Delivery Drone

Basic Information

A delivery drone is a remote controlled or semi-autonomous device designed to deliver goods. This is, at the time of writing, an emergent retail technology with a few examples of parcels and packages being delivered by both flying and land-bound systems.

Longer term these obviously have the potential for wider applications (post, fast food) and wider reach. Logically it may also work at larger scale with full scale cargo moving by drone.
Probably there will also be space for the drones to collect parcels as well.

Sources

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• Obvious, slightly comic, potential for deliveries in media res - such as a vehicle involved in a car chase being itself hunted down by a drone determined to deliver a fast food order made by the occupants¹, or equally - especially in cyberpunk - an express courier drone appearing in the middle of a firefight to deliver reloads or medical supplies.
  • Less exotic, it would be entirely reasonable for things like BigDog or LittleDog to be found rushing through the fire to deliver supplies to front line troops in the very near future.
  • Also appeared in The Hunger Games where the protagonist had a supply drop sent in by a sponsor - could easily be recycled for Battle Royale or other (near) future gladiator shows.
• Combining the gimmick of "gifting" food and drink orders and delivery of fast food, imagine locating someone by sending them pizza and then either following the drone or using the order tracking function to find where it goes…
• Or idiots on a stakeout, giving their position away as their donuts and coffee fly in on a brightly coloured quadcopter.
• Presumably people will take to robbing these drones … in cyberpunk, at least, they may fight back. Hacking may be more effective than violence.
• Noted that in the 2022 Ukraine War, these drones have been successfully used to deliver explosives to Russian forces, albeit using remote control and a few modifications.
• Combining the above two, there could be deadly game of intercepting peoples parcels (and or takeaway) and replacing it with bombs.

Footnotes

1. This may or may not have already appeared in a film by Luc Bresson or someone similar…