2017 may be the year of the drone, or maybe not.
In a story leading up to the early January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Wired wrote, “This year, don’t get hung up on any particular drone, but instead notice the sheer breadth of the offerings: the shapes and colours, the drone races and drone rodeos, the drones that carry cameras and the drones that carry people. Everyone in tech knows drones are going to be … something. Nobody knows exactly what yet, so they’re trotting out their newest idea to see what you think. All the pieces are there, but nobody’s yet put them all together the right way.”
Meanwhile, Amazon has filed a patent for a drone the size of a warehouse. It would allow a Zeppelin to act as a floating fulfilment centre. They’ve been talking, publicly, about drone delivery of packages since 2013, when they launched a really cool video.
And that was a cool video. A guy needed a special tool, he ordered it under a 30 minute delivery option (Amazon Prime Air), and it was flown from the warehouse straight to his front door on the beach. Wow.
This is the stuff of dreams, and will remain so, probably forever, no matter what the “something” Wired forecasts drones will become.
Consider our front yard. It’s perfect for landing a drone. No overhead powerlines, perfectly flat. The large driveway, unfortunately, is also perfectly flat.
And when we got home from Christmas visiting, there were two inches of snow on the driveway that required blowing. The front yard was a lump more than two-feet deep in snow. I battled with the snowblower to clear a path around the house to limit any melt water making its way into the basement. I imagine this snow will remain until mid-March, likely April. Where does the proverbial drone land between then and now?
On the other hand, a parcel arrived via Canada Post the same day. She was driving a van, which, I imagine, had a heck of a time making it down any street the week before, after about eight inches of snow. I know this because I could barely drive my wife’s 4x4 through it.
Did I mention this week it’s -25 C as well? I knocked over a plastic water bottle while putting the snowblower away and it broke. I wonder what would happen to a drone?
Maybe Estevan, Sask., is a poor example. Okay, let’s try Canada’s tech centre, Ottawa, Ont. It’s been raining there, in January. I wonder what happens to your deliveries in Nepean, in that situation?
And this is where all the drone fantasies falter. Small drones are fair-weather aircraft. Landing locations fouled with snow will always be problematic. We are not going to see our skies filled with drones, akin to the sky highways in Back to the Future Part II or on the city planet of Coruscant in the Star Wars universe.
Maybe there is some high-tech work around. An online delivery system that promises 30-minute delivery should be tied into the local weather forecasts, taking away air delivery when it’s not feasible (half the year?). Perhaps you might have to go out to the delivery point with your cellphone and use its GPS to designate precisely where to land where it’s safe. I can’t imagine any jerk teenagers ordering $10 items and then setting up landing zones for expensive drones to crash in.
I love my drone, and the whole concept of them. But after you’ve used one a bit, you realize there are going to be very serious limitations to drones becoming part of daily life.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
