Personalized Drone Delivery: the new Personal Computer?

Miniaturization, robotics, and the hastening automation economy are coming together in interesting new ways. Personal drone delivery services could be a fast-arriving concept. Amazon announced PrimeAir in November 2013, to possibly be ready for launch in 2015 pending US FAA regulations of personal drone airspace. In the ideal case, the service would deliver ordered items within 30-60 minutes. Similarly, Dubai and the UAE announced a personalized drone delivery service including eye-scanning verification for government documents. Personalized or at least targeted micro-delivery via drones is not a new idea. One obvious use is delivering aid, medicine, and other supplies to remote, war-torn, economically-strapped, crisis-based, or other remote or sensitive geographic areas (Singularity University example: Matternet). As is the case with many newtech ideas, a modern version of personal remote delivery was conceptualized in Vernor Vinge’s Rainbow’s End (2006).

The potential cost savings, convenience, and efficiency gains make a strong argument in favor of personalized drone delivery. Immediately many human-based delivery and courier services could be put out of business. Supply chains could be reinvented to support services that still need both a human and drone aspect (such as court filings and within office building deliveries), although amphibious drones could be just around the corner: robotic-on-land and flying-in-air for urban office and apartment building deliveries. Hiro Protagonist is out of a job not due to landing in a swimming pool but due to personalized drone pizza delivery services!

Longer-term implications could include a redesign of how space is used. Personal drone delivery services could become like the pneumatic tubes or dumbwaiters of the past, including the secure vestibule area already envisioned for delivery at home and office entry areas. Downtown traffic and congestion could be significantly reduced. An obvious challenge is quality of life degradation due to noise and the visual detritus of drones. Are human civilizations relegated to becoming the hive substrate for the incessant and pervasive buzzing of personal drones circling as they conduct their business? Hopefully the 'Prius drone' (e.g.; quiet) and pleasing visual design will be part of the modernization. Personal drone delivery could be an important intermediary step on the way to the 3D home printing of all desired objects.

Figure 1: Let them Eat Drones (photography drone at Versailles). Image Credit

Dubai: possibilities or probabilities?

There is an exciting energy that emanates from Dubai and the UAE, an aura of possibility and momentum that is refreshing and reduced but not fully hijabed by the global economic crisis and local market bubble burst (gulf area GDP growth of 1% expected in 2009 vs. average worldwide contraction). Things can happen very quickly in the UAE because it is a managed economy with greenfield opportunities;

socially, economically and politically, everything is architected;

if the right person can be reached, decisions can be made quickly, world-class talent can be recruited and economic incentives, funding and operational support can be provided. However, just because things can happen quickly does not mean they do or will.

Strategic plan for the UAE
What would have to happen to make Dubai and the UAE have a higher probability of being a long-term world-leading society, to shift into being an ideas and innovation-driven economy?

First, there would need to be a wide-spread awareness and interest in really being a leading society of the future, moving beyond energy, cargo, financial services, construction and tourism.

Second would be building a culture of ideas and innovation, having world-class scientists based onsite in a large scale conducting research and development. This could be executed by either building research labs or more fundamentally, by establishing one or more externally-recognized world-class accredited universities with scientists and technologists focusing the majority of their time on research.

Third would be creating a broad culture for entrepreneurship including standard financing entry, expansion and exit mechanisms, liberalization of visas, business licensing and facilities requirements (e.g.; legality of home-based software programming businesses; visas automatically issued to those with computer science degrees) and the establishment or improvement of bankruptcy laws.

Example: Masdar City

Status as of March 24, 2009 and in Designer Mockup

Masdar, city of the future, is an interesting experiment that if executed correctly could be a pilot project for a larger effort, expanding from energy and materials to infotech and biotech. Masdar could benefit from a research focus at the MIST university and a tight linkage between university tech transfer, tech incubation and entrepreneurial efforts in Masdar City.

Post-scarcity economy

The long-term future economy is a post-scarcity economy (PSE), where substantially all human material needs are easily met at low cost or for free. The term post-scarcity economy is a bit of a misnomer since only the scarcity of material goods is likely to recede. The economy itself and scarcity as an economic dynamic will probably persist, for example, scarcity of time, energy, processing power and creative ideas.

The future economy will likely be realized in phases. Some material goods would be replaced or provided at near-zero cost at the outset, perhaps certain classes of items or goods like fuel, then more items such as food, then substantially all material goods. Fancier items like high-end designed objects and medical treatments would probably not be available in the earlier phases.

What will happen to services as material goods are increasingly provided at minimal cost? Initially services would be unchanged, but over time, nearly all current services could be replaced by technology-advanced near-zero cost alternatives. As Josh Hall suggests in Nanofuture, nanobots could provide daily hair-trimming and nano-foglets could create new hairstyles on demand. Robots are already available for lawn-mowing upkeep (Robomow). Telemedicine could be used for medical diagnostics and treatments. Artificial Intelligences (AIs) may be consulted for tax and stock advice.

Over time, public services such as police and fire protection could be provided by trusted AI networks and other mechanisms. Wireless sensor networks and cams may shift the nature of crime and policing activity. Future building materials may be impervious to fire and possibly self-reconstruct following earthquakes or other damage.

New virtual and other non-traditional services requiring intelligent attention from AIs or human minds, particularly in providing entertainment, learning and means of interesting and productive engagement, will probably be a growth area. The future economy will likely be transacted with multiple currencies, a variety of monetary currencies and additional supplementary currencies such as time, attention, intention, reputation and ideas.

Read more >>