 |
| Source: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21719487-amazon-has-potential-meet-expectations-investors-success-will-bring-big |
We live in
digital reality and it’s a fact.
Many problems were solved thanks to technology which is being developed at a crazy rate. As always, there
are pros and cons of using technology and replacing people with machines. In
many cases, we don’t think about just ‘replacing’, but problems are more
complex. One of them is using drones as a delivery tool. With no doubt, there’s
going to be huge progress in this field, but is this change really good?
First of all, there is an unemployment problem.
Replacing postmen or suppliers (e.g. food suppliers) with drones is connected
with losing jobs. Of course, it is a similar problem to ‘driverless world’ described two weeks ago by Sylwia
Pechcin, but not the same. Postmen and suppliers will be needed, because of
security reasons (e.g. money distribution), but most of them will be made redundant.
Secondly, logistics, I mean e.g. where to leave the package, how
often drones will collide with each other or cause some damages. Probably for
most of us these problems are not so big, but they exist and we need to solve
them.
Next, the biggest problem for me – surveillance. To be honest, I’m crazy about it and can’t imagine the sky with thousands of drones. Most of them will be welcomed – they will have our stuff and after leaving it, they will fly away. But the others can be used to follow us or observe our houses. They will violate our privacy. Is this a real problem? Perhaps, I am oversensitive...
 |
| Source: http://www.swiatdronow.pl/najwieksze-wyzwania-stojace-branza-dronow |
On the other hand, drone delivery gives us unbelievable
possibility to improve our lives. Thanks to it, we will get ordered stuff much faster and drones will be
able to leave our package regardless of our absence. Perhaps, we will be able
to change a delivery address just a few minutes before its delivery.
What’s more, the drone delivery will cut costs both for end users and companies.
What’s more, the drone delivery will cut costs both for end users and companies.
To sum up, the era of drones is coming. In my opinion,
despite some ‘bad’ arguments, this positive one is much more important for us.
Now, we are talking about using drones for the package delivery, but who knows what will they be used for tomorrow?
Questions:
- What do you think about the drone delivery?
- Do you agree with its disadvantages? Do you see the surveillance problem?
- Can you give some other examples of bad/good way of using drones?
- Do you know any technical problems with drones usage and the ways of resolving it? Such as too weak batteries, capacity limit etc.?
Comments
http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/24/technology/dedrone-drone-prisons/
Secondly I often buy something through the Internet what will be delivered by a postman and then I'm not home at the day of delivery. Our postman knows that he should leave my stuff to my grandmother leaving across the street. Would drone know that? Would it recognize if I'm home or not?
Another problem what comes to my mind is really long way to travel by drone. All this idea could be a great solution for deliveries from another countries which may last months. But it's not possible because of drone limits such as battery etc.
I'm into drones technology, but I heard and as I know this technology is still developing, so those problem will be probably solved.
Potential problems may be some human mistake, for example if they program drone wrong and it will have got an information, that it should deliver a package to Ms. X, instead of Mr. P. Or maybe all of the information will be "put" there automatically?
The most serious challenge to drones will come from driverless cars, not the energy-wasting trucking system we have now. What if a driverless car makes same-day delivery a much more economical model than an individually-delivered drone model? Maybe we can have a combination of driverless cars and small distance drones delivering everything in a span of maybe 6 hours? Maybe we won't have huge local warehouses but plenty of large moving trucks carrying boxes to locations close enough so that individual boxes can be delivered economically enough by drones with lower battery power
If driverless cars and delivery drones become a reality even in the next ten years, the world is probably going to be a very different place and I am waiting for it to happen.
Do you think it's possible to construct law in a proper way? I have an impression that law regulations are always an effect of something made in the past that's why it's impossible to construct it in the way that will prevent future ideas.
On the other hand, some of my friends don't care about losing privacy. The most important for them is to live easily. Privacy is not valuable part. So there are two groups:
1. worried about privacy
2. doesn't care about it.
Which group you belong to?
I'm also into drones technology, but I just worried about surveillance. You don't?
I think it is a matter of time for this to become a standard way of shipping products, but maybe in 10 years. I think the prototypes will be improved but in order to organise the whole transportation plan so they don't collide with each other, the time, resources and money need to be spend on it.
Honestly I agree with most of disadvantages you've mentioned. For me an unemployment isn't a problem. Let's be honest - we have lots of jobs that may disappear soon. We have to deal with it.
For me the best way of using drones it delivering food. Then we would be sure that our meal is delivered as soon as possible, it's not cold and delivery man didn't have to face traffic
- Some drones models can be easily hacked, and I don't need to tell what this could mean for our packages.
- With increasing number of drones in our sky, air crashes can happen. Such drones should have really good algorithms to prevent such situations. Happily, Amazon has one of the best IT experts in the world, so I think this isn't big issue.
All in all, I think drone delivery will be normal thing in few years.
It can be the future, and personally I believe in that, but definitely not today - the technology is still improving, but I still consider drones only being a prototype for general-purpose tasks today.
They can’t deliver packages to apartment buildings, the weather can also be problematic for them.
The drones can also crash because of some error and your package will be destroyed, or after delivering your package to your porch it can easily be stolen.
I thinks it’s cool but I don’t think that the drones will completely replace human postmen.
I'm super excited about drones delivery. It will improve our lives. Unfortunately, many postmen will lose their jobs, but it's an inevitable circumstance of progress. People need to come along with new technologies. Also, I don't think it will happens right away, so younger postmen still could change their field of work.
For such delivery should be some system like for airplanes. Drones shouldn't hit each other in the air and fall down on people's heads. I think it's one of the most important actions should be taken in this field.
In the topic of surveillance I think it will not change anything at all. Agencies like CIA are spying on us all the time, in cities we've got cameras almost everywhere, our internet connections are monitored so I think it will not change our situation at all.
Technical problems with batteries will be for some time, but it's going to disappear we just need more time for engineers to figure that out. But bigger problem I see is coordinating these drones in air. If we imagine situation when thousands of drones are flying altogether we can't let them to do it freely so it's must be some regulations like in planes traffic.
seriously, I don't see it as a problem, some things just have their limits and specific usage. It is like with planes, they don't transport big loads of containers, the container ship does that.
It is really interesting, how are they going to avoid the collisions? ok, for the first time, there won't be lot of drones, but then will it will become popular, people will have to create the drone traffic rules, and they will keep flying above our heads all the time, right?
I like the innovations, but until I will found out all the details, I prefer DHL:)
Surveillance problem - For me it is a really bad idea. Currently ATM's are being stolen just to get some money. Don't want to think what can happen to small drones... but nothing good. Range is to short to use it more efficiently - no good vision of it at all.
Drones are currently used for paroling country borders, air pollution monitoring and company protection. I think that these are their main field of operation and we have to focus on them.
It still isn't known... In my opinion, if it would be possible to throw dron in the clouds technically, then new law should come into force. These acts would be possible security against threats such as monitoring with cameras mounted on drone, incorrect data collection, loss of control over drones and much more.
About technical problems... Problem with batery can be solved by placing solar panels on dron's casing. It won't be effective in 100%, but help to keep the energy for longer time.
I think I don't trust such kind of delivery. I would be afraid all the time that my package would be lost.
Do you agree with its disadvantages? Do you see the surveillance problem?
I totally agree with disadvantages.
Can you give some other examples of bad/good way of using drones?
Well, I'm looking on drones as a kind of toy. It's fun to use but can be also dangerous if it is in bad hands.
Do you know any technical problems with drones usage and the ways of resolving it? Such as too weak batteries, capacity limit etc.?
I don't know much about drones. So I can't say anything about that.
The second thing is the weather. It probably won't deliver during thunderstorm or heavy wind, and the weather can change quite quickly.
I basically don't like the idea. You can have your package delivered in 24h, is it really that long? And a drone can't deliver the package to your house, as postman does. In my opinion it is unnecessary invention.
I'm not bothered by the work automatization problem - while some people may loose jobs, more jobs are created for maintenance, manufacturing and operating the drones. Surveillance doesn't seem like a big problem for me too, it's already happening and airborne drones would be the least effective way of doing it anyway.