Poses a big privacy concern also.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: This past weekend, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made the surprising revelation that his company is working on a drone-based technology that can deliver modestly sized packages to consumers in as little as 30 minutes. The drones would operate within a radius of about ten miles, dropping packages that weigh no more than roughly five pounds to homes and offices in the viable delivery area.
The news has been met with both elation and skepticism, and both have their merits. After all, who wouldn’t like to order a new pair of shoes and have it at their doorstep in half an hour? On the other hand, no one wants to be walking their dog and accidentally get clunked in the head by an Amazon drone.
Bezos, who earlier this year salvaged the Washington Post by purchasing the newspaper for $250 million, is emerging as one of the savviest men in the tech and business worlds, becoming something of a new Steve Jobs. He is able to look at what people want and come up with an innovative way to satisfy that desire. Amazon has already entered the arena of original programming, and came up with a rather brilliant way of choosing its pilot shows by having viewers themselves pick which ones they like the most, and is now on the cutting-edge of delivery technology.
I, for one, will admit to being one of those who was over the moon when I heard Bezos unveil the drone idea in an interview on 60 Minutes. Deliver in a half-hour instead of a week — where do I sign up? Even UPS is considering utilizing drone technology in a manner similar to what Bezos has proposed for Amazon, and Google is also rumored to be looking into robotics technology like this. But is the drone idea a little too good to be true?
The security of having drones buzzing around is something that just can’t be ignored. The Federal Aviation Administration will likely have to weigh in on whether or not the drones pose a potential risk to air travel, and low-flying aircraft like helicopters and private Cessna-type planes will be affected. In fact, the FAA has already said that commercial unmanned flights within US airspace are a strict no-no, but that could always change between now and 2015.
Bezos says that the drones would not need human operators; instead they would simply get GPS coordinates, fly to where the coordinates say (somehow avoiding things power lines and birds), drop off the package and fly back. Somehow, I can’t imagine that would ever fly (pun intended) with the FAA, which would require some kind of human supervision and oversight for this long-shot proposal to ever see the light of day.
Most importantly, however, is the technology behind the drone. What kind of software does it run on? What kind of hardware is used to build it? How expensive could these things be, and frankly, how safe are they from being hacked?
We’re in a world where basically any software can be hacked. Someone sitting in an internet cafe in eastern Europe can hijack computer screens in California and make them do just about anything. There’s no reason to believe that the software keeping the Amazon drones running won’t be susceptible to the same kind of criminality.
Regardless of it the drones are manned or un-manned, both present their own set of risks:
Noted hacker and software researcher Samy Kamkar, who was arrested back in 2005 for hacking MySpace with something he called the “Samy Worm,” told NBC News that he has created his own drone that is capable of hacking into other drones within its area and turning them into “zombies,” making them do whatever he wants. The kicker is that such a drone isn’t even expensive — the most costly part of building his machine, says Kamkar, was buying that actual drone itself, which was a Parraot AR.Drone 2 quadcopter device that is commercially available for just $300.
In essence, if you buy the new iPad from Amazon, shelling out at least $500 for something that is well within the Amazon drone’s ability to deliver, a hacker drone that flies by can theoretically be able to identify what your package is, hack into the Amazon drone, and tell it to deliver that iPad somewhere else.
Surely Amazon and Jeff Bezos have considered this possibility, and will install fail-safes to ensure that even if something like that were to happen, they could trace the drone’s flight history and nab the perpetrator. The drones will certainly have some time of security camera installed on them to see who interacts with the drones and help subdue potential criminals.
But a camera on a drone that flies around over residential areas delivering packages to doorsteps also introduces a privacy concern, much like the one Google faced for its Maps and Earth programs that had alarmingly close-up footage of neighborhood streets, along with the vehicles and people that populate them. How safe would you feel about someone at Amazon being able to look into and around your home when the drone is delivering your package at your doorstep?
The other risk of having a person actually piloting the drone is simple and, frankly, probably unavoidable: basic human error. If Amazon’s drone delivery idea takes off (again, pun intended) and is affordably priced for the average consumer, there could be thousands of such deliveries occurring every single day. It’s only a matter of time before a sloppy drone operator accidentally crashes two drones, destroying both them and the goods they were carrying.
The crash scenario is equally feasible for unmanned drones, as well — perhaps even more probable in that case.
Then there’s cost: these drones will not be cheap to make. On top of that, Amazon will have to create bases for them to fly out of, meaning most major metropolitan areas will need to have not just an Amazon office, but an entire distribution center that houses the goods these drones are supposed to deliver. Currently, Amazon has headquarters in Seattle, “fulfillment centers in 14 states, customer service centers in three states (one of which, Washington, overlaps with the 14 other centers), and “other locations” — in Phoenix, Las Vegas, New York City, and Herndon, Virginia.
The prospect of automated package delivery is undoubtedly exciting, evoking ideas of society moving in a futuristic direction a la The Jetsons or Blade Runner. Who knows, flying cars may not be that far off, either. But the reality is that, like any new technology, bugs will need to be eliminated, risks need to be addressed before something bad has already happened, and costs need to come down enough for the program to even be affordable.
The idea is good; now, we just need to see if its execution will be, too.