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Transportation Businesses

Deliveries-By-Drone Continue Expanding. Pizza Deliveries Planned for Seattle (kuow.org) 80

Posted by EditorDavid from the pies-in-the-sky dept.
"Pagliacci Pizza is partnering with drone company Zipline to begin drone delivery to customers in the Seattle area," reports the Seattle Times, citing a statement this week from Zipline.

"If all goes well, the company expects to deliver pizzas in 2024," reports local news outlet KUOW, noting that Zipline has battery-powered drones that hover above a customer's location "and lowers the delivery on a tethered droid." "Obviously, it seems pretty sci-fi and a lot of customers think this is totally insane when they first hear about it," said Keller Cliffton, cofounder and CEO of Zipline, a delivery drone company. "But what has really struck us is that there are about seven days of sci-fi magical amazement, and then on day eight people are basically bored of it — bored of it in the way that there's no way they're ever going back to the old way of receiving things... Anybody can pull out a phone, press a button on that phone, and place an order that can then be delivered autonomously to the home in a way that is 10 times as fast, half the cost, and fully zero emission compared to the way we do instant delivery today."

Scenes of hot pizzas lowering out the sky onto Seattle porches are contingent on Zipline receiving approval from the FAA for an operations and safety plan. That plan is in the works but not yet submitted to the agency. The FAA may impose restrictions tailored to Seattle's busy airspace such as on flight altitudes, hours of operation and places to avoid...

The plans don't end with pizzas. Last year, Zipline announced a separate effort to deliver medical products and lab samples for the MultiCare Health System around Tacoma... As with the pizza proposal, the earliest estimates for medical deliveries around Tacoma are sometime in 2024. Zipline has also made delivery deals with supplement retailer GNC in Salt Lake City, and with Associated Couriers in Long Island, New York to deliver medications... [Zipline] has already been delivering some products for Walmart to customers in the Bentonville, Arkansas area and prescription drugs for some health care providers in parts of North Carolina and Utah. But the Washington state plans would involve newer types of drones, which the company calls Platform 2 Zips.
Pagliacci Pizza's co-owner told the news outlet that the drones "will enable us to scale our deliveries sustainably with up to 97% fewer emissions than cars." They told CNET drones would deliver pizzas "while they're still hot," and told the Seattle Times that drone deliveries will make it possible to deliver pizzas to further away or difficult-to-reach locations. ("The Zipline drones can deliver goods to customers in a 10-mile service radius," according to the newspaper, with drones flying more than 300 feet above the ground while remaining 'nearly silent, designed to sound like rustling leaves in the wind,' according to Zipline.)

Local news station KIRO notes that Zipline's current system uses larger drones and small parachutes "for Walmart and other customers around the world." And Pagliacci Pizza told them that since there's no driver, tips offered during drone delivery would go to the kitchen staff.

Wednesday Zipline also announced a deal with wellness brand GNC, according to CNET, which "will begin with customers in Salt Lake City, with other cities to follow... Zipline is also announcing a partnership with Associated Couriers to begin delivering prescription medications to patients at long-term care facilities in Long Island, New York. Associated Couriers plans to expand the service across the US and then internationally. The delivery company has already completed more than 600,000 deliveries to customers since 2016 using its previous iteration of drones....

Zipline is far from being the only company experimenting with drone delivery — Walmart, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon and startups like Flyby Robotics and Manna have also run trials and performed delivery services.
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Deliveries-By-Drone Continue Expanding. Pizza Deliveries Planned for Seattle More

Deliveries-By-Drone Continue Expanding. Pizza Deliveries Planned for Seattle

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  • Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @04:27PM (#63520871)

    And Pagliacci Pizza told them that since there's no driver, tips offered during drone delivery would go to the kitchen staff.

    Why am I expected to tip a drone? If you're cutting your emissions by 97% as you claim, then the money you're saving can go to higher wages for your kitchen staff.

    • Re: Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RegistrationIsDumb83 ( 6517138 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @04:46PM (#63520901)
      We'll never be rid of the damnable tipping. They sold uber to us as a no tip service, now it's got tips. They told us if we vote in 15/hr we wouldn't need to tip (here employers have to provide that as a minimum even to wait staff regardless of tips)... but tipping didn't stop. If anything, tips cost more now. And now with drones getting rid of the job entirely they're still asking tips. Fuck tipping culture.

      • Re: Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @04:54PM (#63520913)

        Short story about tipping. Many years ago I was at a place with a then girlfriend. Hard to explain what it is other than a bunch of cabins in the woods, but they have their own on site dining area. Sit down, not fast food.

        We ordered our meal and were biding our time when our waiter came out and said there was a delay in the kitchen so it would be a bit longer. No problem, we said, we're in no hurry. We really weren't since there wasn't any other place to go in the area and it was late evening.

        Some time later the waiter came out and again apologized for the delay. Again, not a problem.

        I believe he came out a third time, profusely apologizing and gave us each some appetizers on the house. Finally he brought our meal, piping hot and we indulged. I left him something like a 30%+ tip (can't remember at this point, but it was definitely well above 15%).

        After we ate and left, I came back to pick up the bottle of wine they were keeping cool for me and the waiter happened to see me. He came over and thanked me for the tip saying he thought I'd be upset. I told him I had worked in restaurants before and he did everything short of making the meal himself. What more could I expect? He went above and beyond.

        That's when a tip is earned, not dropping a pizza via drone on my porch.

        • My favorite part of this story was how your "recollection" of the tip you left went from 30%+ (which is pretty good for good service) to "definitely well above 15%" (which isn't even the minimum for adequate service of 20-21%). I agree with the idea that some things that are calling for a tip these days are BS (personally I think that about any order I call/web in and then go inside to get) but, man, do a better job of making yourself look good. It isn't like we can / will care to try to police what you're

      • Possible scenario:
        Business: I've arranged things so-as to use your own guilt to against you and thus coerce you to pay for intangibles
        You: Nuh-uh, I'm not gonna pay.

  • One cold, soggy pizza coming up!

  • Cool! (Score:5, Funny)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @04:30PM (#63520881)
    The homeless can shoot down food.

    • The homeless can hack drones passing overhead to capture others' food.

      FTFY: Not everyone is American dude !

    • You could shoot down a 747 and get some great airline food as well. But both shooting down commercial airliner and drone are highly illegal if you have two brain cells. (Obviously.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )

      They'll have to fight the seagulls for it. Anyway, the whole idea is just dumb and is being greenwashed to sell it as if it isn't.

    • The homeless can shoot down food.

      Homeless people are shooting things?
      Were there really that many Obamaguns given out by the Department of Health and Human Service Revolvers?

  • Lots of ways this could effectively go wrong:

    Parachutes can be blown off course by stiff breezes and lane completely elsewhere.

    Drone/Pizza drop onto a passerby or property, incurring potential damages via lawsuits.

    Drones colliding with one another or other obstacles (see above point).

    Theft/Destruction of said drones.

    Theft/Destruction of customer goods.

    Not to say drone-based deliveries cannot work, but it is really dependent on the circumstances and environment. For a congested city with high-rises and a hig

    • Actually, for people with yards and other non-public areas where a payload can be delivered, this is actually a more secure way of doing delivery. Also keep in mind that this can be used for things like pharmacy deliveries as well, so there are potentially higher value payloads at risk that could benefit.

      It might also be interesting if high-rises start having dedicated rooftop drone landing pads with corresponding lockers/internal building delivery. (There's a video of a drone doing a pickup in a speciall

      • A bit more information about the new platform:

        https://dronedj.com/2023/03/15... [dronedj.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrXym ( 126579 )

        Drones make sense in some niche situations. Expecting people to stand outside in a scary parking lot in the the dark / rain / snow for a pizza is not one of them

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by stooo ( 2202012 )

        >> this is actually a more secure way of doing delivery.

        Yeah, not so sure.
        - The real pizza owner has to come quickly take the pizza at the right moment, so has to come close to the drone.
        - The real pizza owner has to stay away from the drone, so as to not get injured by the propellers.

        A bit conflicting requirements.

    • Imagine an alternative universe in which pizzas are delivered by brainless two-ton machines propelled by fire and controlled only by low-paid (and frequently chemically-impaired) teenagers!

    • "Parachutes can be blown off course" -- You obviously have not seen Zipline's demo. It doesn't drop by parachute, it's lowered down. And the thing that lowers down has multiple fans to keep it centered. They really have thought this thing through.

    • Collision with overhead cables. = Fzzzz, pop!

    • Lots of ways this could effectively go wrong:

      Parachutes can be blown off course by stiff breezes and lane completely elsewhere.

      Drone/Pizza drop onto a passerby or property, incurring potential damages via lawsuits.

      Drones colliding with one another or other obstacles (see above point).

      Theft/Destruction of said drones.

      Theft/Destruction of customer goods.

      Not to say drone-based deliveries cannot work, but it is really dependent on the circumstances and environment. For a congested city with high-rises and a high homeless/burglary problem, there are a ton of risks not being addressed here.

      Lots of ways letting automobiles operate in cities could effectively go wrong.

      Cars can go off course by missing the exit or encountering construction detours and delays.
      Cars can go off course and leave the road due to wet roads and driver inattention, intoxication. drowsiness.

      Cars can run into a passerby or property, incurring death, injury, and potential damages via lawsuits.

      Cars colliding with one another or other obstacles (see above 100 years of world history).

      Theft/Destruction of said cars.

      Theft/Destru

  • Ill just continue to pick up or make myself and avoid any issues. That goes for package delivery as well. I dont want my food or my packages being flown around unchecked into some weird place.

    • Ill just continue to pick up or make myself and avoid any issues. That goes for package delivery as well,

      That's why I make all my own packages. And it has nothing to do with not having friends who live outside my compound. It's because when I have had friends who lived outside my compound who sent me packages, they were not wrapped properly, so those friends were eliminated.

  • Boring is indeed better (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ThosLives ( 686517 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @05:00PM (#63520919) Journal

    Because delivering by small electric car, with the same "zero" emissions as the drone, but also far fewer total joules per pizza delivered (hovering air transport is the most energy inefficient way to transport anything - unless these are fixed-wing drones?), doesn't sound as cool as delivery by drone, even though it's much much simpler.

    Not to mention delivery by electric car is weather robust, harder to steal the pizzas, doesn't need to deal with the FAA, or about a thousand other complexities needed to solve that aren't related to the task of "get me the pizza, please" but arise wholly because you want to deliver by drone.

    Maybe there's an argument that lifetime emissions of making N drones is better than a single small EV car ... but I'm not convinced.

    • Re:Boring is indeed better (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Kotukunui ( 410332 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @07:10PM (#63521105)
      Airborne drones can go point-to-point directly. No traffic lights, no intersections to negotiate, further from the reach of thieves. The Zipline drones are a hybrid model. They lift off vertically, fly cross-country as a fixed wing, and then re-transition to hover for delivery. A lot of people in this thread are saying, "Drone delivery won't work in *ALL* situations I can dream up, so it is a lost cause". All it has to do is work in enough situations to be profitable, and I think it can. There will be teething issues, but those will just become part of the refining of the operation to a point where we don't even notice them any more.
      • Yup fly right over your backyard, say goodbye to privacy on your own property, not to mention the noise.

      • But where is the destination point? A delivery drone can't just drop over the boundaries of a tax parcel, how will roofs be avoided? Dropping a pizza on a fence, bush, pond, even a puddle will lead to heartbreak. Wind drift seems like it would be a big problem too. Will recipients have targets they can deploy?

    • Re:Boring is indeed better (Score:4, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @07:15PM (#63521117)

      Because delivering by small electric car, with the same "zero" emissions as the drone, but also far fewer total joules per pizza delivered

      Oh man, I'll take that bet. Just look at the relative size of the battery in the delivery drone vs the car! Air is less efficient per unit mass, but when one vehicle weighs 1000 times as much as the other, that's the main factor.

      • I think you will be surprised. My "heavy" EV can do between 200 and 250 W-hr/mile in stop-and-go "delivery style" traffic. With essentially an unlimited number of pizzas.

        It's a question of scaling, and I haven't seen the scaling on this particular drone, but hovering energy goes linearly with mass and cruise drag for fixed-wing goes with mass squared - induced drag is a harsh mistress. So while carrying two pizzas in a car effectively reduces the amount of energy per pizza, carrying two pizzas in the dro

        • I think you are hitting the nail right in the head. We donâ(TM)t have any proof, but my instincts match yours: transportation on wheels is orders of magnitude cheaper than transportation through the air, per unit weight.

          In addition, there is virtually no limit to the weight you can carry on wheels, whereas on a drone, you have a hard limit based on available technology.

        • I think you will be surprised. My "heavy" EV can do between 200 and 250 W-hr/mile in stop-and-go "delivery style" traffic.

          Zipline's first generation drones have a 1.4 Kwh battery and a range of 190 miles @ 60 mph, meaning they use 7 Wh/mile. The P2 drones are probably slightly less efficient because they can hover (though they use wing lift for the majority of their flights).

          From an energy-use standpoint, the problem with EV delivery is the fact that you're moving thousands of pounds of vehicle (plus another 150-200 pounds of driver), vs a 40-pound drone. When your cargo weighs hundreds of pounds, that makes sense. When yo

          • Several people in this thread have brought up the idea that air transport has a major advantage over ground transport because of straight line flying.

            Straight line flying is in Schrodinger's box. It can only exist theoretically, while still inside the box, because nobody is doing it yet. Once someone succeeds at it and everyone opens that box to adopt it, it will kill straight line flying.

            There is a vast cubic volume of empty space between ground level and 40,000ft up. Even if you live near a large busy air

          • Ok if those numbers are correct that's pretty impressive. I mean that's only an average drag of less than 16N at 30m/s, which is 480 watts.

    • even though it's much much simpler.

      Um, no.

      (ask Tesla)

    • Because delivering by small electric car, with the same "zero" emissions as the drone, but also far fewer total joules per pizza delivered (hovering air transport is the most energy inefficient way to transport anything - unless these are fixed-wing drones?), doesn't sound as cool as delivery by drone, even though it's much much simpler.

      Most modern cities use e-bikes instead of "small electric cars" but I think this is the status quo. I think at most, drone delivery will be a niche market for small, light, high-value items. Pharmaceuticals were mentioned, and I can see how drone delivery could take off (pun intended) among the suppliers of "illicit" pharmaceuticals too. You don't need a very expensive drone to deliver a gram of white powder. Drug dealers also don't need to worry about FAA rules like Zipline do.

    • It's a hybrid drone... it has a fixed wing with 4 vertical rotors on it, and one rotor on the rear that appears to tilt for horizontal flight.
      https://www.flyzipline.com/tec... [flyzipline.com]

  • Lawsuits (Score:4, Interesting)

    by p51d007 ( 656414 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @05:02PM (#63520923)
    I can see it now..."If you or a loved one were injured or killed by (insert company)'s delivery drone, YOU could be entitled to substantial compensation. Contact the law firm of Dewee, Cheatem & Howe". Not to mention how many clowns will shoot em down on a Friday/Saturday night after consuming copious amounts of alcohol. Then, there is the noise issue. Above 150 feet, my UAV is pretty quiet, but below that, it's easy to hear. Put a bunch of these in the air and think of the noise. Also how will they put it "on your doorstep", if your home is surrounded by trees, live in an apartment building etc. Perhaps, these would have "landing pads" in areas close to a person, or, would be for more REMOTE delivery, as opposed to in cities. I just don't see this going well.
  • Yeah, who needs a guy who can open doors to get into an apartment building, walk under a porch, and hand the pizza to you as you stand inside? Getting bundled up half the year and being forced to use an app every time is so much better! Why would I ever go back?

  • Not ready (Score:4, Informative)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @05:23PM (#63520963)

    These things are stunts. There are a few credible applications at this time, like a hospital-to-lab delivery but there both sender and receiver are prepared and speed is more important than cost. At this time, general drone delivery does not work economically. That may eventually change, sure.

    • A pizza place just contracting out drivers a la UberEats is still a hard proposition to beat, especially if the cost of maintaining a car falls on the driver themselves.
      Benefits like health insurance, at least AFAIK in the US are not required to be paid to contractors either so that helps keep labor costs down.
      No need for building out a specialized logistics and control network either, which requires its own set of expensive skilled labor.
      BTW how goes the Dominoes pizza drone delivery? I remember reading ab

  • basement window (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @05:30PM (#63520985)

    I always give a good tip and the delivery driver is willing to slide the pizza through the basement window. I just have to stand up out of my chair to reach it. Try that with your drone.

  • Love what Zipline has been doing (Score:3)

    by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Sunday May 14, 2023 @07:14PM (#63521115)

    For a while now they've been delivering both drugs and blood to hospitals in some African countries. It seems their work has saved a lot of lives, cut costs, and vastly improved quality of healthcare. But for the sake of the pizzas, I sure hope they don't use the drone-launching method they use in Rwanda! [youtu.be]

  • Mail Delivery Halted for an Entire Zip Code in Seattle [mynorthwest.com]

    “Some south Seattle residents are claiming a significant ‘mail fail’ is occurring as the United States Postal Service (USPS) has halted mail delivery due to a rise in recent vandalism and theft. A sign at a nearby U.S. Postal Service office in Columbia City is telling residents in the ‘98118’ zip code to pick up their mail in person at an annex office, located at 5920 Martin Luther King Jr Way South.”

  • How big of a pizza can it deliver? Can it handle beverages? How about sides?

    If I order an 18 inch pie with everything on it, super thick cheesy crust, plus extra breadsticks, dipping sauces, and a two liter of a beverage, will it be able to deliver the order?

    Or is this limited to overpriced artisinal small flatbreads?

    Is it really cheaper than standard delivery? Is it only cheaper for small orders and then significantly more expensive than traditional delivery for larger orders?

  • Apartments, anywhere near an airport, a military base, government offices ....
    etc .....

  • All their drones now work full time.
    Both of them.

  • Drones make noise. Noise causes stress. Stress causes health problems. Why are we causing more health problems? And if you think it's going to be an occasional drone, imagine all the deliveries that are being made on your block today.

  • If deliveries can be specified by gps coordinates, that will be great in Seattle, allowing deliveries to pizza-bomb street derelicts.

  • As God as my witness, I thought Pizzas could fly.
  • Will automation finally end tipping? I'm not planning on tipping a CEO, nor (singular) their fleet of bots.

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