December 6, 2014 at 18:20Delivery of goods by drones can cost 20 cents
Professor of the Swiss Higher Technical School Raffaello D'Andrea in the collection of scientific articles IEEE Automation Science and Engineering published the results of his study on the economic feasibility of using drones for the delivery of goods. After analyzing the various components of such a cost, the professor concluded that for companies whose business components include the delivery of goods, the price of such a service can be about 20 US cents.
The competence of the scientist in this area is beyond doubt: he is one of the main consultants of the Flying Machine Arena project , as well as the co-founder of Kiva Systemse-commerce robotics company that Amazon bought in March 2012 for $ 775 million.
Suppose that the flight distance for delivery will be no more than 10 km and the payload of the drone (in fact, the load) will not exceed 2 kg: a lot of consumer goods fall into this range, including the well-worn example - pizza. Having made some more assessments regarding the technical parameters, the professor comes to the conclusion that delivery in this way will cost only about 10 cents in terms of the cost of energy spent on the flight, which cannot be considered profitable, even very roughly estimating the cost of delivering pizza on a regular car with an internal combustion engine .
On the other hand, if we take into account the cost of the drone itself at about $ 1000, add the maintenance costs of 20% of its cost per year and determine the depreciation period of 5 years, then you can get an estimate of the cost of shipping the goods at 20 cents, which is still an order of magnitude less than Amazon pays now: from $ 2 to $ 8 per unit of cargo. Then, if the professor’s assessment is correct, then for Amazon the savings can be a fantastic $ 3.538 billion at 2013 prices.
In fact, of course, everything is not so simple and there are a number of complex problems that have not yet been completely resolved. For example, really accurate navigation in urban conditions, taking into account all kinds of flight situations (if you consider the drone to be completely autonomous) or the scenario for delivering the same pizza to an apartment building requires development, and perhaps the delivery price will need to be adjusted upwards.
The competence of the scientist in this area is beyond doubt: he is one of the main consultants of the Flying Machine Arena project , as well as the co-founder of Kiva Systemse-commerce robotics company that Amazon bought in March 2012 for $ 775 million.
Suppose that the flight distance for delivery will be no more than 10 km and the payload of the drone (in fact, the load) will not exceed 2 kg: a lot of consumer goods fall into this range, including the well-worn example - pizza. Having made some more assessments regarding the technical parameters, the professor comes to the conclusion that delivery in this way will cost only about 10 cents in terms of the cost of energy spent on the flight, which cannot be considered profitable, even very roughly estimating the cost of delivering pizza on a regular car with an internal combustion engine .
On the other hand, if we take into account the cost of the drone itself at about $ 1000, add the maintenance costs of 20% of its cost per year and determine the depreciation period of 5 years, then you can get an estimate of the cost of shipping the goods at 20 cents, which is still an order of magnitude less than Amazon pays now: from $ 2 to $ 8 per unit of cargo. Then, if the professor’s assessment is correct, then for Amazon the savings can be a fantastic $ 3.538 billion at 2013 prices.
In fact, of course, everything is not so simple and there are a number of complex problems that have not yet been completely resolved. For example, really accurate navigation in urban conditions, taking into account all kinds of flight situations (if you consider the drone to be completely autonomous) or the scenario for delivering the same pizza to an apartment building requires development, and perhaps the delivery price will need to be adjusted upwards.