Are Delivery Drones the Wave of the Future?

I was sitting at a local sporting event when, during one of the breaks, an advertisement for a ticket broker came on the big screen. It showed a hangar-like facility where a staff member walked an envelope through the building to a specialized area where he proceeded to load the envelope into a canister. As he walked away, a drone buzzed overhead, swooped down and with careful precision, scooped up the canister and flew off.

The drone did what drones do best; it flew at low, rooftop levels across town providing spectacular aerial video footage before it began to descend on its “target”. The target in this case was a quite unassuming home with a typical soccer mom waiting out front.

The drone swooped down, released its payload and sped off into the distance. The woman opened the canister and inside was a pair of hockey tickets for an upcoming game. Could this be real? Are they really delivering tickets by drone now?

I was ready to place an order right then when the announcer came over the loudspeaker to remind us all that it was just an advertisement and any ticket orders would not be delivered by drone.

My heart sank as I wanted to be the first on my street to have a drone fly over my home and deliver premium seats to the big game. This got me thinking about why I originally believed the advertisement to be true. Didn’t Amazon consider using drones to deliver packages at one time? Yes, and they are still working on it.

It seems that as the RC drone hobby becomes extremely popular, we are seeing more people flying drones around parks, playgrounds and neighborhoods and still more people using the same hobby drones to take real estate photos, pictures of farm crops, high school graduations and even capture those impossible to get wedding shots that they can rave about for years to come.

Why not then, have delivery drones dropping off everything from mail to packages, even pizzas and other take-out items. Imagine the possibilities. Less traffic on the roads, faster delivery times since the drones don’t have to wait for traffic lights or even follow paved roadways and, of course, the fact that having a drone deliver something right to your door would be the coolest thing that happened to you all year.

Maybe one day we will see this type of drone delivery service, but until then, I will stick to practicing with the RC drones and perfecting my flying skills just in case. This could be my new future job. 🙂