Droning On

need to get this a SAP like. I don't want to wait for shipping, and I don't want to pay the shipping costs. I want it here in about thirty minutes. I hesitate to ask why you want the mercury. In fact, I'm not even going to think deniability. I'm not going to ask it's it's liquid mercury was useful for all kinds of things, all kinds of poisonous, poisonous things. Okay, well, then I'm glad that I'm leaving the office within half

an hour. But I will tell you how you can get this done, all right, How you can get from Amazon in half an hour. Do they have like, um, now, can you you pay extra to have somebody bring it to you on a sport motorcycle zooming weaving through traffic? Not not quite not quite that, not here in Atlanta. No, do they put it in a catapult and get it to your in the within thirty five you're considering that we're right across the street from the Terminus complex, you

probably wouldn't even get to clear that building. That's a problem, though, I don't know which direction actually the nearest Amazon fulfillment center is. I assume they have the mercury there already. Well. Catapulting not recommended for liquid mercury. Yeah, sure couldn't. I couldn't lose a single gram of it I need if you're if you're really, if you really needed in half an hour. I'm sorry to say that right now, we don't have a solution for you. But Amazon is working

on it. Last Yeah, they've got this thing that they've proposed. Wait wait, wait, whoa, whoa, they're working on they're working on it thirty minutes. Not just mercury, though, I don't want to give you the the implication that they're only working on mostly I would say books and DVDs, things that weigh less than five pounds, right, but four grams mercury that's like a pound. So it's fine, whoa, whoa, let's back up. What is going on here? Okay, thirty

minute delivery. Do you know, do you know what a drone is? Yeah, I'm not talking about Yeah, that's also true. It's also what you know bagpipers do often when they're talking about their bagpipes and say military weapon that is flies around and doesn't have any people in it. Yeah, but it's not just a military weapon. That is an example of a drone. Yes. So it turns out that what we're talking about here are specific subset of unmanned

aerial vehicles. They're usually either semi autonomous that well, they can be completely piloted by humans. They can be semi autonomous, or they could be fully autonomous. It all depends on the model, but we're generally talking about these smaller devices that are unmanned aerial vehicles that can do various things.

And what Amazon is proposing is building a fleet of these unmanned aerial vehicles that can carry payloads of five pounds or lighter and deliver them to locations within ten miles of a fulfillment center within half an hour of you ordering that item, which sounds pretty phenomenal. Right, Well, before we get into Amazon's approach, let's talk about the idea of using drones for delivery in the first place. It's not Amazon is not the first company to propose

doing this. Oh, certainly not. It is currently happening. Well, is it currently happening or is it kind of shot kind of shot happening. You know, China has been looking. There are two countries actually where it's happening on a small basis, and small being that neither place is using them on a rollout as wide as Amazon would, And China is one of those nations. Australia is another. And you can see some publicity stunts in other places around the world. Yeah, and in China they don't have that

many regulations about this kind of thing. A business can just talk to its local government about whether or not it's chill to fly you know, cake or or whatever they want from out to the you know, cities around them. Australia is the same way. I mean here in the United States, we've got the f A A and they have. Um, well, we'll get into some complications with the f a A in a bit, but another In short, you can't just launch literally or figuratively a drone delivery business in the

US without some approval process. I knew the government would be gumming up the works. I'm getting my mercury as fast as possible. Yeah. Yeah, as though there have been a couple of publicity stunts with like, um, there was a there was a dry cleaner in Philadelphia. Yeah, actually that that dry cleaner. It's kind of funny. They were showing off this very tiny drone. I don't know if you actually saw the video, but the drone is like

super small. It's really just it wasn't even really a drone in the sense of anything that was semi autonomous or it was remote control. It required two people to operate, and it required a spotter and a pilot. So when you get into the point that not only did it require a spotter and a pilot, but it also could only carry one pound worth of stuff, which is essentially a shirt, then you couldn't really use it to deliver dry cleaning on a meaningful basis in the in the

the service area of that dry cleaners. On the plus side, anything that's wet when it's leaves is dry by the time it arrives. Well, it's dry cleaning. Why would it be wet, So it's got the word dry in the name of the service. Perhaps more importantly, Um, there is a tacocopter in San Francisco. Well, there's a potential, there's a potential burrito bomber. I really want these to exist. I mean, I really seriously want these to exist. But

right now they're they're they're having some issues. But before we get into all that, the the cleaners, it's interesting, it's a man, a young cleaner which was in Philadelphia. Um, like I said, it was a tiny little quad rotor drone that not even a drone, but a little it's almost like a remote controlled helicopter at that stage where

it required two people to operate. So obviously, from an economical standpoint, from a practicality standpoint, there is no reason to do this because the amount of manpower required to deliver one shirt is more than what it would take if you just hired a driver to do it. So

or hired a walker. Really yeah, even a walker. Yeah, yeah, So it's it's one of those things that clearly this was something that could get a lot of buzz in more ways than one, because the drone was loud, but it would get a lot of attention and therefore drum up some some customer service type stuff for this particular dry cleaner right there. They want to get some business out of this. So it was more of a marketing stunt, I would say, than any kind of meaningful delivery service.

I would argue, the same thing is true for something else. This this, by the way, that story broke in June of I believe another story that broke that same month June was that the Domino's Company in the United Kingdom used a drone to deliver pizzas in a essentially a concept video. So I think the weirdest, most unfortunately comic death ever would be killed by falling pizza. It would that would have to be a well, I'm not gonna say that would have to be a lot of pizza,

because I guess if it were lots of toppings. Yeah, maybe you have a very virulent gluten allergy, and I'm not sharing. You can't absorb gluten through the skin. However, you would have to have your mouth open while you were staring at the sky and have swallowed all that pizza, which you must admit would be really unfortunately, would be a terrible way to die. I do admit if you were smothered by pizza, that would not be pleasant. But that's we're getting a little far from the point here.

That what I was going to say is that, again, this was more or less a marketing stunt. It didn't there was no specific plan to put this in place, the same sort of thing that in order to do this they would have to to obey a lot of different rules that are still kind of being formed as we speak. But as far as marketing stunts go, nice work. I mean it attention and immediately people were asking the United States divisions of Domino's Pizza, like you plan on

doing that here? And they said no, that was their inset, very it was very upfront. Yeah. Well, the thing about that is it's it's silly now, but you know, in a few years I could see that happening. Well, the the issue I have right now is that both of the ones we just talked about, the cleaners and the one with the pizza, required there to be a human

pilot and essentially maintain line of sight with drones. Yeah, at that point, if you have to have line of sight with the drone to be able to control it and you're piloting it, it's essentially an RC helicopter or or airplane something along those. It's not truly a drone. Now, what Amazon is proposing is something that is much different. It would not be uh, some a remote controlled vehicle that uh that a person, a pilot and a spotter

would have to follow. Right. It would use cameras and GPS. Yeah, it would. And you you might have a single person, a supervisor, overseeing maybe thirty or forty of these things altogether. And so you would have multiple supervisors at each fulfillment center. Because I don't know if you know this, but Amazon fills a lot of orders. So and according to Jeff Bezos, who's the CEO of Amazon, around eight of those orders

are five pounds or lighter. So that means most of the stuff people get on Amazon could in theory, be delivered by these drones that are supposed to have a payload capacity of about five pounds. Now that doesn't mean that everything that's five pounds are less could be delivered because some of it's gonna be bulky. For instance, not that long ago, I bought paper towels on Amazon because I was running low and Amanta. I didn't have to go out in Atlanta and buy them, and the less

interaction I have with other human beings the better. So anyway I ordered, I ordered them on Amazon to have them delivered well. The package weighed less than five pounds, but it also was much more bulky than what a book or DVD would be. I would imagine that your average drone would have difficulty flying around with that. For

one thing, the air resistance would be much higher. So if there were any kind of wind resistance at all, like if if the winds were blowing at any kind of uh, you know, gusty level, I bet that that drone will have a real hard time getting those paper towels to me in half an hour. Hopefully I will never have an experience where I'm like, I need sixteen rolls of paper towels within thirty minutes or I Am going to freak out. That would be a bad day.

I've had those days in the past, though, but luckily I've had the paper towels on hand. No i'd imagine that there will be in addition to weight limitations, there be dimension I'm sure there will be, and also, I mean there's also the limitation of distance. They are supposed to have a ten mile radius of delivery distance from a fulfillment center, of which there are currently nineties six.

So if you don't live within ten miles of one of those ninety six fulfillment centers, you won't be getting any deliveries from drones in the first place, because you'll you'll live too far. Uh. Let's talk for a second, though, why would we even go with using drones in the

first place. I mean, Convenience obviously is one. If you wanted to get a specific thing within half an hour and you're like, I cannot possibly wait until tomorrow for overnight shipping, or or maybe you're like, you know, none of the stores that are near me actually carry this in their stock, but it's on Amazon. If they have it at the fulfillment center, that I can get in

half an hour, Obviously, that's convenient. But what about other reasons? Well, you know, I don't have an answer on price, but I do have a question, you know, and it would this in the long run be cheaper. It seems like initially would be more expensive because you'd be adding new technology, coming infrastructure. I'm imagining that the price point on that would be actually a lot more overnight shipping, right at

least at least initially. At least initially. Now in the long term, I can see how it might actually be cheaper. Requires less human labor, less fuel. You know, you just charged like an electric motor. However, these are powered I assume electric, yes, well no only that, but or I assume electric too, I should say, because the details are pretty I would think that a tiny diesel engine on that kind of thing would really not be what you're

looking like. Yeah, I imagine so the I mean, some some r C type aircraft do run on fuel and not just electricity. So that's why I'm like, well, you know, I'm probably electric motors, but we I don't know for sure. I would I would guess electric, mostly because they've talked about the problems with battery life. But we'll get into that too in a minute. But another another thing that I was going to say is that when you're talking about shipping, Amazon isn't the one who ships everything from

door to door. It's not an Amazon driver who drives up and delivers your Amazon product. They're they're contracting with other companies in order to get stuff sent, or they're you know, paying a per package fee to have stuff sent, especially if you are like an Amazon Prime member and you have shipping covered like two day shipping covered in your in your agreement. So I'd imagine if someone like Amazon is uniquely positioned to negotiate shipping prices with the

major carriers. I'm sure, I'm sure the but you know, you think about the costs of maintaining a shipping fleet or just even maintaining the infrastructure to get stuff to the trucks, and you know you have to pay people to do all that kind of stuff. If you're able to streamline that, then that would cut down potentially on costs. Okay, Well, if these drones were able to be, say, electrically powered, I would think that might have some kind of carbon emissions.

I packed right. Yeah. And the announcement that Jeff Bezos made, he was talking about it being um a lot greener than current shipping options are, and and shipping options, if I may be depressing statistics girl, um kind of scary right now? Okay, so so according to carbon fund dot org, which takes a whole bunch of data from a whole bunch of different places, it's it's a it's a pretty pretty legit estimate. I think they look at air cargo, truck, cargo, train, cargo,

and freight and UM. According to them, uh C freight which is which is at the low end of the scale, creates some like like zero point zero four eight krams

of carbon dioxide emissions per ton of cargo shipped a mile. Okay, UM train freight about half that amount, but truck creates about six times more an air cargo thirty two times as much as C freight UM some one point five kilos per ton mile, which which means that if you're shipping something from let's say Atlanta to Los Angeles, UM that's about two thousand miles, you can create as much as three metric tons of emissions for a single ton of cargo during that trip UM, which you know, for

for reference, the world average as of UH per person per year was about five metric tons UM. So that's a lot. So yeah, if you could come up with a way of at least taking that last mile out of it, which you know, it sounds like it's a small amount, but that every little bit can make a difference. Now again, since we're talking about electric motors, we have to say this every time. It all depends on where you get your electricity. Right, it's not free, We're not

getting it from the air. It's not like generally electricity is going to be less of a problem than say, burning gasoline. Right, as long as assuming you're not getting your all your electricity from some coal plant that had to step up production by d and fifty or so because of your army of drones. I mean, obviously, once we finally build those Tesla towers, we'll all have free energy. Because he was infallible, there might have been some snark there.

But assuming that you're getting your electricity from a place that is as doing, it's best to have at least some green practices in place. I would imagine that the carbon footprint issue would mean that, yeah, using drones makes sense. You're going to produce less are fewer uh greenhouse gas emissions, and it will be a smaller carbon footprint. Now, there are some other challenges besides the idea of well does

this make financial sense? For example, right now, from what I understand, there aren't really batteries out there that have the kind of life that would be required for a drone to be able to carry a five pound payload in addition to the weight of the drone itself ten miles, drop it off and fly back ten miles. Most of the drones that are in the general class that Bezos is talking about, he's talking about octo rotor drone, which

means it has eight rotors. You know, a lot of the ones we see, I have our quad rotors, but this one have twice as many, so it's twice as good. Most of the ones I've read about. The distance that most of these can travels about a mile before they start to have their battery drain pretty heavily, and they

can fly for about fifteen minutes. Now they say that they would get your your delivery to you within half an hour, keep in mind that that's everything from processing the delivery, pulling it from the warehouse, putting it on a conveyor belt where it would travel down the conveyor belt to the drone that's going to deliver it to you. Yeah, I want to put in for the record that I cannot get wings from the place two miles away from my house in less than half an hour, so they

can't fly. So they've already removed the wings, so there's no flying anymore. Now in this case, the drone would be flying over to I do, I do. Hey, I just spent an entire week with my family. And if you think I'm bad, you should listen to my dad talk.

So I've I'm full up on terrible puns and jokes, but anyway, and I love my dad and anyway, they they It seems really optimistic right now to say that a drone would be capable of doing what Bezos is saying they will do, to be able to carry a five pound payload at a maximum of ten miles and return on one single charge of battery. Now it may be that they will have multiple batteries and will actually do live battery switching in a single flight, which would help.

But you've got to think, how would you be able to build these drones so that they could make these trips, return and then recharge fast enough so that they would be ready for another trip before much longer. Because if you've got an army of I don't know, two hundred drones, let's say, for one particular fulfillment center, and it's a really heavy day because in cyber on Cyber Monday, Amazon

was getting three hundred order requests per minute. Now that was the company, you know, nationwide, but even so, that means those fulfillment centers are really, really busy. So assuming that this was in place in four or five years, when Amazon says that this is a possibility, how would they be able to not only make sure that these drones could get to where they were going, but recharge fast enough to meet the demand that continuously comes in. And I don't I don't have a question and answer

for that question. I mean, you can have rapid recharge batteries and they do recharge pretty quickly, but you know, that's a pretty heavty demand on power to be able to carry five pounds through the air, preferably at an altitude where people aren't going to be messing with it. Because that's another concern, is that what happens when you get people looking in the air and seeing a uh, essentially yeah, or they're just thinking, I bet that thing

is carrying something nice. I would like something nice. I'm going to knock that thing out of the air. And get something nice. So instead of fell off the back of a truck, it's going to be this fell off a drone. I never paint them to look like question blocks and Mario, it's it's a bad it's a bad thing.

This is one of some things that have been talked about as a genuine concern as people are interfering or people hacking the system so that they could have things delivered to their house and to where they're supposed to go, or even when someone gets a delivery and goes like, oh look I got a free drone with this, I'm going to play with it now. So there are a lot of there are a lot of concerns here and and so part of this there's a Pixar movie just

begging to be made. So but these are legitmic concerns, and so one of the answers are potential answers, maybe that they will fly at altitudes where it won't be obvious that there's a drone flying by, but that means they're flying pretty high, which requires even more energy to get to that altitude and maintain it, especially if it happens to be a windy type of area and be able to get to where they're going and drop them off.

Another challenge, how do they know what's on the ground so that when they deliver it, they're delivering it safely without damaging a person or their property, because most of these are going to have ways of seeing their surroundings in the air, but not necessarily what's on the ground. Um. I'd see that though, is more of a scaling and implementation problem because as we've seen with like Google's autonomous cars,

it's doable. I mean you can use like l DAR or something like that to to pretty accurately map your surroundings in a way that you really understand what's nearby. And that kind of sensory technology is probably also another five to ten years off, yeah, because you there are systems that exist. The problem is getting them to the point where they will fit on a drone and not cause even more of a of a problem with weight for the drone to be able to do what's supposed

to do. So yeah, and maybe five years it will be prohibitively expensive. It's another issue, right although you know, if people are willing to pay what's it like bucks to have something overnight shipped to you, then so yeah, I mean there's three times, but what is what is the price of shipping? Yeah, this this project doesn't have a price on it yet, but they do. They call

it Amazon Prime Air. So you would assume that this is another either subscription based service or possibly it's a per order surcharge if you decide to have that added on. So you get streaming video, two day delivery, and drones potentially. But there are other challenges to overcome. So we've talked you know, there's technical challenges, and we've talked a little bit about that. There's some practical challenges, like how do you get the drones to travel through isn't it illegal?

That I was going to get to, Yeah, the governmental issues here in the United States in particular, it's it's a tricky situation because it hasn't it's so new, just like a lot of new technologies, it's so new that it outstrips what our laws cover, right It's and it's basically only hobbyists who are doing it on a on a private level right now. I mean, which is fine, like the like you want to you want to fly your little helicopter, as long as you do it at

four ranch. Yeah, and and it's basically mostly legal for some three hundred or so public agencies that can use them. I mean in addition to the military. Um, you know, at low altitudes and away from airports, so things like fire departments, police departments, schools, there's some facilities. Yeah, the

fire department use it drone for search and rescue. Yeah really Also I mean also it gets a really like there are times where a drone needs to get you know, they need to get a look at where the hot spot is in a building and they may not be able to reach it directly from the ground. It helps out a lot. Yeah, Okay, it's not just like it flies around looking for fires there. It's usually used after

a fire has been identified as being in progress. Yes, But as of twelve, the government had a lot of the f A A UM sixty three point four billion dollars to modernize the US traffic control system UM billion billion, lots of dollars UM. It's it's called the Next Gen program, and it's it's being used to kind of update like airport controls and include more GPS based stuff into into

all airplanes and into air traffic controlling. Which seems like, you know, oh, that's that's I have a GPS and my phone, So why doesn't the entire air traffic control system used? And that's because it's a big system and very expensive, right, and it's made up of lots of different pieces. Right. It's not like it's not like everybody uses the exact same equipment across all different types of

aircraft exactly. It's it's so difficult to coordinate that they don't even have a full plan as of right now when we are recording this podcast, and they are supposed to publish one by the end of well, and there's well a draft at a draft of it by the end Congress has given the f a A a man date to come up with rules for u a v s for both private and commercial use by the end of So that's why Bezos is saying four to five years, because we don't even know yet if it's ever going

to be legal for companies to use drones in a professional sense besides some case by case basis. Technically there are just two types of u a v s that the FAA has licensed for commercial use. Uh, it's kind of like you know, drones per higher in the United States, and so those two are the institution scan Eagle from Boeing and the Puma from Arrow Environment Incorporated, both of which come at the measly price of one hundred thousand

dollars per unit. So they are obviously much more expensive than the kind of drones you can get, like like the Parrot drone where you can control that with your your smartphone. Is it's that's a that's a consumer device that anyone could go out and buy and operate and play with. These drones are obviously meant for much more heavier use, but even these are not being used widely.

I mean, they're really expensive. A lot of the uses I've seen for, or at least the the potentially uses I've seen for drones are in agricultural UM applications, things like spreading fertilizer that kind of stuff UM. And there are farmers who are using drones to do that. Technically, most of them are doing it illegally because they haven't received licensing from the f a A to do it. But it's also one of those things that doesn't tend

to get UM enforced. Now that being said, if there were ever a catastrophic accident with a drone, you can bet that that would put a lot more attention on it, and we've had some near misses, haven't we. Uh Yeah, I didn't uh drone crash in New York and almost hit somebody earlier this year. Yeah, it collected with the building, I think, and then then kind of felt and almost hit a pedestrians right ten feet away from somebody, and uh, yeah,

that's kind of scary. Yeah. I remember having a similar experience once where a sheet of ice fell off a building in Chicago, and I felt that really, Chicago should outlaw ice. I think that most of Chicago agrees with Yeah, I think so. Um. Now, of course, here's the thing I'd say, because I actually trust autonomous drivers better than human drivers, I'd only really be worried about the safety issues of of drone crashes early in the implementation, before

people have warned the kinks out. Once we've got good autonomous drivers for drones, I'd probably trust them more than I would, you know, the ones that are piloted by people. And see, the thing here is that the f a A may feel exactly the same way, and maybe part of what they're going to look at is ways of having having various drone producers demonstrate the safety of their products by maybe navigating through an obstacle course or going

through some other form of testing. Maybe they'll even be a third party testing entity that will put these things through the paces to make sure that they can go into full widespread commercial use. Or maybe the f a A says, you know what, this is just too big of a headache and the convenience is not going to be outweighed by the potential disaster. I mean, I think of things like even a really good autonomous vehicle I wonder can navigate through things like a neighborhood where there

might be a lot of power lines. That kind of makes me a little nervous. There are certain things that could interfere there. I mean, even electromagnetic interference could be an issue. I just google delivery truck crash, and I got four hours ago from CBS Local Miami delivery truck crashes into Miami home. I mean, obviously it is it is currently a problem, right there is still sure, Yeah, yeah,

there and there is. And the problem is you can't do to cooke reasoning where you say, because this happens this other thing, you know, just because you don't put this restriction on this type you shouldn't put this restriction on this other. No, no, no, I'm not saying that drones shouldn't have extensive safety vetting. I'm just saying like

one couldn't expect them to be one because entropy. Um. Well, and and also you know, I think that as the infrastructure of this Internet of things kind of improves so that we get more of a you know, smart roads and smart more you know, better power that involves so many power lines for example. Things things that allow us to have an infrastructure where everything talks with one another as opposed to potentially interfering with one another, then you

have the potential to do some amazing stuff. Not just get your mercury in half an hour so that you can go on your mad poisoning way, but all sorts of different things. Okay, folks at home, I don't actually want to poison anybody. I would never. I mean, mercury is a very very cool element, very very very cool. Uh dangerous, I'd say, Actually, I can imagine a much more practical use of when I might want to have something delivered within thirty minutes. Uh, I've had this experience before.

Maybe you have. You start cooking dinner and you're making something really involved, and then you realize you don't have an ingredient. Yeah. I I go through the entire range of infomercial over emotional responses when that happens to me. Frustration and then anger and then saddening down into tears and then just the shrug. Yeah no, but it's really frustrating. So you get home from the grocery store, you start chopping all your vegetables. You realize, like, I forgot to

get chili powder, and I don't have any. But if you could get some to your house delivered in less than thirty minutes while you're still doing all the other stuff you need to do, well, Okay, I mean that's that's a big frustration, saver. I'm just gonna turn that around on here, Joe. I'm just imagining a drone raining down chili powder across a suspecting city with children just crying, coated in chili Pelder. Okay, why do you hate the children, Joe? I would love to get I would rather have chili

powder dropped on me than have a pizza dropped on me. Well, that's because he's constantly are staring into the air with your mouth open you're gonna get smothered by that pizza Joe, whereas you might just sneeze from the chili pelder um. Oh maybe with with less potentially smothering um concepts. I I can, I can, And this is where my anxiety lies. I'm like, what if you're if you're getting dressed to go out somewhere and you realize, oh, I just put a run in my tights. I'm sure that you guys

have this happen all the time. You'd be surprised, Lauren, I am in theaters it has actually happened to me. Well, yeah, you could be getting ready to go to work in the morning and you just realize, like, I don't own any underwear how in my one good shirt interview and well, and oh, well I have done that. I've stained my

clothes right before I needed to go out. Or for me like I can imagine getting to I can saying well, it would be great if I could have something delivered here because on my way to work, I'm a pedestrian, right, so I have a nice long walk in the mornings. There has been a time where I've walked to uh to the train station and it's on a rainy day and I get one of those like I'm almost at the train station and that's when the driver drives with

the big puddle and I get splashed. And I wish I had another shirt at at work because I am a mile away from my home and I could walk back, change, come back out. But one, I would possibly have the same thing happened to me twice, and two I would

be late to work. So if I had some way of doing this where I could have it delivered discreetly into the office building, so I could at least change here and not look like I don't know which clothes are clean and which clothes are dirty in my house, that I guess the question is could you find a shirt cheap enough to justify that transaction? You know what? There are times where you just look at yourself and you're willing to pay any price. But let me let

me tell you how. This is exactly the first thing I thought of when I when I heard about this, this particular service. And it's the kind of thing where, you know, we sometimes think about what would you need to what would you want so badly that you'd have to have it in half an hour? Well, if I were let's say from it may not be the case in four to five years, but let's say in four to five years, i'm playing on I finally decide to buy an Xbox One or PlayStation four, because I haven't

bought one yet. And the reason I haven't bought one is because there aren't any games out for either system that really appealed to me. I'm sure that in four to five years you will have purchased one of them, at least probably, But let's just assume for some reason that I have held off that long. I actually held off about that long for the Xbox three sixty, so it's and I held out even longer for the PlayStation three. So it's possible that maybe I have one of them

but I don't have the other. But finally enough games have come out where I'm like, I've got to have this console now, And I go out and I buy the console, and then I buy a couple of games, and I come back and then I read about this one game that came out three years ago that I don't have that I would love to have, And you know, maybe I don't have the download speed to download it within half an hour, But if I order it off Amazon.

I could have a drone drop it off in half an hour and I've got it right then and there Now, any upcoming game, I could order ahead of time and have it delivered the day that it comes out. But if I order, you know, something that's been out for a while, and it gets there in half an hour, and then I'm able to satisfy my impulse buying needs. Also, we're all thinking about this from from a very privileged place.

There are lots of people who are not able to go out and run the kind of errands that that we are on a daily basis, and think about, you know, if if if they have an emergency and need to have something kind of immediately. I mean, there are delivery services around most major metropolitan areas these days that can get you a lot of different things. But but those Amazon fulfillment centers certainly have more than your corner drug store. Well yeah, especially if it's going to be cheaper than

say a delivery service. If you have mobility problems, that could be a huge help to you. Oh yeah, yeah, No, there are there are some some applications for folks that would be way more meaningful than the relatively sill any stuff. Yeah, but I mean it's it's again, it comes down for most of us, it comes down as something that just it's added convenience. Also, there is something of a cool factor to think of my my stuff was delivered to

me by a robot. I mean that's kind of nifty's with robot Yeah, pretty much robot apocalypse not cool at all Without robots. You can get a robot delivered by a robot, yeah, you could. You could get a robot delivered, like if you had your roombot delivered. I don't know how heavy rumors are though, imagine we might have to wait for the next generation of drones before that happens.

And it's interesting because the f a A Is going to have to look at larger drones in the future right now, Uh legislation or not even legislation, but rules that they are supposed to publish. Uh, those will only cover these light U a v s. So these smaller U a v s will be covered by that, But anything larger that would be capable of carrying something, you know, heavier than five or ten pounds, We're gonna have to wait a while before the government catches up to telling us,

you know, how those can and can't be used. They may end up being too large to be practical for any sort of consumer use, but maybe it's something that is used, uh for something like a fire department or police department, you know, in a in a more more versatile case than just spotting hot spots or or looking for survivors of disaster or something along those lines. So yeah, I'm curious to see if Amazon can do this. I

will say one thing. By going on on sixty minutes and talking about this, Jeff Bezo has got a lot of attention towards Amazon just before Cyber Monday. Yeah, that was one of the more clever things that I mean.

I mean, He's done a lot of clever things, but that was And so by by talking about this, you know, he also got people just interested in Amazon Prime, which is a service that a lot of people subscribe to, and uh, you know, maybe getting even more people always can yep, yep, you know, you always want to grow that business. So it's it was a very savvy move on part. Even if we never see a drone fly,

it was a savvy move by Bezos to do that. So, uh, it's it's possible that this won't turn out the way Bezos hopes, maybe because if there's a you know, just a fundamental problem with batteries, maybe because the government never allows it. But we'll have to wait and see. And

either way, I'm really glad that he did. I mean, even if it was a pure publicity stunt that nothing comes out of I I really want the general public to have more of a concept that drones are not just this scary military application, that there's a lot of really awesome stuff that can be done with them. Oh yeah. And I'd say even if it was more publicity stunt than an announcement of like a real project that he plans to implement. I mean, there's no essential technological barrier

to this, and it's in the public consciousness. It just seems like a thing that is more or less inevitable. The question is when and yet to what extent? Yeah, right, because I mean it may turn out that there there's a very limited, uh implementation of this kind of technology, or maybe it'll mean that within twenty years our skies are gonna look kind of like Coruscant and uh, one

of those prequels I don't like to talk about. All Right, Well, um, this kind of wraps up our discussion about Amazon's approach and just the idea of using drums to deliver stuff in the first place. If you guys found this conversation interesting, you should definitely go to FW thinking dot com. That's our website where we've got blog posts and videos and other episodes of the podcast that you can check out.

Lots of interesting stuff there, and of course if you want to talk about drones or maybe you are a drune, you should get in touch with us. We're on various social media outlets like Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter are handled there is FW thinking, and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places.