h a l f b a k e r y"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
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Amazon is working on UAV delivery of packages. I don't
want
to be a Luddite but it's got some problems. It's inspired by
the
American pizza company that promised "Your pizza in 30
minutes or less guaranteed." It only took a couple of million
dollar lawsuits caused by minimum wage drivers
killing
people by driving recklessly to meet that 30 minute
deadline
to shut the program down. One UAV crashing in front of a
car
causing a fatal accident and the whole UAV delivery
program
gets shut down as well.
I don't want to see that happen. Therefore some thought
should be given to creating appropriate paths for robotic
delivery of parcels, away from civilian traffic that might be
impacted by these things falling out of the sky.
I propose stringing cables along existing utility poles along
which little unmanned package delivery scooters can
travel.
Customers can pay to have a delivery cable strung to their
home just as they would pay to have a cable tv line
installed.
Using this system, anything from parcels to food to
medicine
could be delivered very cheaply, quickly and reliably.
These would be safe, quiet, could work in any weather and
would not annoy by flying overhead day and night.
I'm just not crazy about the idea of fully autonomous
vehicles
swarming the skies in my neighborhood. Also not excited
about the prospect of minimum wage UAV pilots taking the
controls to steer that 10 pound 40 mile per hour missile the
last 50 yards onto my front doorstep.
Design update: This power pole mounted delivery system
shouldn't be cables, it should be an enclosed plastic oval
shaped tube split into two parts like a subway (tubeway)
underground train line.
This would keep the packages from being buffeted by wind
and rain, prevent the sound of the robopods motors from
annoying people and keep the deliveries hidden so bad guys
wouldn't be tempted to grab some of those packages flying
overhead. Plus they'd look kind of cool. I'll sketch it up.
Robot delivery missiles
http://www.usatoday...e-delivery/3799021/
coming to your neighborhood soon? [doctorremulac3, Dec 02 2013]
Suitable technology is already in development...
Gondola_20with_20the_20Wind
...at least on the halfbakery. Think bicycle messengers... [normzone, Dec 03 2013]
I wonder how much these guys get paid - probably not enough...
http://www.flixxy.c...cable-inspector.htm
[normzone, Dec 03 2013]
A better way to do it
https://dl.dropboxu...very%20Tube-Way.jpg
Power pole tube-way [doctorremulac3, Jun 16 2014]
[link]
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// could work in any weather // |
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... except severe icing, high winds, heavy snow, very heavy rain. |
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Vacuum tubes would be much better, as has been proposed before. A simple, reliable and well-proven technology. |
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Vacuum tubes would be very expensive, large and
hard to install. The infrastructure to install cables on
utility poles is already in place. Plus, vacuum tubes
are never going to happen so there's that. |
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The cable track would work superbly in blizzards and
hurricanes and if icing became a problem, the cables
could be easily heated. Wind speed necessary to pull
a mechanical device off of a half inch cable, eh, 200
mph minimum. Wind speed necessary to keep a fleet
of drones grounded, mmm, anything over 20 miles
per
hour or so. |
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So, why not design this to reuse the existing cabling? Sure the robot will be much more complicated. It will probably need a couple long arms to allow swining past utility poles and jumping form the main wire to the service feed coming out of a transformer, but that would be easier than attempting to install a new wire on all the existing poles. |
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I think the largest problem is that in many areas, for many years, all new neighborhoods have been built with buried utilities. |
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// reuse the existing cabling? // |
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Existing telecoms cable isn't particularly tensile, and would fail under even moderate loads; the outer casing would deteriorate fast due to wear from any sort of gripper mechanism used to propel the robot. |
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Bare steel cable would be by far the best support. |
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The robot could leap from pole to pole. |
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Dr.,Dr. If you think the wires are gonna be there through a 200mph wind, think again. All the power poles went down here and we only had 186mph, a mere breeze. Hurricanes are tougher than utility poles. |
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Point is, robo-wire-crawling pods will stay up as long
as the utility lines stay up. |
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And during a two hundred mile per hour windstorm, I
think the fact that the Kindle we ordered from
Amazon might not be arriving as expected would be
the least of our worries. |
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As 8th said, you'd have to put up new cables
specifically made to have things roll over them.
Existing power and telecommunications lines are
built to do what they do, nothing more. Having
robot pods roll over them would break them on a
regular basis. |
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//lines are built to do what they do// and sometimes,
what they do is providing catenary pigeon alignment. I
think a robot of 30 to 50 squabs weight should be
within design requirement for most spans, particularly
if it scares away competitive loading. |
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Yea, not a lot of payload but for very light parcels,
sure, why not? |
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However we do it, robots are the future, not "the
children" like the Whitney Houston song says. |
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Maybe she meant "robot children". |
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What's to stop people knocking the delivery pods off of the
cable and stealing the contents? |
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Onboard security cameras. |
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Plus, it's an awful lot of work when you might be
knocking off a pod containing a Tickle Me Elmo doll,
denture cream or adult diapers. (Sounds like supplies
for a party I wouldn't want to attend) Assuming they
don't have a cherry picker equipped truck, they need
to climb a utility pole with wire cutters, cut the
cable while on camera, pick up the pod, disable the
GPS tracker and get away all for a pig in a poke. Cops
will be on their way immediately as soon as the
cable is cut so it better be something good. I see
these things carrying groceries as much as durable
goods so you might be risking life, limb and freedom
for a bag of corn chips and a six-pack of Coke. |
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In bad neighborhoods a couple of bucks worth of
barbed wire could add disincentive. |
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//
Onboard security cameras.
// |
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// In bad neighborhoods // |
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So this is a cities-only thing? I was sorta thinking about my
neck of the woods, which is more of a no neighborhood
situation. Long lonely stretches of road with nothing but a
moose or two for a mile in either direction. But no, by all
means keep your automated delivery service for the city
folks, I know they need it more than we do. Gods forbid
they should have to walk a couple of blocks to get the
things they need. I mean, I could completely stuff living out
here in the wilderness but you just can't beat the
convenience, knowhuttamean? |
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I think to be feasible this would have to be in high
population density areas. |
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// Onboard security cameras. // |
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// high population density areas. // |
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Paintball gun or paint balloon. |
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If I ever start "Zip-Pods LLC" I'll hire you to be in
charge of security. |
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I've added a design improvement to the zip-pods
concept. See link. |
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The last few feet to the house would be paid for by
the customer and would run underground. The
installation would be simple, similar to installing a
lawn sprinkler or sewer pipe. |
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You'd buy something on line and have it in your
delivery hatch in minutes. |
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I think it makes a lot more sense than the drone
thing. |
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You wouldn't need all the networks to be connected
immediately.
You could have upload points where trucks pulled up
to the package upload point and all the packages in
their little zip-pods shoot out of the truck, into the
system and onto their final destination. The truck
would also pick up the empty pods from yesterday's
deliveries. Eventually all the lines could be
connected and the trucks could be eliminated. |
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By the way, the vacuum tube concept has some
problems. Self motorized robo-pods getting their
power from their rails are much easier to do. For one
thing they can switch direction on their own to get to
their destination and don't require a sealed tube. |
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