Food delivery drones, where are they?
Imagine a world where your food would arrive much quicker and right to your door or even to your window. No human intervention, just you and the drone. That would be, at least interesting to see. The takeout industry keeps growing at a rapid pace. Online food delivery platforms are getting more orders and more choice is available, including healthy food. Restaurant service to the consumers is also improving. Waiting times used to be more than one hour. Today, some restaurants can deliver your food as quickly as 15 minutes.
Drones are being heavily used in warehouses where the regulations are not as strict as in public spaces. Improvements are happening every year and warehouse drones can do more complex things than going from A to B. Drones can select which package to pick, the best route within the warehouse to use and deliver the package to the right shelf. This without any human interaction. The Healthcare industry is adopting the usage of drones for human benefit. Drones are used for surveillance of disaster sites and areas with chemical hazards.
Food delivery makes a good market for drones. Short distances from restaurants near our homes, payload under 5kgs for the majority of the meals, no road traffic, no risk of delivery drivers eating part of our food (30% admit to eating your food, yes, 30%), cost savings compared to the traditional bike, man-hour rate and so on.
Developments in this area are happening. In 2016, Domino’s the largest Pizza chain in the world, did the first pizza delivery by a drone.
So why after so many years do we still not get the food we order online delivered by a drone?
There are multiple reasons that can be delaying the mass deployment. Regulations are a big reason and one that is going to be hard to beat.
In dense and urban areas where hundreds of drones will be flying and crossing right above our heads, safety is a big concern. Failures happen when technology is in its early days and getting hit by a drone or the drone’s package on our head could be quite painful if not deadly.
The technology itself is also a concern, drones rely on batteries and batteries are still in early stages. There has been a huge investment in batteries lately, especially within the EV industry however it is still a long road to get them cheaper and with better ranges.
Privacy is another issue with drones. How easy would it be for a drone to carry a camera and record everything while en route when you open your door/windows and record your living room, funny isn’t it? And there is also the point about technology stealing jobs from humans.
Things are not looking so bad…
Last year, UPS got a license to operate a drone airline focusing on the healthcare industry initially.
Amazon keeps pushing hard with its Amazon Prime Air program. Amazon is doing what it does well. Before releasing to the public it uses for its purposes.
Uber Eats got FAA approval to test their food delivery by drone’s program late last year.
Before we have drones in the food delivery industry, we will have to see them more often in other industries such as healthcare, surveying purposes, infrastructure inspection, agriculture, forest, mining, remote areas where access via road is difficult. It all happens outside of urban areas. Once we get more and more drones being used in those industries and it is proven we have all the ingredients ready for the food industry, it will arrive.
Driverless robots are also under development, and again, Domino’s is testing it. Driverless robots have their challenges as well.
Depending on the layout of your house or apartment building they might not be able to get right into your door. And if we are in our pajamas, going outside even for 3 meters during the winter, it defeats the purpose. Boston Dynamics robots can easily tackle steps. But they may be able to tackle a human easily as well…
For now… we will be staying with the delivery drivers who are doing a great job every day in bringing our takeout meals. However, it is not long until we get the drones delivering our food. And lockdown periods like the one with the COVID-19 will accelerate the adoption of food delivery drones.
