Will they have an exemption to allow deliveries near an airport, or other "no fly" zones, or are those customers just out of luck?
Apparently MANY people will be out of luck. Apparently the first deployment is intended in more rural suburban regions that they can reach within the designed range, but do not have a high enough population congestion to validate whatever delivery per mile statistic they like to use for regular drivers.
What I really like to envision is a large tractor trailer platform where the trailer has a mechanized roof that can open to deploy a fleet of delivery drones in one large pass, have them return, charge, and deploy again until the area is served.
The work Otto is doing with automated trucks right now means that this model in the very near future could enable fully automated delivery over any range inside the United States. That's a spicy meatball.
The big truck doesn't have to navigate dangerous narrow streets, just get close enough for the more minute control of the drone to deploy while it waits in an appropriate stopping area with more packages loaded into the magazine and all the energy and satellite networking support the drones need to stay operating.
This would also be in line with a lot of current DARPA initiativess the Air Force is looking at for National Defense.
If they're smart, they'll deliver the packages to the back yards of houses, since they won't be able to put them into boxes and may have difficulty putting them in a place that isn't easy to see from the road.
Also, thieves could just listen for these and follow them to their destinations....
So, early test runs I saw seemed to indicate that in order to use the service, you would have to install a landing pad at your home which has a large QR Code looking thing on it. Installing it on a roof or back deck makes a lot more sense than front porch.
