This seems like a marketing stunt more than anything.
Drones would be cost effective if they were at least somehow semi-automated, otherwise there is an endless supply of teenagers and people willing to use scooters to do this at minimum wage. Drone pilots/operators are presumably more skilled and would have higher hourly wages.
It seems like 'self piloting drones' > 'self driving cars' in complexity. So we aren't quite there yet.
I would also imagine that once it becomes even remotely technologically viable it will be snuffed out by legislation. But perhaps one day.. :)
I'm really not that sure that drones like the one in the video are more complicated than self driving cars. Self driving cars have to handle a lot of external stimulus, like other cars, road regulations and thrust/steering balances on the road. This helicopter is quite free to move and can be "easily" tracked by gps or such. Only the remote landing can be tricky depending on the situation.
I agree that a self-driving car is much harder on the basis that it has to handle other cars alone.
With that being said, a small drone like this is harder than it looks for a couple reasons.
First, there's not enough payload capacity for a good, accurate IMU. You're stuck using lightweight but awfully noisy MEMS gyros and accelerometers along with drifty barometers.
Plus, there's not enough payload capacity for an off the shelf LIDAR or other long-range depth sensing. That means detecting obstacles needs to be delegated to 2D imagers plus CV algorithms, with some short-range depth sensing. IR ToF like a Kinect 2 or even a grid-based approach like a Kinect 1 might work in a favorable environment, but I wouldn't trust it outdoors even at close range.
If I had to build a pizza-delivery drone, I'd use a bottom-facing camera like the AR.Drone does to try to provide a position reference independent of the bad MEMS gear, and I'd use CV algorithms combined with a last-ditch short-range obstacle sensor (like IR or ultrasound) to attempt to avoid obstacles. Once I got to the destination, I'd delegate landing to a pilot, since "finding the front door" is a surprisingly hard problem.
Multicopters like the one in the video have no trouble reaching much higher altitudes, where obstacles would likely be fewer and easier to detect. Given a specific delivery area, a reasonable cruising altitude could be preconfigured and the flight could probably be navigated by GPS with no CV whatsoever. Then, like you say, a human pilot could handle the landing and subsequent take-off.
The location of the pizzeria could even be chosen such that take-offs and landings at that end of the trip could be entirely automated, by GPS or perhaps with some much more basic CV.
> Self driving cars have to handle a lot of external stimulus, like other cars,
You say that, but you still have obstacles to avoid (trees, tall buildings and hills), "driving" conditions to contend with (high winds) and other "vehicles" (birds, other drones of such a scheme takes off).
> ...road regulations and thrust/steering balances on the road.
Thrust and steering is a great deal harder when you don't have a solid contact (ie movement in air vs wheels on a road). If these drones were to ever be a commercial tool, then they would be bound by regulations as well.
Plus with helicopters you have additional complications that aren't an issue with self driving cars: three dimensions to worry about rather than just two (as you don't need to worry about altitude if your a car), regional air space limitations (eg are you near an air port?) and the obvious issue of somehow notifying the customer that the drone is outside their front door (assuming the AI is smart enough to determine what bit of the house is the front door).
And to make matters worse, each drone would only be capable of one drop off at a time as you have space constraints and trust issues (you couldn't trust customers not to steal other peoples food so you'd need some kind of method to secure other customers food). Where as this wouldn't be a problem with a human delivery boy nor even an automated delivery car.
But that all said, I wouldn't say that these things are more complicated either. I think they're both equally complicated but for different reasons.
> This helicopter is quite free to move and can be "easily" tracked by gps or such.
Cars can also be tracked by GPS. That's how self-driving cars work and what's used in SatNavs. Autonomous tracking is the easy bit as that's been available in consumer technology for the best part of a decade already.
Trees and buildings are static environment and can be mapped. I don't see how bird traffic can compete with road traffic, this comparison don't hold much to me.
The third dimension is only an issue at takeoff and at landing which are by far the greatest show stoppers here. With maybe economic feasibility.
Cars also have road navigation to handle with ugly stuff such as dynamic roadblocks and obsolete maps, all of which don't really apply to flying.
Maybe in a mid/long-term future we'll see regulations for drones but it is very close to free for all as it stands right now
Unless there is some great AI that can handle the landings I think that part can be left to a human. Each situation can be very unique with obstacles such as trees, power lines, other buildings in the way and a human can make better decisions about those on the fly.
Plus if you are delivering to a business in a crowded downtown area you'll probably need to call the recipient while hovering then identifying and directing them to a safe drop off spot :)
As opposed to other drones (we are assuming a future where this isn't a novelty, so lots of air traffic) and regular aircraft, flight regulations, weather and birds.. and yes, the landing and obstacles at low altitude.
Now maybe if they never had to go low but literally drop ship the packages..
I could see this being semi-automated to the point where the drones can travel between the home base (there can be special devices to assist the drone with automatically landing that you wouldn't have on a home or business) and some radius near the drop location by themselves then you have some human assistance with the final 100 feet or so. This would make it possible to need only 1 operator for a small city, I think. He'll only need to be concerned with landings/near-ground hovering then getting back in the air for the trip back home or to another drop.
I'm sure there will be some kind of regulation/standard that will deal with the way drones avoid other drones (and other tall structures) while in the air.
Given how good your average teenage layabout is at video games, I'm not sure that making the leap to drones would be all that hard!
That's mostly tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely - the sorts of spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination skills that kids develop playing video games directly translate to fly-by-wire systems.
(The downside, of course, is that teenagers are easily bored and easily amused, and may be prone to wrecking expensive company drones doing barrel rolls and buzzing their friends.)
The "drone" itself is a DJI S800 and not autonomous in any way. It is technically a Remotely Operated Aircraft (ROA), so a fancy RC helicopter.
It looks like this was filmed in the UK (from the .co.uk address on the side of the box). Had it been filmed in the US, they could run into serious legal problems for not having a Special Airworthiness Certificate from the FAA for commercial operation.
I would have thought that the obvious advantage of this over scooter-kid is the time saving over someone in traffic. It would take potentially half the time to deliver to some areas by air. With the major side benefit that your pizza is less soggy when it arrives, which means a noticeable improvement in product quality.
It's a cool idea. I'm sure some would be tempted to capture and steal the drones as they made delivery—they can't be cheap. It will become the modern day equivalent of stealing a plastic milk cart—only you won't be building ugly book shelves with the drones. :)
Who cares if it is a commercial. People need to realize drones can be used for other stuff than military. Maybe this ad will serve as a good tool to democratize drones as that "Pizza for Bitcoin" website did for Bitcoin, even if it's just a small step.
I am 100% sure that automatically landing a pizza in your front yard will be technically feasible long before the theft rate of these neat gadgets would drop to an acceptable rate. Maybe the first copters will parachute the pizzas :)
if i had any money, i'm quite sure i'd consider investing into something drone related (commercial). almost positive these things will become a huge part of our everyday life/society in the future. (hopefully for the better)
To put my slightly cynical hat on (one of my favourite hats) - the viral marketing video space is a popular one at the moment, since everyone knows how quickly video content can spread - especially when it's entertaining and/or novel, and marketers would love to reach those kind of audience sizes with their brands.
There are also a great number of video producers out there - often relatively young folks who keep in tune with what's popular online, stay current on technology trends, and would love to earn their income by creating and selling videos which advertise brands (Dominos) and products.
So, these folks - their raison d'être is to produce videos which promote a brand and spread virally - and to achieve that, they need to 'feel' unique, but the catch is that they generally need to display the branding quite prominently in the content.
To me, I'd suspect both are viral marketing, if well disguised - and even if they're not, I'd suspect that viral video marketers are going to become more sophisticated at making videos 'appear' to be genuine / user-generated / found footage.
One question that springs to mind with this one is: if Dominos were beta-testing this, would they have the operator wear the Dominos delivery uniform?
Drones would be cost effective if they were at least somehow semi-automated, otherwise there is an endless supply of teenagers and people willing to use scooters to do this at minimum wage. Drone pilots/operators are presumably more skilled and would have higher hourly wages.
It seems like 'self piloting drones' > 'self driving cars' in complexity. So we aren't quite there yet.
I would also imagine that once it becomes even remotely technologically viable it will be snuffed out by legislation. But perhaps one day.. :)