Why is everyone here so negative about this? This is pretty cool!

Tax payer dollars? Also, why waste? It might pay off with more efficient and cost effective delivery. R&D is never a waste. You can't tell if something will work if you haven't tried.

Because I've seen this movie before, and it did not turn out well for the humans.

Would be cool, if it wasn't so hard to find a job already. Now androids are going to take the rest. If I would be able to buy an android for doing house chores then yes it would be cool

You are wise

Pass the blunt

Amazon still can't even figure out how to reliably get human drivers door passcodes into an apartment building, and then into its mail/package locker room.

The map system it uses for telling drivers how to get around a city to make deliveries is also garbage, can't account for traffic, punishes people for using faster side routes to get to the same place, tells you to park in areas that either have no parking at all, or where parking there would majorly disrupt traffic, or assumes available street parking will always exist in places and times it almost never does.

I once did an Amazon delivery gig where they booked me in for the time slot, I get to the FC, after waiting an hour they tell half of us: 'oops we booked too many drivers, so today you all get $200 for showing up and doing nothing, go home now'

???

Amazons “genius” packing bots will throw a tiny fragile thing with a medium size heavy thing in a box 16x too big along with a shred of packing material.

Can’t wait to have that same “genius” applied to the actual delivery itself.

Seriously, I make maybe 5 or 6 Amazon purchases per year. I would say at least 50% of those disappoint in some way: the item was misleadingly listed, or it was damaged in shipping, or it doesn’t arrive when the promised. I really don’t find it convenient at all.

Wonder how much copper is wired up in those things

That handrail makes it look like Mecha Mew

Update: It is day 126 and Amazon still can't figure out where my camera is.

I know where it is. Their delivery driver stole it. (Yes, I just charged back my credit card. Their response was to send me an incredibly smarmy and condescending form email asking why, as if they don't already know. And they lost the chargeback dispute, obviously.)

So maybe their robots won't steal your package. They'll just yeet it into a bush 65536 yards from your house in a random direction instead. On the bright side, you might occasionally get a package that belongs to someone else from the other side of town dropped on your lawn.

To both this and that I say no thanks; I don't use Amazon anymore.

What makes you think you can't have individualized instructions for harder to reach addresses? After the first failure it's pretty trivial to go out and fix it. Google does far more work maintaining maps and directions services.

Vs having a new delivery guy get confused every other week?

Down voted for the obvious observation. A drone just needs to get explicit instructions ones a report is filled and it won't be an issue. Google does more work on Google maps IMO.

Airspace rules are a huge factor there. I see delivery robots on the sidewalk often enough though.

I suspect most companies are still waiting out the testing and waiting for costs to be reduced.

I imagine they will scale back robot design and just throw from the truck.

They'll be vandalised almost immediately.

Technological unemployment is only going to get worse without a plan to support the people being replaced by automation. They can't just 'get another job'. As long as the benefits of this stuff only goes to shareholders, it can fuck off.

brb popping out to get that right now

Reminds me of these cheeseparade skits:

Not in Philly they won't lol