In 2013, Jeff Bezos introduced the world to
a concept that promised to revolutionize delivery. “[00:00:20] Charlie Rose: Bezos kept telling
us that he had a big surprise, something he wanted to unveil for the first time [...] Bezos:
but there’s no reason they can’t be used as delivery vehicles.” Within a matter of years autonomous drones
would engulf cities, sweeping across skies, delivering packages to front yards just thirty
minutes after their order. The announcement floored Charlie Rose and
America alike—grabbing headlines for weeks and setting off fiery debates over just how
disruptive the disruptive technology would be. Drones would offer urban and suburban consumers
a clean, quick, convenient delivery option for food, medicine, or whatever else five-pounds-or-less
without burning fossil fuels, without getting stuck in traffic, without making them wait. The idea felt far-fetched, it was exciting,
it was the future arriving in front of our very eyes, and it signaled that the race to
take delivery drones to market was on. By the time Amazon landed its first package,
Zipline was already delivering medical supplies in Rwanda, SkyDrop had flown a 7-Eleven slurpee
and a Dominos pizza straight to consumers, and Google’s Project Wing had air dropped
burritos to hungry college kids. A wave of startups sent their maiden drone
deliveries skyward to much media fanfare while major parcel couriers—DHL, UPS, FedEx—substantiated
the hype by partnering with the budding tech companies set to help solve their last mile
problems. Inventors, investors, eccentric billionaires,
and the world’s biggest companies were all pulling the same rope. Anything, anywhere, anytime: the dark days
of Doordash and two-day delivery were over; the drone delivery era was coming… or so
it seemed. It’s now 2022 and save for the smallest
fraction of a percent of people, it’s not automated drones dropping off your small packages
and food orders. Pizzas aren’t falling from the sky, they’re
showing up in the hands of a highschooler. Burritos aren’t delicately dropped on your
lawn from above, they’re left on your doorstep by a hustling gig worker. Your Amazon order won’t show up in thirty
minutes, it probably won’t even show up same-day. The world 60 Minutes introduced in 2013, the
world that felt closer and closer to reality with every inaugural delivery, just isn’t
here. Fundamentally, the fast delivery niche still
exists. The last mile still accounts for around 40%
of parcel shipping costs, roads are still increasingly clogged with traffic, green shipping
alternatives are still desperately needed, and consumers still want products as cheap
and as fast as possible. Outside of a few specific locations, drone
delivery has yet to take off—and in those few specific locations, it's hardly more than
a proof of concept. Certainly, delays are understood—expected
even—when it comes to the acceptance of a disruptive technology. Delayed acceptance though, is at very most
only part of the story. In 2021, Amazon fired staff and closed its
Prime Air offices in the UK. From the former center of Amazon’s drone
project emerged stories of mismanagement and disarray: employees drank beers at their desks,
managers were given no direction, executives ignored the stalling division aside from the
occasional pizza party. While the company responded to these reports
with a statement affirming its continued investment in drone delivery, Amazon hasn’t released
any promotional material for the project since 2016 and Prime Air’s website doesn’t seem
to have been updated in years. The most generous possible interpretation
is that Amazon’s project is definitively on the backburner. Others aren’t even there. While Amazon remains quiet on their future
intentions, DHL announced in summer 2021 that it was officially abandoning its parcelcopter
project nearly eight years after it’s maiden flight. So, two of the most important drone delivery
companies put their programs on ice, few companies are getting the investment they used to, and
no company has yet realized the imminent future of widespread operations laid out a decade
ago. So, what went so wrong with drone delivery? Well, this is Phoenix—a sprawling desert
metropolis home to 5 million people. On first glance, Phoenix seems the perfect
candidate for a drone delivery service: its year-round sunny, dry, still climate would
make for easy, reliable flight conditions; its autonomous innovation friendly city and
state governments would welcome them with open arms; and its sprawling, low-density
neighborhoods would make for countless hungry and impatient residents lacking walkable dining
and shopping options. Surely, this is the low-hanging fruit. Surely, a drone delivery company could come
in, connect any house with any product within minutes, and demand would immediately outstrip
supply, right? Well, perhaps not. Connecting any house with a drone delivery
provider doesn’t quite work because in the center of the city, right here, is Phoenix
Sky Harbor International Airport. In order to assure the safety of arriving
and departing aircraft at the busy hub, the FAA restricts the use of drones within this
area. So, a Phoenix drone delivery service probably
just couldn’t operate here… and here, in the restricted airspace around Luke Air
Force Base… and here, around Phoenix Goodyear Airport… and here, and here, and here, here,
and here. It’s not entirely impossible to operate
drones within restricted airspace, but, from a legal perspective, it ranges from somewhat
to extremely difficult—enough that it probably wouldn’t be worth pursuing for a drone delivery
company, at least at the start. The rest of Phoenix, though, is fair game…
to an extent. You see, drones need somewhere to deliver
to, and it’s got to be safe. When the concept was first introduced, the
vision typically presented was of a drone flying down, landing on one’s lawn, releasing
its delivery, then taking off and flying away. That didn’t work… at least not in reality. Drone delivery is a novel technology and,
like any novel technology, the public views it with an air of distrust—the worst thing
the industry could do is prove that distrust warranted with a series of high-profile accidents
at launch. The first instance of a delivery drone injuring
a customer will inevitably ignite a media firestorm, which could lead to a legislative
clampdown, so manufacturers naturally must strive for perfection. Perfection is tough to scale, though. Delivery drones must act autonomously to be
cost competitive, and autonomous operations require computer vision and artificial intelligence
able to reliably identify a clear landing zone. Determining whether someone is behind or infront
of a window, noticing when a dog is running towards the drone, knowing what’s a pool
and what’s dry ground—these are all challenging for a computer to tackle on its own, and so
attaining perfection proves rather difficult. Therefore, whereas the logistics field generally
considers the last mile of delivery the most difficult—once the economies of scale are
gone—drone delivery is a last mile solution with its own last foot problem. It’s fairly straightforward to get a drone
to a couple dozen feet above the ground—getting a package safely to the ground has proven
more challenging. Some solutions have emerged: Zipline, focusing
on longer-distance delivery to a set number of facilities with dedicated delivery zones,
drops its payload in a packaging with an attached parachute that carries it to the ground. Matternet also uses dedicated zones for delivering
to commercial facilities, while they’ve developed a system of delivery stations for
use by urban consumers. Uber Eats, meanwhile, implemented a scrappy
yet inefficient system where delivery drones would land on the top of delivery drivers’
cars, then those delivery drivers would walk the food to the customer’s door. Most solutions for the last foot problem,
however, have gravitated towards one method. Wing, Skydrop, Flytrex, Wingcopter, and others
have developed systems where their drones hover above the destination at a safe height
and lower their payloads to the ground using cords—far less risky than landing a heavy
drone propelled by fast-moving rotors. What all these solutions have in common is
that they require a roomy, controlled, obstruction-free area to make their final deliveries. However, in the places where people actually
live, that’s hardly a given. Yards are the best delivery zones that are
widespread, but not everyone has a yard. While it’s a safe bet for single-family
homes in an area like Phoenix, it can be hit or miss whether multi-family homes and apartment
buildings have a big enough yard and, even when they do, their communal nature means
that the customer couldn’t necessarily guarantee that the landing area would be free from obstructions
as would be the case with their own, private yard. So, at least for an early drone delivery service,
it probably wouldn't work in restricted airspace and probably not for anything beyond single-family
homes either. These and other legal, technological, and
practical constraints combined mean that the scope of what works in terms of drone delivery
is narrow. It’s pretty easy to start crossing off cities—Boston’s
winter is too harsh, New York’s density inhibits yards, DC’s airspace is too restricted,
Pittsburgh's landscape is too hilly, this could go on and on. Even within the cities that might work, there
are only so many areas that might work. While it varies by company, most delivery
drones tend to be able to fly to deliveries as far as about six miles away. So, assuming early operations would base out
of a single location to capture economies of scale, meaning their drones would have
to return to said location to charge after each delivery, that means a viable first delivery
zone in Phoenix—optimizing for a large area, free of airspace restrictions, centered on
wealthier neighborhoods—would be this. 310,987 people live in this zone—a small
chunk of the metro area’s 5 million. However, in Phoenix, only 63.2% of housing
units are single-family, which are likely to have the private yard necessary for a delivery,
and only 92% are occupied meaning, in this prime zone, at least extrapolating using city-wide
data, which is the most precise available, there are only 180,820 possible users of a
drone delivery service. This is, clearly, an imprecise methodology,
but it’s indicative of how the prospect of drone delivery—the prospect of anything,
anywhere, anytime—is getting diminished, and diminished, and diminished down into a
niche service for a lucky few. A small system linking a strip mall to the
neighborhood behind it, a fixed route flying COVID vaccines from a distribution center
to vaccination sites, six shops delivering to a small part of a small town in Virginia—drone
delivery has hardly moved beyond proof of concept, and it’s not even clear that they’ve
proved the concept.  In 2016, when asked about same-day delivery,
70% of respondents said they were content with the cheapest option while just 23% of
respondents said they’d pay more for same-day. For drones to prove commercially viable they’d
need to decisively corner that quarter of more willing consumers, and to become ubiquitous,
they’d likely need to operate at no extra charge from ground delivery at all. Most people, it turns out, are simply okay
with waiting a day or two for their packages, while all want them delivered as quickly and
as cheaply as possible. When the drone delivery hype hit fever pitch,
one bit of nuance went overlooked. Consumers simply don’t care about how a
package gets from b to c, so long as it’s quick, cost-efficient, and reliable—they’d
opt for a new technology once for the novelty, but by the 100th time that wears off. Eventually rationality will return. In fact, when surveyed in 2020, consumers
perceived drones to potentially threaten those most important factors for delivery—they
said they were uncertain about drones’ reliability, cost, and were worried about the job loss
they could incite. Meanwhile, competitors have figured out a
number of low-tech solutions that fulfill these consumer desires: look no further than
food delivery apps. Since 2017, the very moment when drone delivery
hype hit fever pitch, the food delivery industry has tripled in size, ballooning into a $150
billion sector globally. In this, speed matters and consumers expect
to pay for the delivery cost—facts that seemingly pave a lane for drone delivery. But between Uber Eats, Grubhub, and Doordash,
the power players are already established and the competition is already fierce. These comparably low-tech companies don’t
even tell the consumer whether to expect their burger to come by car, moped, bike, or foot;
they just prioritize getting food to doors quickly, pleasing the consumer regardless
of method and undercutting drone delivery in the process.By-and-large, food delivery
apps closely match the upside of drones within urban and suburban areas without the hassle
of complying with FAA guidelines and figuring out the last foot problem. Adding to the competitive problems facing
drone startups, these companies and others have since expanded into grocery, medicine,
and goods deliveries. Put simply, from the consumer perspective,
the problem drone delivery was designed to address has already been solved without building
out a massively complicated aerial delivery network. The current low-tech, gig economy model isn’t
perfect, though. For consumers and restaurants alike, the usage
fees are expensive; for those delivering, the pay is minimal; and for the big players,
profit has proved elusive. One partial solution is automation. Here still, though, drones are likely to lose
out. Ground-based autonomous and semi-autonomous
robotics have begun popping up in test markets and partnering with the likes of Uber Eats
and Grubhub to expand their reach. While a recent partial ban on sidewalk-wandering
robots in San Francisco points to the hurdles the technology faces, these hurdles just won’t
be as numerous as those facing drones. Automation and technological advances may
well help smooth out food and last-mile delivery. In the near future, your prescription, your
lunch order, or your afternoon coffee might be showing up at your front door courtesy
of an autonomous vehicle—you’ll just need to reach down and grab it from a robot instead
of unclipping it from a drone above.  Now, many probably now look at drone delivery
in retrospect and find it unsurprising that the bombastic claims of the 2010s failed to
pan out, but far fewer would have expressed a dissenting opinion just five years ago. That’s because this is a rather classic
story: that of a hype cycle. A new idea comes around, a few early players
start development, then something—a launch, a demo, or even just a domino effect—sets
off a media firestorm painting a rosy picture of a future revolutionized by this new technology. This story is so archetypal in tech that there’s
even a theoretical framework defining the process: Gartner’s Hype Cycle. According to it, after that media firestorm,
that peak of inflated expectations, results slow and sentiment starts shifting downward. Investors complain and the public’s memory
fades until the media begins coverage of the purported failure. The public grows disappointed, but then grows
silent, and in the silence, first generations are adapted into seconds, failures inform
potential success, and slowly something meaningful—albeit minor compared to the original vision—starts
to work. We are here. While what’s happening may be drowned out
in the media by what’s not, there are applications that are starting to work. Three years ago, Zipline was a small Silicon
Valley startup operating a few dozen drone delivery flights per day in one region of
Rwanda. They relied on the principle that many medical
products are crucially important when used, but not used regularly, and often have short
shelf lives, making them tough to economically and efficiently stock at smaller clinic operations. In less developed regions, poor road infrastructure
makes many remote clinics many hours or days away from a distribution center, despite relative
proximity as the crow flies. Therefore, Zipline’s drones acted as a quick,
low-cost distribution system for necessary medical products to remote areas dotting Rwanda’s
rolling hills. Far more places than Rwanda’s Southern Province
fit this description: nowadays, Zipline operates similar systems in the country’s Eastern
Province, four regions in Ghana, the US, and a number of other locations are in active
development. Excitingly, the news of Zipline’s impending
expansion to the Ivory Coast hardly made news: it wasn’t written about in Wired, TechCrunch
didn’t publish an article about it—just a simple press release and some industry and
regional coverage. This is progress. This shows that Zipline’s deployments aren’t
proofs of concepts, aren’t publicity stunts, they’re actual, real, commercial implementations. Crucially, Zipline didn’t find a use case
that drones could fulfill—they found a use-case that only drones could fulfill. They found the healthcare use-case—they
found the low-hanging fruit, and other companies are noticing. Matternet and Wingcopter are now placing heavy
emphasis on their medical potential as well. As the early use-case matures, cost will come
down, acceptance will rise, and innovators will find more uses that only the novel technology
can fulfill. Once one becomes clear, more must be possible. Eventually, everything will creep closer to
that idealistic vision first presented at peak of the hype and then, just slightly delayed
behind expectations, the new technology will finally have actually changed the world. Unlike delivery drones, what I hope does live
up to expectations is our brand-new, feature-length documentary, which came out today after almost
a year of work. It’s called The Colorado Problem: A River
in the Red and rather than trying to describe it, you’re about to become one of the first
people to see its trailer, but before I need to very quickly remind you that if you’re
not already a subscriber to CuriosityStream or Nebula, the two sites where you can watch
this doc, you subscribe to them both for less than $15 a year at CuriosityStream.com/Wendover—lower
than the monthly fee for that big, red streaming site that just jacked up its price. It’s these exact subscriptions that enable
us to do these big, ambitious documentary projects, so a massive thank you to those
of you already subscribed. But now to the point: the trailer. As a reminder, to watch this doc, click the
button on-screen or head to CuriosityStream.com/Wendover and you’ll get access to both CuriosityStream
and Nebula for less than $15 a year.Â
Reality happened.
Decent video that covers the hurdles of drone delivery though the first five minutes can be skipped because it just seems to talk about the 'hype' and 'oh look the hype'.
If I could sum up the video then:
Market demand for same day delivery is much smaller
You don't have that much room to work with. Anything near an airport is off limits. High rise buildings is off limits.
There's a tradeoff between cost of the drones vs technology, computer vision software, and other adjustments to make deliveries safe and reliable.
Which leads into humans being safer, better, easier and cheaper to deliver than drones.
Uh... you didn't give it enough time? You thought drones were going to be invented and then delivering things around the country in less than 10 years..?
I also wonder if we really do want this type of technology.
Do we want to hear drones buzzing around our homes? Do we want the sky to be filled with little drones buzzing around or would we prefer to see the clear sky.
I'm exaggerating a little, but do we really want that?
Just because they roll on the ground, doesn't mean they aren't drones.
Love this channel. And this video is a good example why. It effectively breaks down certain issues into an easy-to-understand narrative. And it effectively cuts through some of the misconceptions and hype surrounding certain technology and trends.
OMG get to the point already!
A dude with a bb gun