You place (and pay for) your order online, and then your GPS enabled phone tracks your location as you zoom along the road. At the exact moment you pass the shop, your shopping swings out on a boom for you to grab (ideally using a netting scoop built into your vehicle, like the old TPO).
This would be ideal for people travelling by public transport - shops could spring up alongside inter-city railway lines, perhaps direct farm outlets for the producers in the countryside along the line. Trains and buses could have built-in scoops which network wirelessly with your phone and the system to grab your goods as you relax in First Class sipping your complimentary champagne.-- pocmloc, Jul 11 2015 This is a nice idea [+] with a couple of issues.
Who likes to shop for tomatoes online? All you'll get are either of the tasteless and durable or the rotten variety. It only works for standard items.
Who pays the bill if you miss the boom? Who will be responsible if you get the wrong shopping basket? How to make sure that all the goods you payed for have been delivered?
These are all solvable issues, though. I support the motion if you include a bicycle interface, too.-- Toto Anders, Jul 11 2015 Well I suppose the interface needs specify only speed, in fact not even that, as your gps knows how fast you are going and the boom can swing out at a rate to match your speed.
As for tomatoes, you are not thinking laterally enough. You could pick them up from your local specialist heritage-variety free-range tomato farm as you cycle past.-- pocmloc, Jul 11 2015 It's high time that food was implemented in software, eliminating all the costs associated with shipping it as hardware.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 11 2015 That's well baked in TV cooking shows and lavishly illustrated recipe books.-- pocmloc, Jul 11 2015 I'm with Ian, I want to shop for speed too.-- blissmiss, Jul 11 2015 I see no reason why your local drug dealers shouldn’t partake of the system. It might make it easier, saves you having to stop on a shady alleyway. Just zoom past in your phaeton as if nothing was happening.-- pocmloc, Jul 12 2015 + then, with modification.-- blissmiss, Jul 12 2015 If your car sunroof is open, the supermarket trebuchet should be able to lob your shopping into your car so that it lands on the passenger seat. If the trajectory of the lob is calculated so that the horizontal speed of your car and your shopping ("horizontal vector" I mean...) are matched then it should be relatively safe. At high speeds - e.g. if you are driving past the supermarket at 80mph - an additional calculation will have to be made to determine how much the shopping will be slowed by air resistance.-- hippo, Jul 13 2015 Mayor's wife accident may have been planned.
Police suspect: Simona Hefberked who was killed last week when a bag full of milk bottles fell on her while passing through a hippo-drive store, may have been the victim of a planned murder.
A twitter message on her account from an undisclosed source read: They shoot but will they score?-- pashute, Jul 13 2015 I don't see why this wouldn't work for plopping the parcel into my bicycle basket either, come to think of it.-- blissmiss, Jul 13 2015 random, halfbakery