[Tomorrow the world? [If so, then Royalla, burritos and headache-tablets seem like pretty prosaic places to start.
[Royalla's not a town. It was originally the name of a sheep and cattle station. It became a place-name, including several other large grazing properties. It includes a sub-division of maybe 50 x 10 acre rural-house blocks, which is presumably where they would like to deliver to. [The area's attraction may be that it's twice as far from the nearest shop as the earlier trial area, the Googong sub-division of smaller house-blocks. (A cynical guess might be that they've worn out their welcome in their first trial area. Occasional free BBQs mightn't make up for the disturbance). [It's also curious that they think that a 35km stretch along a ridgeline, starting under a flight path, is a good place for a trial. [The proposition that people in a modestly-populated area are "prime users for a drone delivery service" sounds like economic madness to me. The interests of burrito and pharmaceutical retailers alike are best served by making sure that the costs of transporting goods to their customers are borne by their customers, not by the retailer. [However, there have been no reports of deaths, injuries, damage, or unduly upset domestic animals or livestock; so I guess it must be progress.] Google trials burrito delivery by drone in NSW Ry Crozier Oct 17, 2017 2:19PM Partners with Guzman Y Gomez. https://www.itnews.com.au/news/google-trials-burrito-delivery-by-drone-in-nsw-475578 Google Australia has kicked off trials of drone deliveries for Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez and Chemist Warehouse to farms on the NSW/ACT border. Co-leader of Google's Project Wing, James Ryan Burgess, said the trials involved farmers near Royalla, a town approximately 35km from Canberra. Residents of the area face a 40-minute round trip to pick up supplies of any kind, and are therefore considered prime users for a drone delivery service. Burgess said the first two retail partners for the trial would teach Google "what we need to do to ensure that orders are channeled to their staff smoothly and that they can easily load goods onto our delivery drones". In the case of Guzman y Gomez, "we want to learn how much notice to give them for a drone's arrival so that they can cook, pack, and load it in one well-timed workflow". For discount pharmaceutical chain Chemist Warehouse, Google wants to understand how to pick and place products into packages that can be flown via drone. "They're offering nearly 100 products across categories like vitamins, dental care, sun care, and over-the-counter medicines," Burgess said. "We'll learn how to optimise how many items we're able to deliver per flight." The trials on the NSW-ACT border are expected to run for several months. They are also likely to extend to local emergency services, with Burgess noting plans to work with the Australian Capital Territory Rural Fire Service. Project Wing sits under Google's "moonshot factory", known as GoogleX. -- Roger Clarke http://www.rogerclarke.com/ Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd 78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 2 6288 6916 http://about.me/roger.clarke mailto:[email protected] http://www.xamax.com.au/ Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law University of N.S.W. Visiting Professor in Computer Science Australian National University _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
