations continue to investigate how feasible UAV delivery could be for their operations. The United Arab Emirates needs to spend its oil money somewhere, so high-tech drones with biometric analyses will deliver drivers licenses, passports, and other documents to citizens in an official capacity. In the Netherlands, a drone-based defibrillator can be flown to remote patients. After it lands, users can fold away the rotors and carry the drone to the patient. A camera, microphone and speaker allow the doctor or paramedic to instruct how the defibrillator should be used.

At the same time businesses are upgrading their technology to alleviate some of the issues that plagued the first waves of drone delivery. Google has developed Google Wing, a drone aircraft that lowers packages to the ground via winch. This decreases the chance for injury to a person as well as damage to the UAV. At the same time, Matternet, a company which claims to be the most advanced of drone manufacturers and operators, promises a drone that adapts to changing conditions with a network of support stations every 20 miles to ensure drone maintenance and minimizes the chance for lost packages. Matternet also hopes to make direct package delivery available to everyone via smartphone apps.

Because of the rapidly changing state of drone delivery safety and the clear benefits they can offer, the FAA has allowed such small-scale drones, but with crippling rules: the drone is less than 55 lb., flies lower than 200 feet, stays far away from airports and heliports, and never leaves the line-of-sight of the pilot. Obviously it's the last contingency that makes delivery drones useless, but the FAA has at least shown the awareness that they can't keep delivery drones grounded forever.

The future of drone delivery could be this: you're hustling along, trying to catch the 8:20 a.m. subway to midtown, but the caffeine crunch has hit. Pull out the phone, order a cup of coffee, and hear the buzz of a drone creeping up. It has delivered a warm cup of coffee from the café down the street in minutes. This is as close to teleportation as we may ever get.