Dominos Pizza Delivers Pizza via Helicopter Drone

[lunavixen]

Negative point: Delivery Man out of a job.

Maybe, maybe not, someone has to fly the drone, besides, with a cap on drone numbers per area there would still have to be delivery drivers that and i doubt that these drones could be used for long distance deliveries, they'd be used for local only (small deliveries, otherwise the weight ratio would be shot)

That's cool...but what if I want a 2 liter of Dr. Pepper too?

Joking aside I think a lot of delivery guys and gals are going to be rather upset with this. As neat as it is to have your pizza delivered by a robot, this is pointless and just going to be people out of jobs...Just seems like way too much technology for something that's already been well tended to.

It would likely be strapped in on top of the pizza bag or have a separate housing over the bag somewhere in the centre. Either that, or it wouldn't be able to be delivered by drone, neither would large orders.

What happens if I order say... 25 pizzas for a party that I'm never going to have? Or I become a falconer? All I want is a little fun and chaos!

The drone flights would likely be restricted to three or four pizzas max within a fixed radius because you have to watch the weight ratio, too heavy and it won't fly, if the weight is lopsided, it'll throw out the balance and be harder to steer, or even crash. And the more weight on the drone, the more power it'll use.

Overall it seems like a not bad concept for cetain areas (suburban with no high rises) when delivering credit card orders, other than that actual drivers would be best.

 

[Agent Cross]

What happens if I order say... 25 pizzas for a party that I'm never going to have? Or I become a falconer? All I want is a little fun and chaos!

The drone flights would likely be restricted to three or four pizzas max within a fixed radius because you have to watch the weight ratio, too heavy and it won't fly, if the weight is lopsided, it'll throw out the balance and be harder to steer, or even crash. And the more weight on the drone, the more power it'll use.

Overall it seems like a not bad concept for cetain areas (suburban with no high rises) when delivering credit card orders, other than that actual drivers would be best.

Nah. I meant the hilarity of them sending a fleet to one house for a delivery. It'd almost make you a bit nervous not to tip when you're greeted by ten drone helicopters at your door.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Don't talk down to Bob 40 year old! He served in 'nam you know!

You kind of have to be at /least/ 56 to have served in Vietnam. The Vietnam war ended in 1975. (US pulled out in '73.)

Unless you think actual infants were fighting in the conflict you have to add at least the bare minimum of 18 years to even talk about someone who might have served there. And that's someone who would have only served like 1 year.

Yeah, yeah - pedantic and missing the joke I know...but still.

It's Bob 56 year old!

#getoffmahlawn

The thing is, BoB 40 year old has done enough drugs to think he was in 'nam.

[sub][sub][sub]The joke was that he couldn't have possibly been there. [/sub][/sub][/sub]

 

[Wyvern65]

Don't talk down to Bob 40 year old! He served in 'nam you know!

You kind of have to be at /least/ 56 to have served in Vietnam. The Vietnam war ended in 1975. (US pulled out in '73.)

Unless you think actual infants were fighting in the conflict you have to add at least the bare minimum of 18 years to even talk about someone who might have served there. And that's someone who would have only served like 1 year.

Yeah, yeah - pedantic and missing the joke I know...but still.

It's Bob 56 year old!

#getoffmahlawn

The thing is, BoB 40 year old has done enough drugs to think he was in 'nam.

[sub][sub][sub]The joke was that he couldn't have possibly been there. [/sub][/sub][/sub]

You have won. I concede complete defeat. I is be fail. D:

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

It would depend on how the drone is guided. American military drones like the Global Hawk can guide themselves because they're guided by military GPS. Such GPS systems aren't available on the private market. GPS units on the private market are either precise, or fast, but they can't be both, and they are designed that way specifically so that a GPS system bought at radio-shack can't be used to guide a missile. So because of this a "self guided" drone made by Pizza Hut, flying itself by GPS, wouldn't be precise enough to deliver a pizza to someone. So Dominoes would have to have someone at the controls of a pizza delivery drone in order for it to actually be able to deliver a pizza right to someone's door.

Good point regarding the US restricting GPS in their country. In other countries those restrictions may not exist, I don't know myself, so that may be something that depends on local conditions/laws etc. Also cost comes into it, if the drones with perfect AI are too expensive then manual may be the preferred option. I wonder if the US will ever allow drones to reach their potential or weather fear will forever be too strong, will be interesting to see where this goes.

GPS is a service that the US government provides to the rest of the world. All of the GPS systems in the world run off a single set of satellites which were launched, owned, and maintained by the US government. The US government allows the entire world to use these satellites which they own, but restrict the type of GPS receivers that can be made. Therefore the same restrictions exist for all GPS receivers around the world.

There is another system that the Russians have called GLONASS, and the EU, and China are building their own systems as well, but haven't finished developing them yet. Those systems might have different restrictions when they become operational, but until then, the entire world (except for the Russian military) is using GPS, and the US enforces the same restrictions to all of the consumer market GPS units in the world.

So regardless of which country uses these drones, only the United States Military can have autonomous drones that navigate via GPS systems. So yeah, every Dominos in any every country would have to have people controlling these helicopter drones manually.

Really makes you wonder what else the entire world gets to enjoy just because the US is generous with its technological advancements.

 

[Comocat]

I think this would be awesome in a number of ways:

1) Frees up roads relieving congestion for people running to the store for a quick item- just queue a delivery drone

2) Opens up new business for cheap delivery services- example grocery shopping delivered via drone

3) Reduces major operating cost and delay for pizza delivery

4) Reduces operating expenses for land because less space is needed for customer parking

I hope the trials of this work out well. It would be nice to see drones used for something other than Obama killing Arabs.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Yes, the remote control that the guy in the video uses will totally work from India.

Do you have any idea how much it costs to fly a drone remotely from thousands of miles away? Way more than Pizza Hut would save by hiring a bunch of Indians to fly these things. Don't worry, your job is safe.

Suppose you had a brain you'd realise that most business are more concerned about long-term costs.

There's such a thing as an initial investment being so high that a company can't justify spending the kind of money it would take to achieve its goal to its stockholders, even if it would ultimately cost less in the future. It really depends on how high the initial investment would be, and how long it would take the company to recoup that investment and begin making a profit off that plan. In this case, getting Indians to remotely fly a bunch of helicopter drones from a few thousand miles away would have such a high initial cost that it would be infeasible to do with current technology because of how long it would actually take them to recoup their costs.

I understand that you don't know anything about how drones are controlled from across the planet, and it's obvious that your understanding of economics is only tenuous at best, and I suggest that you either believe me, or do some research before declaring that I have no brain.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

If the pizza comes with the video footage of the trip from Domino's to my House, then I will gladly buy all of my Domino's Pizza this way. That looks so amazing!

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Um... how are you supposed to pay for the Pizza?

 

[theultimateend]

...You know, I seriously need to brush up on my own cooking skills, actually. The more convenient delivery food gets the less you notice how damn pricey and often unhealthy it is. And I'm a low-maintenance cheapskate.

I do chuckle a bit when people say they eat fast food because its cheap.

For the price of one meal out with my wife I can feed us for the entire week with much healthier food >.>.

Shit you can buy a metric fuck ton of bananas for a few bucks most of the year (just as a random ass example).

 

[Da Orky Man]

I see no real issue with this, the less delivery teams we have driving around grants us a few things:

1) Saves money
2) Less pollution
3) No risk of car accidents and potentially harming the driver / safer employees
4) Much, much faster delivery.

You already give them your card info when you order by phone, so there's no risk of them losing money, and should anything happen to the drone you already gave them your name, home address, phone number, and a valid credit card so it won't work out well for you. Only issue I can see is undertrained delivery teams who make a mistake flying the drone by not understanding proper distancing, handling wind, etc.

Very unlikely there will be any collisions as there will most likely only be 1 drone per area total (there is absolutely no reason to get more than one considering the speed of the drone is extreme compared to a car), and the drones don't fly high enough to really be near any planes. The biggest risk, again, is to the drone itself.

Negative point: Delivery Man out of a job.

Positive point: Delivery man now gets to remotely control a helicopter, and a technician gets to drive around to retrieve and fix the ones that are GOING to crash, no matter how careful the pilot is.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Um... how are you supposed to pay for the Pizza?

Ever hear of a credit card?