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.

Autonomous Personal Mobility Vehicles

Story: My father’s experiences with mobility got me started thinking about the transportation needs of seniors. My father loved to walk, but he didn’t like to walk alone, so he stopped his regular walks when my stepmother contracted Parkinson’s disease and couldn’t walk with him. A “Personal Mobility Vehicle” would have been ideal to help them both. Existing motorized wheelchairs seem like the answer. Unfortunately, my stepmother didn’t have the fine motor control to manage a motorized wheelchair. Have you ever tried to walk among a sea of motorized wheelchairs driven by seniors? They are heavy and jerk – you fear for your ankles and knees.

Adding autonomous control to these motorized wheelchairs could overcome these challenges to provide safe, personal mobility to millions of seniors and others who are challenged in moving about. Fortunately, the electronics needed to enable autonomous travel are already available and inexpensive, developed for devices from cellphones to drones to smart watches. Existing motorized wheelchairs have a number of drawbacks: they are expensive, heavy, and awkward. But these were designed as “wheelchairs,” so they need to provide support for all manner of disabilities and be comfortable all day. Most seniors don’t need all those features, they just need to get from one place to another, and then stand up, or move to another chair or sofa or bed.

So what we need is really an Autonomous Chair. Instead of using a motorized wheelchair all day, a senior might only need an Autonomous Chair for a few minutes a day. And because the chair can move autonomously, when a person finishes it can go serve the needs of someone else, sort of like Uber. This means the cost of the Autonomous Chair can be shared among many people. My father lived at Charlestown, an excellent senior facility in Catonsville Maryland, for many years.

Charlestown is built on the site of a former Jesuit Seminary. Buildings have been added and connected together, sort of like a donut, with attractive trees and landscaping in the middle, and even a creek running though. Now more than 3,000 people live there. My father liked to walk inside around the perimeter of the complex, and could go for over a mile without retracing his steps, or even covering the same area on different floors. Thus Charlestown had a linear density of almost 1 person per foot – we’ll come back to this when we look at Communities and Cities.

My observations at Charlestown showed that most seniors would need an Autonomous Chair between 20 - 60 minutes per day. Thus the cost could be shared among perhaps 20 people, so a $1,000 device would only cost each user about $50, which brings the cost of travel to a few cents per trip.

This thinking led us to a family of Autonomous Vehicles for personal mobility in different situations: brief trips, longer trips, and even emergencies. Note the Autonomous Gurney would help in hospitals and all sorts of emergency situations, speeding emergency care and reducing costs and waiting times.

These advantages extend to children who could travel safely without needing someone else to drive them places. I appreciate my daughter’s excellent comments on my drafts: one important issue she flagged here is privacy and personal safety while traveling, especially for children. Automobiles address this by allowing you to lock yourself inside, so consider an enclosed Privacy Container that you can lock from the inside.

Another issue my daughter raised about these vehicles is cleaning and sanitary conditions.

Story: At Burning Man last year, we stayed in a very nice RV that we rented. It was comfortable and did a good job of insulating us from the desert environment … until the wind storm! On the fifth day, the winds grew and grew, so tents were flapping, and loose items were flying by. Then the dust started. It got so that we couldn’t even see the tent next door – later our neighbors asked us to move our RV to block the wind for their tent camp. We thought we were safe inside … until we started to notice that the air was getting thick, and dust was collecting on every surface. We rushed to tape around all the windows, but that didn’t stop the dust that literally piled up on the widow sills. After the storm we spent hours with moist paper towels trying to get up all the dust – not sure if even a vacuum cleaner would have managed the dust because it was so fine. On our way back to civilization we stopped at an RV park, and they wouldn’t let us enter until we took the RV to a truck cleaning service nearby; where they spent an hour spraying the outside of the RV over and over again. So we can vouch for the need for automated cleaning.

Because these vehicles are autonomous, we can send them to a cleaning facility any time it’s needed, sort of like an automated car wash, but on the inside too. The Roomba is an excellent start – I use one frequently at home – but we need to extend the capabilities beyond just floors. We can also use sensors to determine when something needs to be cleaned, and how thoroughly, for example, does it need to be dusted, washed, or sterilized. These innovations of sensing, cleaning, and other functions are crucial for many applications, and we’ll come back to them many times as we talk about different uses.