They revolutionised online retailing when they entered the scene in 1994 and exactly 20 years later they come up with another revolutionary idea that could change the way you get stuff delivered. They are intent on teaching the world at large an art or two on delivery.
Lo behold! The time when you can get your potatoes delivered directly to your couch is not far away if Jeff Bezos has his way. Couch potatoes can order Big Mac and fries with diet coke from Mc Donalds and a DVD on yoga from Amazon all delivered at your footstep. A balanced diet delivered with instructions on how to burn the unbalanced calories the exotic way. Now that’s one healthy life style to lead.
It might find its way from the delivery station to the doorstep via GPS and what not, from there on with an extended app it will find you on your couch for a couple of $ more. I like the Idea. I could tweak it a little once near my couch to fetch my TV remote and a beer from my fridge too. Forgotten school assignments, science projects, lunch boxes and even a fresh pair of socks could be delivered by drones.
But in certain parts of the world it could create confusion with regard to the identity; there should be methods in place to distinguish between the one with a lethal payload and a non-lethal one. From an Indian perspective it will be interesting to see some of the challenges that the drone deliveries will face and on the positive side there are a whole lot of potential drone applications too. In fact this whole concept of air borne basket delivery was an Indian concept. Go to a middle class high rise in Bombay you will find neighbours sharing stuff between different levels. That all important missing green chillies when the curry is on the stove are all yours with a simple tug at the rope and a shout and in exchange you might have to send some tomatoes on its way back, some kind of a mid-air re-filling of grocery.
Imagine a drone navigating through the thick ‘manja’ laden kite traffic during a peak kite flying season in Triplicane in Madras. The ‘manja’ might just be strong enough to snap a key communication cable on the octocopter and cause it to malfunction and thereby delivering the sausage that was meant for Kevin of Kilpauk to Krishna Iyer in Mylapore. That’s sacrilege unless Krishna Iyer is a US return with a German wife who loves her Frankfurters. We might have to allot a dedicated air corridor for drones or impose a no fly zone for kites.
In Kerala I find a better use for the drones, these are days when it’s hard to find someone to climb coconut trees, why not use a sickle attached to the drones to fly up the tree and do the job. An improvised version could be developed for toddy tapping too and be named the Drunken Drones! Ha Ha if you are thinking of patenting any of these, it’s too late mate. I’ve done it already!! But our comrades would be up in arms against the drones and stage a bandh on account of this. But Comrades, the bandh unfortunately will only affect the mortals on road not the air borne drones. They could come up with an inbuilt stone pelting recognition system to change the altitude once they spot comrades down below.
Drones in Drains is where I will put my money on next, when manual scavenging is still so rampant in several parts of the world why not use Drones with a basket to go down in and clean up the drains. The application of drones in sanitation would certainly be noble idea.
How does it matter if you don’t get that music CD, or a book or that mouse pad or that Pizza within 30 minutes? There are more worthwhile uses of drone technology that will serve mankind better. Why don’t people get working on that? And by the way, I would sell the toddy tapping drunken drone patent only to Mallya and he might end up bottling Toddy and call it Woodpecker instead of Kingfisher!!!
We should know more about the use drones than the Americans…after all ‘Dron’acharya the teacher of Drones was Indian!!!
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