I'd like to see someone try integrating them into the delivery trucks. Roof mount it, make it easy to load from the back storage area, and have it auto charge. That way drivers can choose to hand off smaller packages to it and launch when they are delivering close by.
That's how I've always imagined it. The top of the FedEx truck is a mini-helipad, and there are two people on the truck. As the truck makes its normal route stopping to deliver heavy packages on foot, there are two drones darting back and forth delivering light ones, with someone constantly feeding them packages and batteries.
Somewhere years ago I have a chat log where I describe the whole thing as imagined, including the phrase "print out helipad_qr.pdf and tape it to your driveway" as part of the process. ;)
What delivery men need isn't messing around with slow and complicated drone launches. They need the equivalent of a mailbox, i.e. package lockers in front of every apartment building and in front of every house. Then all they have to do is get off the delivery vehicle, retrieve the package, open the locker, insert the package, close the locker and then go back to the vehicle.
At that point you have reached human peak efficiency and then the only thing you can do is build a self driving delivery van with an integrated crane/robot arm to operate the locker.
Self driving is hard. Building a robot arm that inserts packages sideways into a locker doesn't appear as difficult. The post office can dictate the package formats and add visual markers to make it easier for the robot to grab the right side.
I really doubt that cost per package drops more than adding multiple extra drivers.
The truth is that the wave of “imminent drone delivery” mania was always just marketing, and wasn’t going to make sense except in extremely limited scenarios.
Also the drones take up more capacity in the vehicle, as does the charging station, the batteries, the loading mechanisms. And so does the second person. You can carry far less packages now.
It would probably be a lot cheaper and safe to make an autonomous or semi-autonomous wheeled platform that unloads and delivers the packages, sort of a motorized pallet cart, which would be usable also for bigger loads.
