Alibaba and Drones Deliveries – Three day Ginger Tea Taobao Drone Delivery Test of AI Drones in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou

“Even though it's very limited in scope, Taobao is delivering real goods to real people, which is a step further than its Western counterpart Amazon has gone. That said, which company will actually roll out a fully functioning drone-based delivery service remains to be seen and [such a deployment] is still a long way off”

BBC Tech in Asia's Paul Bischoff commenting on Alibaba decision to do Drone Deliveries in China

Amazon, you are so getting left behind!

Alibaba, the Amazon of China, has begun a three (3) day trial of Drone Deliveries in China as reported in the article “Alibaba begins drone delivery trials in China”, published 4 February 2015 By Leo Kelion, Technology desk editor, BBC News.

The company doing the deliveries on behalf of Alibaba is called Taobao as noted in the article “Drones are delivering ginger tea in China”, published FEB. 4, 2015, 5:29 AM by JOSHUA BARRIE, Business Insider. 

Their test is restricted to 450 persons living in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou who were selected by email as stated in Alibaba's blog article for those of you who want to practice reading Mandarin! Translation of the Alibaba email quote: “This is a one-off campaign where ginger tea packets ordered on Taobao can be delivered to designated cities or regions within an hour. We’re unsure about future possibilities yet, but this is our first drone delivery service campaign”.

Oddly too, you can't order Cake, just Shou Quanzhai brand Ginger Tea ordered from Shanghai-based YTO Express. The max package weight varies from 340g (12oz) to 1kg and Alibaba’s drones have a range of 10km as reported in the article “Alibaba Starts Drone Delivery Test In Three-Day Program”, published 2/03/2015 @ 11:54PM by Yue Wang, Forbes.

More Interestingly though, these drone deliveries will involve the Drones flying out of the line of sight of operators based on the video provided below.

Alibaba joins the ranks of SF Express Drones in China does a limited deliver for a much smaller company called InCake, a bakery that delivers Cake via Drones to Residents in the city of Shanghai, China during their Birthday as noted in my blog article entitled “SF Express Drones in China Deliver Cake and Zookal Drones deliver Rental Textbooks - How Drones and smartphones in Jamaica can revive the Postal Service via Personal One-Day Delivery Service”.

This implies that that they're either being remotely piloted using Cameras transmitting using NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) or HDTV Bands or they'll be piggybacking the data over a 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) Data Network.

Alibaba and the Drones deliveries – Three day Ginger Tea Drone Delivery Test of Autonomous Drones

So far, the idea of Drones flying autonomously, especially in a city, seems a bit farfetched, as the talk in the US of A, where anticipation is high for the FAA (Federal Aviation authority), is that drones will need well paid Pilots as noted in my blog article entitled “FAA to allow Commercial Drones in 2015 - US$100,000 per year for 100,000 Drone Pilot jobs for the next five years”.

Still examples do exist, such as the use of Drones by Deutsche Post aka DHL  to deliver medicines to the tiny island of Juist in the far north of the country since September 2014 as stated in my blog article entitled “DHL Parcelcopters make deliveries to Juist off Germany’s coast – Why Progress of Drones in West slower than in the East for same-day delivery”.

This is where the difficulty lies, as flying among moving people and irregular buildings, below the treeline, is an untested concept, to quote robotics lecturer at Imperial College London, Dr. Ravi Vaidyanathan, quote: “It's well established that drones can be flown autonomously above the tree-line - but below it, there are still a lot of issues. They will need to get around moving obstacles like children and pets when they come to land below the roof of your house. And the kind of co-ordination it would take to get airspace reserved for drone flights is also a big issue too”.

Alas, he's an optimist, quote: “I don't think these problems are insurmountable, but the safety considerations must be addressed, and obstacle-free take-off and landing zones may need to be considered in the near term”.

And why would Alibaba not be optimistic give the stats:

1.      25 million parcels are delivered every day in China

2.      200 million in the next ten (10) years

To that end, Alibaba is investing heavily in a $16.3 billion to deliver packages anywhere in china within 24 hours. couple with a US$361 million in appliance maker Haier Electronics, given the vastness of China, Alibaba is either crazy or they're loaded like Alibaba in the story Alibaba ad the Forty Thieves.

Hoping that Drone deliveries come to Jamaica soon as I’d pay for one-day delivery for Chocolate to any place in Jamaica!