Brad Ideas - deliverbots - Comments

Vacuum cleaners

brad — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 08:33:47 -0700

While a vacuum was the item suggested to me, I think other items make more sense. Many of these items already are commonly rented, even with the large hassles involved in renting them such as driving to rental stores and doing paperwork.

The deliverbot is going to be a lightweight electric vehicle and thus lower in energy costs. And indeed energy of manufacture (and shipping all the way from China) is going to be much larger in many cases.

I also expect more devices of the future will know when they break, so human inspection will be less necessary. If something arrives broken, just call and another one will be there in 10 minutes. You are the human inspector. If you break it as soon as you get it you might blame the other guy but this will be rare. Insurance covers this.

But the big thing is convenience. Going to the basement of an appartment building for a vacuum is not convenient. A robot at the door or in your garage is.

I'm not sure this will pan out, but many people rail at our consumer culture, where everybody has their own private stuff when the stuff could possibly be easily and efficiently shared with deliverbots. With small light items like DVDs, we already have this with netflix. Perhaps it can happen with more than DVDs.

Energy Waste, Usability Problems

mendel — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:18:06 -0700

Some counterpoints:
a) The addditional transport volume means more energy consumption. It is possible that this is offset because less items need to be manufactured, but given that many items expire with use (i.e. your vaccuum will break down after X hours of use) this is unlikely.
b) You've gotten used to your brand of vaccuum, how to empty it, how ling the cord is etc. Doing Rental means you are going to get a new unit moreoften than if you own one, and it means there'll be a (short) period to become comfortable with that.
c) You still need manpower to check that returned rentals are in good condition or risk frustrated customers.
d) A good location to pilot such a service would be a high-rise apartment building or complex. If this was profitable, why isn't it done today?

Not a bad idea... in fact....

Randy Robinson — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:18:13 -0700

Pretty close to what Webvan was thinking.... They had robotic warehouses, where the orders were packed by robotic systems, then loaded in to the truck. You are taking the next step; the delivery is automated as well. Considering the auto-drive lanes in the San Diego area, I suspect it could be easily done. My original comment to a Webvan exec still remains -- what do you do when there is an extreme slowdown, do you lay-off the robots? (yes, I know, and I said it, but it is true)

damaged rentals

brad — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 09:03:56 -0800

This is a problem that many systems have to deal with. It is usually handled by insurance and reputation. It can be improved by recordings of the delivery trip, and diagnostics run in the equipment at drop-off and pick-up. But we already handle this problem with rental items today without these fancy diagnostics. Mostly by just eating it.

The hijack problem (piracy) is one that's been talked about for autonomous vehicles. Remember the main driver today is the military wanting to move cargo. They have a few more options available than civilians, but it is indeed considered an issue.

The bots will of course transmit video of the hijacking, and their location, until they are smashed or put in a faraday cage. Hijacking is possible of course but it's not going to be a trivial thing. Quite possibly neighbourhoods where hijackers hang out will not have companies willing to run bots through them if the insurance rates get too high.

Dream or not, we'll see. Certainly people regularly find themselves running to the store for things they need, and would be happy to get a cheap deliverbot service at the very least.

yet another problem

Anon Y. Mouse — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:42:40 -0800

I see you ignored the problems of hijacking and liability.
Here's another one to ignore:

Customer: "The robot delivery is here, and the X I
ordered is missing/incomplete/broken."

Service: "Well sir, it was there/complete/functional
when it left."

Customer: "I don't care, it's not now, and I'm not going
to pay!"

Who's right? How to resolve these disputes?

The economics of robot delivery just don't add up. With
big ticket/infrequently-used items, the time & cost of
delivery or picking it up are but a small fraction of
the price, so automation provides little benefit. You'd
want to go the other way -- i.e., flowers or candy, etc.
But there, one hijacking or accident wipes out all your
economic gains.

All I see are lame justifications for some geeks' wet dream
of robot vehicles; a hammer solution reaching desperately
for problem nails that don't exist. You can ignore the
real world, but that doesn't make it go away. Most people
don't want this and there's no advantage.

Timing and benefits

brad — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:05:48 -0800

While I agree you want your own vacuum for small spills, it would not be up to the fancy one. If the fancy one can be there in 3 minutes, do you even need the small one? 3 minutes, with a 20mph deliverbot just means one unit on call for ever 2-3 square miles (this is the bare minimum, of course, you need more, but it shows what you could get away with.)

It saves a lot more than $x/hour to leave a person out of the driver's seat. To have a driver, you need a truck able to handle a human and the cargo, not the tiny pod for just the cargo. And the driver has to sit there waiting. And if you have 5 requests you need 5 drivers ready at the depot. And you need big depots. A deliverbot depot is a small warehouse where the bot can quickly go down an aisle, grab the desired rental item and scoot out the door. It's a garage somewhere. (After robocars, I expect there will be some garages for rent.)

Handing out in person is actually not necessarily cheaper if it needs a person and a warehouse where people can go and park. And it's vastly more inconvenient for the person. I'm talking about a system where you are at home, and say, "I need an X" and within 3-5 minutes an X is sitting in the garage. To me, if the time is short, it's almost as good as having the thing in my garage all the time. (The deliverbot can be given a code to open the garage door.)

Except in some ways it's better. It doesn't take up space in my garage, it's a much higher quality unit than I would have bought, and it cost me less than buying.

Now a vacuum may not be the perfect example, since you might have to clean it every time which you don't do at home. (Of course, bump up the robotics and then it is cleaned out by other robots, or is a robot itself, like the Roomba's grandson.)

It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's portable, and a quality unit is expensive. It might be a fancy kitchen appliance or a machine tool. It might be a high-resolution projector for a presentation. It might be a backup disk you want to store offsite or a specialized tool. If it can come by deliverbot for a low price, it could make sense.

Not own a $200 vacuum

Anon Y. Mouse — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:56:17 -0800

Not own a $200 vacuum cleaner? What a laugh! Whoever
suggested that has never spilled anything, or had a
pet who came inside after rolling in leaves. Why would
I want to wait for a rental in those situations? And
one can get a pretty good vacuum for a couple hundred
dollars these days... what could a $2000 vacuum possibly
do any better?

And if one is renting an expensive, specialized piece of
equipment like a lathe or a band saw, then delivery is
only going to be a fraction of the cost. Robo-delivery
presents little advantage there.

Then there's the problem you probably haven't thought
of -- hijacking! What's to stop criminals to taking
the cargo, or even the whole vehicle to crack open
at leisure?

Consider also the liability issues.

"The deliverbot might be programmed to be extra-cautious
and slow around anything like a person."

Right, because we all know that machinery/software is always
easy to design properly, and always works as designed!

"if a deliverbot crashes into an inanimate object, it just
costs money"

Whoops, there goes all the savings, plus N months' profits!

A blog of crazy ideas indeed... another solution in search
of problem. This is the kind of stuff that makes it into
"in the future, we'll..." articles, but doesn't past muster
when a real-world cost/benefit analysis is done.

specific deliverbot benefits?

drewp — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:34:17 -0800

I didn't quite understand the benefit of deliverbot, as compared to the same service with people. Is it just $x/hr cheaper to leave the person out of the driver's seat, so I'll rent y% more things than I do now? Or is it more about the promise of unusual delivery times that's going to change my behavior?

Certainly the cheapest way to do a vacuum rental business is to hand out the vacuums in-person at a warehouse. Some of your customers drive by your warehouse on their way to and from work, and maybe some of your farther customers would use an existing parcel delivery service. I'm not seeing how deliverybot can change the game, there, except maybe to shave off a little part of the rental cost.

"Given the ability of

dieta — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:01:09 -0800

"Given the ability of several cars to navigate a complex route in the recent DARPA competition completely autonomously and a General Motors project to demonstrate driverless cars traveling at 60 miles per hour by 2008, the projection of RFID-controlled cars by the year 2056 is a good example of linear thinking," says Ray Kurzweil. "I believe we can anticipate cars to be doing much of our driving for us in the 2020s if not sooner."

No word on flying cars. Personally, I think anybody who says we won't have them by 2010 is engaged in linear thinking. But then, I'm no Kurzweil.

UPDATE FROM STEPHEN: "Beyond Tomorrow" had a segment recently about an anti-collision radar system for passenger cars. Such a system could really cut down on distracted driver-type accidents. It also looked to be ready to market in Europe.

The Mercedes test vehicle has long range and short range radar systems that surround the car. The car is programmed to stop rather than rearend somebody if the driver is distracted.

There are a couple of practical reasons why we'll have driver assist systems for awhile before we'll see complete automation. First, these initial driver assist systems won't have to be anywhere near as sophisticated as those systems that competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge.

Second, there's the issue of products liability. This Mercedes is equipped with a "driver assist" system, not full automation. It's a little like a driver's ed car. There's a safety brake, but you are still the driver in command. If you have an accident, then (arguably) you couldn't blame the manufacturer unless a system malfunction directly caused the accident.

But if the car is doing it's own driving, then obviously the car manufacturer would have a difficult time avoiding responsibility in the event of an accident.

So, we'll see a slow march toward full automation via various "driver assist" systems. At first it will be simple collision avoidance by braking, then collision avoidance by steering out of the way of a crash.

Eventually these systems will take on all the tasks associated with driving. Then you'll just give it a destination and sit back and enjoy the ride.

UPDATE AGAIN: Well, that didn't take long. Apparently Honda UK is offering a driver's assist sytem that amounts to a full freeway autopilot.

I'll be taking a wait-and-see approach.

H/T to eisendorn.

______________________
Submited by : Dietas

Brad, I think another

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 21:19:21 -0700

Brad,
I think another pathway would be a car share program. The big inconvenience of car share programs is you have to get to and from one of the parking areas for the car share cars. It would be great to be able to call up a car and when i am done with it send it on its way from were ever I am.