Latest / Mark and Pete / Amazon UK's First Drone Delivery Service.

Transcript

Amazon UK's First Drone Delivery Service. · Mark and Pete

• 0:05
  Amazon UK's first drone delivery service.
• 0:08
  Welcome to Mark and Pete. Well, Britain now has drone
• 0:13
  deliveries and the pigeons are furious.
• 0:16
  Yes, this is Mark and Pete, 2 blokes with half an opinion.
• 0:20
  Now here's our first thought. Now the land lies.
• 0:25
  Parcels delivered by drone means goods can be easily flown, but
• 0:30
  if they're dropped and simply thrown, they made land in the
• 0:34
  unknown. Well, yes.
• 0:36
  Amazon has become the first retailer in the United Kingdom
• 0:39
  to start a drone delivery service, which is being launched
• 0:43
  in Darlington, County Durham. Now packages have to weigh a
• 0:48
  certain size. But Mr. Pete, I have a certain
• 0:51
  view on this. I have seen footage of this
• 0:55
  particular inaugural delivery and I do have some, well I must
• 1:02
  say impactful, shall we say. But what say you about the idea
• 1:07
  of drones flying around your environment and to your home
• 1:12
  with the unknown of where the drone is going to land?
• 1:17
  Well, it's interesting that when when we talk about drones in
• 1:20
  this way, I'm always reminded of the end scene from one of the
• 1:25
  Spider Man movies where he defeats a whole army of drones
• 1:30
  and their main ability is to track you down in large numbers
• 1:34
  and. Shoot you.
• 1:35
  So yes, it always regards such drones with suspicion.
• 1:41
  But my main thing is I just, it's one of those things, Maybe
• 1:45
  I'm just a Luddite, but I don't quite believe that it's going to
• 1:48
  work properly. That's my reaction to it really.
• 1:52
  You're going to really deliver what you know, the all sorts of
• 1:56
  technology gets things wrong, things get sent song to the sent
• 2:01
  to the wrong address, your emails get bounced.
• 2:05
  You know, all sorts of things happen when you try and use
• 2:09
  technology. Something happens that you don't
• 2:11
  know about yet. So I foresee, although obviously
• 2:15
  I'm a big fan of Amazon as we mark a big, big fans, but I
• 2:20
  foresee issues, shall we say. Well, let's start with this
• 2:25
  particular case. So interestingly, when they
• 2:29
  delivered this particular package, which incidentally has
• 2:32
  to weigh less than 2.2 kilograms and incidentally cannot be
• 2:38
  further from an Amazon fulfilment centre, which is
• 2:42
  about 7 1/2 miles. So that has a certain range, but
• 2:45
  the point here is, is that I was expecting this very adept,
• 2:50
  carefully flighted craft to be able to land perfectly and
• 2:56
  precisely on the ground. No, what actually happened was
• 3:00
  this large tube which is inserted in the middle of the
• 3:04
  drone from many, many metres in in the sky.
• 3:08
  Drop this package like a fancy bomb.
• 3:12
  Now I thought, well the recipient there, if they'd order
• 3:14
  their cut glass specialities, they may have had extra cut
• 3:19
  glass, but in fact, luckily a farmer had ordered some gloves.
• 3:23
  Well that's fine, OK. But my point, yes, I do have
• 3:27
  some concerns here because look, at the end of the day, if you're
• 3:31
  going to sort of drop things in people's gardens, who knows what
• 3:35
  some unsuspecting pigeon, cat and or person might have to
• 3:40
  encounter, yes. Yes, that's true.
• 3:42
  Yes, I mean, I think you know, some quite remarkable technology
• 3:46
  at use there. The Proverbs 27 verse 20 comes
• 3:49
  to mind. The eyes of a man are never
• 3:51
  satisfied. Are you not impressed that they
• 3:53
  can deliver like this to the right address?
• 3:56
  Maybe it's in the garden, but finding the right house, I mean
• 3:59
  that's it's quite, it's quite impressive, isn't it?
• 4:03
  Well, I think that the technology is impressive.
• 4:05
  Now this is where I think it can add value because drones are
• 4:09
  being trialled by the National Health Service, NHS, as it's
• 4:13
  commonly known in the United Kingdom to deliver blood
• 4:15
  supplies. Now these are everything from
• 4:18
  blood supplies to London as well as remote communities.
• 4:22
  And this is where I think it can fit to Orkney Isles.
• 4:25
  Now, this is a good idea because if you can't get goods by land
• 4:30
  or by sea and you need a drone, it's perfect because then that
• 4:34
  way you can sort of navigate terrain easily.
• 4:37
  It's not a problem. But when you think about it from
• 4:39
  a domestic perspective, that's where I have some concerns.
• 4:43
  I have visions of people climbing their roofs, their
• 4:47
  parked trees, you know, scrambling through, you know,
• 4:52
  drains, etcetera, trying to find their goods.
• 4:56
  There is another factor here, Mr. P, which is the idea that if
• 5:01
  we had competition and to Amazon and there were licences that
• 5:07
  were offered, I could see that there could be clashes in the
• 5:10
  sky. I I have some concerns that are
• 5:13
  what you mean maybe. You mean drone wars is?
• 5:17
  A drone war occurring where we're going to end up with some,
• 5:22
  some, some sort of chaos in the skies there.
• 5:24
  Is a There is a well, I think it's possible that there could
• 5:28
  be underhand doings to try and get the one up over a rival
• 5:36
  company. That's true.
• 5:37
  I mean, you think about back in the day when they started in, in
• 5:42
  this country at least having a fire service and sometimes it's
• 5:47
  recorded. You know, you're talking about
• 5:50
  hundreds of years ago. Obviously no one would do
• 5:52
  anything like this today when they had private fire services.
• 5:56
  People would set fire to houses in order to get their fire
• 6:00
  service used. And also they would only put out
• 6:03
  the fire if you paid them. So sort of like a protection
• 6:07
  racket and that was going on. And I think people are the same
• 6:11
  these days. So there could well be that sort
• 6:13
  of school daggery happening. But you know, yes, it's
• 6:16
  interesting with this sort of technology, Mr. Mark, that you
• 6:20
  get a technology solving a problem.
• 6:23
  What is the problem? Well, we haven't got enough
• 6:24
  postman or, or couriers to deliver all the things from
• 6:28
  Amazon people like and they don't get there quick enough.
• 6:31
  So we have a technology solves the problem.
• 6:33
  It can get there quicker at the moment only if you're in a 7 1/2
• 6:36
  mile radius, but it, it can do it.
• 6:38
  But then that feeds our appetite, doesn't it?
• 6:43
  Why can't it be across the whole country?
• 6:45
  Why can't it be faster? Why can't it be quicker?
• 6:47
  Why can't it be easier? Why doesn't it just put it in my
• 6:49
  hand? It's more and more and more is
• 6:51
  wanted. The human heart remains restless
• 6:55
  and technology feeds into this. Yes, we just want more and more.
• 7:00
  They can never. Well, we, we, we do want more.
• 7:03
  And of course, as consumers, we want life to be easy.
• 7:06
  Now, what's interesting is Darlington in the United Kingdom
• 7:09
  is currently the only place outside of the United States
• 7:13
  where Amazon is doing drone deliverers.
• 7:15
  Well, I wonder how many other towns and cities throughout the
• 7:20
  United Kingdom will see Amazon appearing on your doorstep or
• 7:24
  maybe somewhere else. I, I have to say that when you
• 7:29
  think about drones, drones are used in many ways because
• 7:32
  they're used in warfare, of course, as we've seen, they're
• 7:35
  also used in entertainment. Many people would have seen on
• 7:38
  stage performances, some very clever lighting and things like
• 7:42
  that. So I see a place for drones when
• 7:45
  it comes to delivering consumer goods to your doorstep.
• 7:48
  That's where I think the technology needs to rethink
• 7:52
  itself because I think that my my also concern is imagine this
• 7:59
  scenario. So you say, for example, you
• 8:01
  order some cat food or something like that and this drone
• 8:04
  suddenly was was developed. It lands on the ground and then
• 8:08
  suddenly the cat decides to jump on it and.
• 8:12
  Yes, you lose the cat, I thought.
• 8:13
  You lose the cat, I thought. You say he drops the tin and
• 8:17
  brains the cat, I suppose. Well, that.
• 8:19
  Could happen too, yes. Yes, there are problems.
• 8:22
  It's with with every bit of technology that's a problem.
• 8:26
  But with drones flying through the sky, it does seem to me that
• 8:32
  maybe our desire for this technological solution, for this
• 8:39
  futuristic vision of being able to have deliveries that have
• 8:43
  flown to us automatically, is making us ignore the safety
• 8:48
  risks. Because we always used to be, I
• 8:50
  think, very, very careful about where we allowed anyone to fly,
• 8:53
  including drones. Well indeed, and and on that
• 8:57
  front. So we have some breaking news
• 8:59
  that the Stalk Society of delivering babies are very
• 9:03
  concerned.