A $1000 drone would have to make about 200 flawless autonomous flights before it paid for itself. If you put a human in the loop to control it, forget about ever saving any money compared to the cost of shipping the book.
YouAre
This is another reminder that paperless office\education is far off.
Mick Martin
Pizza Delivery.
Adrien
they say 9/10 startups fail in the first year. here's 2 more.
JPAR
5 years time - everyone will have 'drop-boxes' on the side of their house/apartment for these drones to deliver fast food. But it'll need some new planning departments to set local air rules to avoid mayhem.
Chris Hogan
"When the hexacopter arrived at their location, it would hover in place and lower the text down to them on retractable cords." Were these people never students? How many drones do they think they're going to get back?!
Hugh Halford-Thompson
People would struggle to steal the drones without being caught on camera. The drone can call home when anything destabilizes the flight and stream the theft back to the office. Whether this stops students... is another matter.
Marlon Thomas
I thought with the onslaught of iPads and similar other devices we would be moving *away* from paper text books. On a more general note, I wonder how well the concept of UAV-based delivery services would scale upwards? Could you imagine a neighbourhood with dozens of these things flying around delivering packages from Amazon and eBay? FedEx and UPS rest easy (for now).
Martin Hone
If it is cheaper than post, why doesn't the Post Office use them ?