HELLO FUTURE: Sky Routes & Super Sleighs: How Drones Will Rewrite the Supply Chain

Speaker 1 (00:07):
All right, So I've been thinking a lot about supply chains,
especially how you know, the reindeer are flying around the
world in one night, and We've got all of these
gifts that the big man in the North Pole are
dropping off. And I'm thinking to myself, maybe the reindeers
are the og drones. Hello Future, it's me keV and
this is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier. The planet
is Earth. The year is twenty twenty five. My guest
is the University of Southern California's professor John Gunner Carlson.
He's advised everybody from DARPA to the military to Toyota
on supply chain and logistics. Okay, John, what can us
people who want to have drone delivery learn from Santa's reindeer.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well, first of all, if you're living in the right
locations in the United States, you could get a drone
delivery to your bank today. There are places in the
US right now, in Texas, Phoenix, I want to say,
places where people tend to have lots of space and
big yards where if you wanted, you could get you know,
a toblerne and a bottle of Fiji water dropped off
in your backyard, where I would say drones and reindeer
are perhaps not one and the same is that Santa's
sleigh has this massive sack, right, he carries lots of stuff.
Now a drone is limited. A drone can't carry tons
of items.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Obviously, the holiday is big rush for all of this stuff,
but even year round, Why should I care about drone delivery?
Obviously I would assume it's not just interesting and cool.
But if you're from a corporation perspective, they must be
thinking that it's more efficient. Why is it? Why is
there's this sudden conversation about drone deliveries.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
It is very efficient when you have something that's extremely
time sensitive. So where drone delivery has been the most
transformed remative in my opinion, would be there's a company
called Zipline that delivers medicine to people in places like
rural Africa where the road infrastructure is not very well developed,
and so the ability to get things in a really critical,
time sensitive way from point A to point B is
where you see the biggest societal impact. We're experimenting in
the United States on that kind of mode as well.
Alaska has actually been really at the forefront of this
kind of development because of the large presence of rural
communities they have that are inaccessible by road for long
periods of the year. So it becomes the difference between
thriving and struggling when you don't have roads that you
can use and you can get things to people in
a timely fashion. And then of course as consumers we
benefit from that with all the side consequences and the
research that's developed and so forth.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
What about cities, or not even cities, but more highly
populated areas. It's kind of like back in World War
One when they would drop food for lack of a
better exams in different zones. I mean, drones is really
the next delivery of that. So it's definitely a potential
good use case of goodwill. But what about in cities
and suburbs.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Absolutely so, you already see developers talking about building apartment
and condo complexes with big courtyards that are sort of
drone ready. There's a company based out of I think
Mountain View, California, just outside San Jose called Maternet where
if you want, you can go on their website if
you live in the Bay Area and schedule a demo
where they'll drop you off a tobleron and a bottle
of Fiji water in the middle of Sunny Vale. And
so where it's transformative, where it's helpful, is that it
is a cheap way to get something in an extremely
narrow time window. Right there really isn't a way for
me to get you know, if traffic is bad and
I urgently need something, right, maybe it's not life saving medicine,
but it's for a party and I ran out of
club soda or something, and I say, look, I need
this thing. You know, I'm willing to pay a premium
on it. I'm not willing to pay a curry to
drive all the way over here. And maybe traffic makes
that prohibitive. But anyone who has a sense of urgency
for something that they need can benefit from this kind
of technology, especially if the item is small, you know,
five pounds or so.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Do you predict in the future Santa has the chimney,
But do you predict in the future that homes of
the future will have a drone delivery post on their property.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Well, if you have a yard, you're already pretty well
set up for that. So if you have any kind
of ten by ten square foot space. These drones are
pretty accurate. They can hold their position pretty well, so
the needs as far as real estate for a single
family home are pretty reasonable. I do predict that you're
going to see a lot of as you already do,
larger developments, apartments and condos, that sort of thing also
being constructed with this kind of use in mind. Right, Oh,
you go to the courtyard and you meet the drone
or it's you know, some driveway in the front or something.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
How many years away are we from most Americans relying
on a drone or it not being uncommon.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
I think twenty twenty five is truly the gear where
it begins to become mainstream. Two data points for that,
I would say June of this year, the presidential administration
signed an executive order that said we want the US
to become a leader in drone delivery. That was last June.
They lifted a ton of red tape off of the
existing regulations that were making it hard for these businesses
to thrive because you don't want a drone falling out
of the sky and hitting someone on the head. They
relaxed a lot of that made it a lot easier to.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Get Honestly, my mother in the pandemic literally almost got
hit on the head with the druon and she was
on the phone with me when it happened. I said,
mob watch out anyway, keep going.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yes, So there are great advancements in safety protocols since
the previous legislation was made on this, which was I
want to say twenty fifteen or sometime around then if
I remember correctly. So they've set the stage for this
to be more commercializable. Just this morning or maybe yesterday,
Uber Eats partnered with a company called ship which is
ground robots but similar kind of flavor to sort of
mainstream this kind of transport method for food delivery.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
What about like the US Postal Service and fat Ax
and ups and all of them. Are we using drones
and we don't even realize it.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Yes, these kinds of organizations do a lot of pilot programs.
Part of why it's not always suitable for them is
much of how they're able to succeed economically is through volume. Right,
they have a van loaded up with letters that drives
down a single street. Can be very efficient in terms
of you know, how much time it takes to drop
off a single letter, but if the US Postal Service
said we're using drones to deliver all the mail, you
wouldn't see that same kind of efficiency because the drone would.
Even though it's very fast and it's not affected by traffic,
it still has to go back and forth to the
post office quite a bit because it's limited in terms
of its payload. So likely you're not going to see
this as a replacement for your postal service or for
your shipments from Amazon that are coming from the other
side of the country. Rather, where you're going to see
this really making a difference is in things that you
urgently need in a really narrow time span, and you're
able to get those in ways that you simply couldn't
have done without.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
So you predict that the postal service van would likely
become more of a driverless car before it would be
serviced for drones.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
I think so yes, because it's not super time sensitive
to me. When you know, my bills show up in
the mail, I don't mind waiting a few days for that, right,
So things that aren't time sensitive, you don't really need
this kind of technology for that.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
I could see flower companies getting behind this.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
One hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, tell me more.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Yes, absolutely. Well, you know there's a there's the common
trope about it's February thirteenth, you suddenly make this horrible
realization that you haven't planned. So absolutely, flower delivery is
a fantastic example of something with the right weight. You
know that a bouquet of flowers is not super heavy,
and something that you could plan at the last minute.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Kind of fun too. The reason I like that as
an example, you know, I always say that Starbucks taught
us how to pay with our phones. I also think
that it's going to be triathletes, middle class Americans who
love to do triathlons. They're going to teach us all
how to use AR with our goggles and our heart
rate monitors and all of the gadgets that we use
to go work out. You know, Biotech is kind of
how I think of that. But the reason I like
this is I think it'd be kind of fun for
your significant other or your loved one in another state
to be hey, go outside, go outside, kids. You know,
there's a flower delivery coming from the drone. And I
think that actually could could help educate sort of what
you would need it for, and especially around the holidays,
there's something to be said about a drone that gets
in on the optics of a fun traditional delivery.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Absolutely, I was spot on it is. The novelty is tremendous,
and there actually have been examples before of drones being
used to this effect. It was a long time ago,
at least ten years, when there was a Valentine delivery
drone that was sort of red flagged by the FAA
that says you can't do this. So I think you're
probably onto something that's a fantastic use case. And yeah,
the novelty of here's a drone in your backyard. I
fly drones recreationally. I've done that myself before. I haven't
had the clever insight to deliver flowers, but I've certainly
landed in my friend's backyard and said, hey, have a
look at what you see out there. So absolutely, the
novelty is huge. It's exciting to see. I think you're
right on the money there. If I'll be honest, I
think you might have a killer You.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Know, where else actually is a better idea. I'm at
the Jersey Shore and I want to get a hot dog,
and I'm on the beach and it is really crowded
and I'm thinking to myself, when can I get my hogi?
When can I get my cheese steak? When can I
get my slushie? When can I get my lou dog?
And I'm going to go on an app and I'm
going to order it from Seagulls, which is the Seagulls
Drone Delivery. Look, I even have a name for it.
And then the seagull is actually the drone, and then
the drone's gonna give me my hot dog with sour kraut.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Absolutely, it would be ideal for that as well. Now,
one of the technological innovations that so you mentioned the
beach is crowded, right, so you might think landing a
drone in a crowded area is dangerous. Well, the good
news is modern delivery drones have this clever system with
a pulley in place, so the drone will actually stay
one hundred or two hundred feet above you and lower
the package on like a cable, so people don't have
to hear the noise, they don't have to worry at
all about any kinds of accidents the cable comes down.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
You could have a post like at the top of
the shore where the wood deck part is where you
could be sitting on the beach. No, little Johnny isn't
going to get whacked by the drone delivery thing of
Kev's HOGI that's lawsuit, okay, So but instead instead of
having to go onto the boardwalk or drive in traffic
with all the chaos, I could just go up to
the top of the beach where the drone delivery thing
is and get my food that way. I like it, John,
I like it. I'm a fan of drones. I just
had to meet the future moments for Valentine's Day, for
Santa Claus, and for summer vacation. Just think, if all
these drone companies should give me a call, I would
give them the best free advice. Probably not free, but
you know I would really help them communicate to the masses.
My friend. Bye bye, thank you.