Online shopping promises effortless purchases from your own coach - without the hassles of entering a store and searching the shelves. But when the goods are purchased, something nasty awaits - literally. We have to wait, often for several days, before the life improving package arrives.
Drones are suggested as a solution to this, most famously by Amazon’s leading star, Jeff Bezos. They are working with an idea where warehouses in big cities can send books fairly immediately to waiting customers using Amazon’s drones. Reducing the wait to something like an hour, depending on demand, they would be available around the clock.
Technical, regulatory and safety challenges must be resolved before these shipments can be witnessed in the sky, however it all looks feasible and I can’t wait.
This is all good and the future looks bright, but what would be the next step? Amazon plans to invest in their own drone network and their delivery bots will only serve their owner. Also, the drones will have to be tailored for their tasks and there will be a limit to how big things they can carry.
What if anyone could order a drone for their transport need, business or private? What if they could be used to carry anything, anywhere?
To get there, I suggest the future brings us commissionable, stackable drones. These can be owned by anyone - like todays taxis - but accessible through a common central. If big things are to be transported - the drones stack together and collectively take your shipment. This can be done either using robot arms or just be flying in formation, eventually using some kind of standardization. If packages are to travel further than the future’s batteries permits, which is far, one and one drone can be replaced in mid air - or the shipment can be re-droned at centrals. The customer pays for the number of drones commissioned and perhaps the delivery speed.
When this system is in place it’s only natural that it’s extended to carry people, families and finally - birthday cakes. That would be some future!
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