Autonomous Delivery Management: Safety, Security, and Privacy

The Autonomous Transportation System can offer unparalleled levels of Safety, Security, and Privacy by enabling complete control of the entire transport process. No one can send you something without your permission: no junk mail and no spam packages. You specify when and where you want it delivered: really helpful when you are traveling or staying at your summer home; and the sender doesn’t learn your location. You know the characteristics of the Contents before delivery starts, so you can track the weight and other characteristics to be sure the claimed Contents match what you expect, and nothing was added or taken in transit. You know that no one had unauthorized access to your package or tampered with it in transit. You can send an item off for testing before you accept it, for example to determine ripeness. You can return an item to the sender. You can even charge the sender a fee if the contents aren’t as advertised – what a great way to stop junk mail! The system can also be applied to electronic messaging, which would stop spam as well.

Enabling this is integral to all elements of the Autonomous Transportation System. The Autonomous Containers can enclose and protect Contents, continuously monitoring their status and location, and signaling if something unexpected occurs, such as someone gaining unauthorized access, or even trying. Enclosed A-Ways assure safety, security, and privacy throughout the transit. The communications system inside the A-Ways is designed to be secure and immune to outside interference. A-Ways implement continuous monitoring of all components, including managing results of redundant monitoring mechanisms. Cameras look for extraneous objects, and other sensors monitor weight and other characteristics to detect extraneous items. A-Ways provide additional safety features by invoking automatic adjustments, dispatching Autonomous Vehicles for routine testing and maintenance, and dealing with any anomalies. Any Autonomous Vehicle in question can be routed to a facility for appropriate action, or moved by another Autonomous Vehicle if necessary.

Security and Privacy are assured because no one sees your items anywhere in the delivery process; even the sender does not know your location, because you manage location and timing for each delivery.

Innovation: Autonomous Delivery Management

Before an Item can be entered into the Autonomous Transportation System, the Recipient must authorize delivery. Here is a sample of the process: the Sender logs into the Autonomous Transportation System, identifies the intended Recipient, and enters information about the Item, the Services requested from the Autonomous Transportation System, and the method of payment. The Sender must have authorization to enter this Item to an A-Way Access Port, and must specify where to return the Item, and must have authorization to send to the return location. The Autonomous Transportation System sends a Transport Request message to the Recipient: the Recipient can accept or reject the Transport Request; the process can be automatic, such as always accept items under 100 pounds from my daughter.

If the Recipient will accept delivery, they specify the Delivery Location – the Recipient must have authorization to accept this type of Item at the specified Delivery Location. Note this delivery specification can be complex, e.g., depending on time of delivery, alternate delivery options, and what to do if the Item is undeliverable. For example, you may be checking out of your hotel at 10:00 am, so if the delivery can’t be completed before then, it must go on to your next opportunity to receive it. The delivery might even take place while you are traveling on an Autonomous Vehicle, for example, you could order lunch. The Recipient can specify additional services, such as send it to a testing service for checking ripeness, or instructions for the delivery, such as, move it to the refrigerator. Note the Autonomous Transportation System does not disclose the Delivery Location to the Sender, unless authorized by the Recipient.

The Autonomous Transportation System notifies the Sender that the Recipient has accepted, and dispatches an appropriate Autonomous Vehicle or Vehicles to pick up the Item(s). The Autonomous Transportation System can take photographs of the item, and determine the weight, size and other characteristics of the Item, to be sure they match the Delivery Request. The Autonomous Transportation System monitors the entire transit, performs the specified services, and delivers the Item to the agreed location. If the Recipient rejects the Delivery, the Recipient specifies the reason for rejection, for example, not what was claimed, or cancel the order. In either case the Sender is informed of the Delivery or Rejection.

Charges are deducted from the Sender and or Recipient Accounts, depending on the specified conditions; for example, if the Transport Request is considered spam, or if the Item was not ordered or does not meet claimed characteristics, the Sender may be charged an additional fee, which might include a payment to the Recipient – that should help defeat spam and fraud. Autonomous Transportation System internal information is updated, for example, if the Sender is sending defective or deceptive items, which can affect future requests and charges.

This innovation can also be applied to phone calls, email, and other forms of communications. Not only can you refuse to accept calls or email, you can even have the sender charged a fee that you split with the message carrier – a $5 surcharge takes all the financial incentive out of spam. In addition, the protocol for Request To Send is designed to prevent infection by viruses and other malware, so the system is safe from intrusions.

Innovation: Autonomous Door

The Autonomous Door is an integral part of helping you manage delivery of items to your premises. For example, as part of preauthorizing a delivery, you can specify that your Autonomous Door accept the Container into a holding area, because you don’t want the delivery Autonomous Vehicle or person gaining access to your premises, or you want the Item kept outside your home, but secured. Or you might authorize your Autonomous Door to admit the person or Autonomous Vehicle, after verifying they have your Recipient Authorization code. Your Autonomous Door can let you view the delivery before and after entering the holding area, and communicate with the Autonomous Vehicle, Container, or person at your Autonomous Door. And your Autonomous Door can send alert messages in case of unexpected events.

For example your Autonomous Door could admit:

• a head of lettuce and move it to the refrigerator, or
• a dose of pills and send them to you, along with a glass of water, or
• a new shower head, and the plumber to install it, or
• a new bed, combined with removing the old one.

The Autonomous Transportation System can provide more complex services. For example, you may order a new refrigerator requiring several steps: the refrigerator is delivered through your Autonomous Door, because it doesn’t have a holding area larger enough; later installers arrive to remove the new refrigerator from the Container, put it in place, and pack the old refrigerator in the Container; the old refrigerator is sent off for recycling; a plumber comes to hook up the water supply for the ice maker; a painter comes to fix the scratches the installers and plumber made in the wall.

Autonomous Doors will come in many sizes to accommodate delivery for different sizes of items, which I predict will become standardized, as boxes are today, accommodating: pill bottles, food containers, pets, people, furniture, and vehicles – like a garage door.

Innovative Impacts: Recycling

This whole discussion raises an important aspect of the Autonomous Transportation system: opportunities for innovation. It’s impossible to predict the actual uses and impacts of a revolutionary new technology. However, let’s look at one possibility, Recycling, and see what innovations might emerge, and how they would affect our lives.

Recycling is important. For example, the items we recycle reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions equivalent to taking 39 million cars off the road; 78% of that saving is from recycling Paper & Paperboard. [http://www.statisticbrain.com/bottled-water-statistics/ accessed 5/25/2016]   

Recycling prevented 110 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste from being dumped into landfills in 2013. Containers and Packaging were the majority of the recycling, saving 39 million tons; however, we still dumped another 37 million tons of Containers and Packaging, and that doesn’t count all those that littered the landscape. We did fairly well by composting and recycling 21 million tons of Yard trimmings. But Food & Other Compost were hardly recycled at all, dumping 35 million tons into landfills.

Today recycling takes time and energy, and as a society we don’t do it well: all too much winds up in our monstrous mounting mountains of trash. An even bigger problem is the proliferation of hazardous wastes: electronics, fluorescent and CFC light bulbs, paints, pesticides, medicines, and an ever growing list of items requiring specialized treatment. Recycling is a pain, even assuming you have single stream collection. You have to decide whether a particular item is recyclable, or trash. Or perhaps you should keep it, because you might find a use for it later (a constant debate in our household because I’m a packrat and my wife is not). Or perhaps the item is valuable enough that it is worth trying to find a buyer and get it to them, or perhaps you should donate the item so someone else can use it. Or if it’s hazardous waste, then you have to take it somewhere else.

If the item is recyclable, then you need to clean it before recycling: you don’t want recycling stinking up your house, and the recycler doesn’t want food and other contaminants. You need a place to keep the recycling, and you have to take each item there. Since we went to single stream recycling, our volume of recycling exceeds the volume of our garbage, so this is a nontrivial exercise. Then you have to remember to take the container out so it can be collected, and bring it back in afterwards. If you are gone on recycling day, or if you forget to take it out, the volume of recycling may overflow your container. Some things are too big to go in the container, so you set them next to the container, where they blow away, or get soaked in the rain.

So let’s take a look at what readily available, inexpensive transportation might have on recycling. You could just drop an item into a container, tell the system what it is, and off it goes for “recycling”. You don’t even need to decide where to send it, because the system will figure out where best to take it, possibly even getting a payment for you. Thus you don’t have to decide whether it is hazardous waste, garbage, trash, or if someone might pay you for it, and if you want to donate the item, you can designate a charity. You wouldn’t need to clean items, because waste food could be collected for composting, and people will innovate new mechanisms for harvesting the energy in food residues (perhaps, bacteria), making the cleaning process a net benefit instead of a cost.

As these innovative cleaning mechanisms become more effective and efficient the balance of disposable vs. reusable containers will shift back to reusable. I remember when the milkman brought glass bottles of milk to the insulated metal container on our front porch, and collected the used bottles for cleaning and refilling. Americans spend $11.8 billion annually on 30 billion non-reusable bottles of water; an estimated 80% end up as litter, and landfills are overflowing with 2 million tons of discarded water bottles. It takes 3 liters of water for every liter of bottled water, over 1.5 million barrels of oil to manufacture these bottles, enough to power 100,000 homes. The average cost of a 1 liter bottle is $1.45, divided among: Retailer $0.67, Transportation $0.47, Water Bottle Production $0.16, and Profit $0.15. [https://www.epa.gov/smm/advancing-sustainable-materials-management-facts-and-figures accessed 5/25/2016] Efficient remote cleaning saves the water you would have used to clean the recyclables, the energy for hot water, and your time and mess – water savings and water recycling are another fruitful area for innovation with the new transportation system, but we will wait until later to follow that thread.

Randall Monroe has created an XKCD comic about bottled water [https://xkcd.com/1599/]. I’ve taken the liberty of embellishing his scenario: the empty bottles collecting, and problems with municipal plumbing (Leaks, Lead, Chlorine, and unintended contents).

The combination of efficient centralized cleaning and efficient transportation may lead to shared dishwashing: you just put your dirty dishes into a container; they are whisked away and returned clean. The cleaning processes would treat each type of dish, pot, and other vessel appropriately – for example, we don’t put our nice pots in the dishwasher because it dulls the finish, and large items, like flower vases don’t fit in the dishwasher. Remote cleaning will likely extend to clothes, towels, and other categories. This saves you the hassles, and the costs of washing machines, water heating, water, and of course your time and energy.

Even more intriguing is the potential for delivering locally produced customized beverages to you whenever and wherever you want them. Because there is no need for a physical store, anyone can set up a business selling customized beverages. Shared comments will help you find what you want;  ratings will assure continued quality; and you can send the beverage off for testing before it gets to you, assuring it is safe, healthy, and as advertised. The same approach can be extended to food and other items. Fast efficient transportation has the potential to provide each of us not only with better, cheaper goods and services, but with rewarding vocations and avocations.

Here is a diagram of how customized beverages could operate with the Autonomous Transportation System.