The Near Future - Stuff that excites me
May, 2013 (after MakerFaire and Hardware Innovation Workshop)
Entry 1 of ??? : MatterNet
You're can read this web page because information can get from A to B on the 'net. Your computer threw a request out into the ether, asking for this page. That request got tossed from router to router, 'til it got to SG's computer. That computer wrote the reply and threw it back onto the 'net, where, hop by hop, it got back to your computer.
What if you could do the same thing with physical stuff?
That's the idea behind MatterNet.
You build a small quadcopter. You build it with a standard-sized cargo box on the bottom. People come up to a kiosk, and they put their package into the box. If it fits, and weighs under two kilos, they get charged and the package is on its way. The quadcopter flies the package to its destination. If the destination is more than ten kilometers away, the copter lands at kiosks along the way to swap out its battery pack. It picks its route from kiosk to kiosk the same way information is routed from hop to hop around the 'net.
The service is in very early stage testing in Africa already. Their cost to deliver a 2 kilo package 10 km is 24 cents, which leaves them lots of room for profit and expansion. It's also a wide enough range to cover most big cities in a single hop. The current test version has no automated kiosks; it's dudes by tiny helopads swapping the batteries and packages by hand.
The big obstacle to this one, aside from the usual engineering challenges with anything this ambitious, is regulatory. The developed nations have outlawed robotic fliers in their cities already. That's one reason to start in Africa: they're allowed to. Second, it's direly needed there. Mud roads wash out in 85% of the continent, for at least part of the year. You need to get medicine to someone 10 km away, and it's a hard problem.
So when will we see it in the developed world? I imagine after enough Peace Corps workers come back from Africa to NYC saying, "They have flying robots that deliver everything there, why don't we?"
May, 2013 (after MakerFaire and Hardware Innovation Workshop)
Entry 1 of ??? : MatterNet
You're can read this web page because information can get from A to B on the 'net. Your computer threw a request out into the ether, asking for this page. That request got tossed from router to router, 'til it got to SG's computer. That computer wrote the reply and threw it back onto the 'net, where, hop by hop, it got back to your computer.
What if you could do the same thing with physical stuff?
That's the idea behind MatterNet.
You build a small quadcopter. You build it with a standard-sized cargo box on the bottom. People come up to a kiosk, and they put their package into the box. If it fits, and weighs under two kilos, they get charged and the package is on its way. The quadcopter flies the package to its destination. If the destination is more than ten kilometers away, the copter lands at kiosks along the way to swap out its battery pack. It picks its route from kiosk to kiosk the same way information is routed from hop to hop around the 'net.
The service is in very early stage testing in Africa already. Their cost to deliver a 2 kilo package 10 km is 24 cents, which leaves them lots of room for profit and expansion. It's also a wide enough range to cover most big cities in a single hop. The current test version has no automated kiosks; it's dudes by tiny helopads swapping the batteries and packages by hand.
The big obstacle to this one, aside from the usual engineering challenges with anything this ambitious, is regulatory. The developed nations have outlawed robotic fliers in their cities already. That's one reason to start in Africa: they're allowed to. Second, it's direly needed there. Mud roads wash out in 85% of the continent, for at least part of the year. You need to get medicine to someone 10 km away, and it's a hard problem.
So when will we see it in the developed world? I imagine after enough Peace Corps workers come back from Africa to NYC saying, "They have flying robots that deliver everything there, why don't we?"
Secondly, I second quadcopter deliveries in Africa!! Sounds like genius to me
xoxoxoxox