Drones Are Poised To Reshape Home Design

Let’s say you want a hamburger.

With a few taps on your phone—no onions, please—the order is placed, with delivery set for within the hour. Soon, your specially wrapped burger appears on the horizon, borne aloft by a humming drone. A retractable door on your rooftop opens to reveal a landing pad and delivery receptacle. The drone places the burger into a box, preferably heated, and a small elevator brings it into the house. “Ding.” Your app alerts you that your burger is warm and waiting.

It’s getting closer: A future where droves of drones buzz through neighbourhoods to drop off and pick up groceries, food orders and packages. Architects and builders might have to rethink overall home design to accommodate remote delivery, with drone landing pads mounted on kerbside mailboxes, built onto rooftops or perched on windowsills. This, in turn, could reshape entire neighbourhoods to include designated drone airspace and traffic patterns designed to ensure the safety of residents.

Drone divisions created by Amazon.com Inc., United Parcel Service and Google’s parent Alphabet Inc. have all received permission from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration for limited deliveries, paving the way for commercial drone service. Amazon Prime Air is testing technology to deliver packages weighing up to 2.26kg in 30 minutes or less. Alphabet’s Wing trials in Christiansburg, Va., allow residents to get deliveries from FedEx Corp., Walgreens and local restaurants. In Florida, UPS subsidiary Flight Forward and CVS Health Corp. deliver prescription medications to residents of the Villages, the largest retirement community in the U.S.

Still, none of the major players have figured out a seamless way for consumers to receive their deliveries at home. Cargo landing in backyards and driveways raises safety questions regarding both people and packages.

At least one tech startup is working on a solution. Valqari, a Chicago company founded in 2017, is developing drone-delivery mailboxes that can accept all types of shipments, from retail packages to restaurant meals. The top of the mailbox acts as a landing pad, and the drone activates a retractable door to a space where packages can be safely deposited, explains Valqari founder and chief executive Ryan Walsh.

Mr Walsh says he envisions drone-delivery mailboxes mounted on rooftops and windowsills of homes or part of a centralized bank of mailboxes that can serve a neighbourhood or apartment complex. Someday, drone-delivery mailboxes will be “as common as a garage,” he says.

The idea isn’t far-fetched. In South Florida, the Paramount Miami Worldcenter condo building was designed to include a “skyport,” a platform on the roof that could someday accommodate vertical takeoff and landing, or VTOL, vehicles as a shuttle for residents. While the possibility of air taxis is years away, “I could see package delivery as happening sooner,” says developer Dan Kodsi, chief executive of Royal Palm Cos. “We have capability because elevators run all the way to the roof.” He adds that the skyport concept has been a selling point at Paramount Miami, where apartments are for sale from about US$750,000 to US$11 million for a penthouse. “Some people bought [units] knowing that it could potentially raise the value of their property,” he says.

Another concept for potentially incorporating drone delivery into residential development comes from Walmart Inc. The retailer <a”icon none” href=”https://pdfaiw.uspto.gov/.aiw?PageNum=0&docid=20190300202&IDKey=1EE7B2FDEDBE&HomeUrl=http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1%26Sect2=HITOFF%26d=PG01%26p=1%26u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html%26r=1%26f=G%26l=50%26s1=20190300202.PGNR.%26OS=%26RS=” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>submitted a patent application for a delivery chute mounted onto an apartment building. Drone deliveries would be dropped through the chute and onto a conveyor belt, which would transport packages into the building’s mailroom for distribution.

When the majority of homes are outfitted with drone-delivery mailboxes and landing pads, they could form the cornerstone of “smart cities,” Mr Walsh projects. Outfitted with solar panels, the mailboxes could provide their own electricity—and even generate enough electricity to sell back to the grid. Data from meteorological sensors could ensure that drones will be able to land safely, with the added benefit of making weather forecasting hyper-local. Masses of mailboxes would also provide a place to put transportation sensors that could report real-time road and traffic conditions or telecom technology that could bolster wireless signals, making cities smarter. Mapping sensors would be particularly useful in remote or rural areas, which tend to be the least mapped.

Enthusiasts say that drone deliveries require less manpower than delivery trucks and would reduce both traffic congestion and fuel emissions. But before hamburgers can fly through the sky, a lot of things have to happen. Chief among them is a drone air-traffic control system to manage unmanned aircraft and protect the airspace from attacks. Currently, the FAA is working on a way to link drone registration to uniform tracking requirements, allowing the agency to identify drone operators and digitally follow their vehicles from takeoff to landing. Tech innovators must ensure that collision-avoidance technology can avert drone crashes. And companies themselves must surmount logistical challenges in stocking, deploying and recharging drones.

On the consumer end, the public will want assurances that their peace and privacy is protected. For example, in Australia, drone-delivery trials by Wing resulted in complaints from residents in suburban Canberra that the crafts were noisy and intrusive. Based on that feedback, Wing developed new propellers that emit a quieter, lower-pitched sound, an Alphabet representative says. In terms of privacy, she added that drone cameras take still, low-resolution images that are used strictly for navigation.

Overall, the main concern is safety, says German academic Mario Schaarschmidt, who specialises in logistics, technology and innovation management in services. Earlier this year, Dr Schaarschmidt and his colleagues at the University of Koblenz-Landau released a paper that aimed to assess whether consumers would willingly adopt drone deliveries. People who were interviewed in the research most frequently cited fears about their personal safety as well as financial risks of property loss.

Over time, Dr Schaarschmidt thinks widespread drone deliveries could become the norm for homes, “but only if the first deliveries with drones go smoothly. If you experience any problems, people won’t accept them.”

In 2021, actress Emma Stone purchased a historic estate in Austin, Texas, with a plan to move her family there. Four years later, she has instead decided to put the property on the market.

The actress and her husband, comedy writer Dave McCary, are asking $26.5 million for the newly renovated estate, according to Eric Moreland of Moreland Properties/Forbes Global Properties, one of the listing agents. The 1.25-acre property, located in the upscale Tarrytown neighbourhood, will be among the most expensive on the market in Austin.

Stone and McCary have spent more than three years renovating and restoring the Texas property, Moreland said.

A spokesperson for Stone didn’t respond to requests for comment. Moreland said the couple’s New York business interests have expanded since they started the remodel, and while they hope to live in Austin eventually, it doesn’t make sense for now.

The couple, who are co-founders of the production company Fruit Tree, own a roughly $12 million apartment in lower Manhattan, according to property records. Stone is slated to star in the upcoming contemporary Western film “Eddington.”

It’s unclear what Stone and McCary paid for the Austin property, since Texas is a nondisclosure state . The Georgian-style brick house dates to around 1940, making it one of the oldest estates in the area.

The roughly 10,000-square-foot estate includes a main house with four bedrooms and a two-bedroom guesthouse. The property also has a pool, a hot tub, and a garage with a screening room and entertaining space above.

As part of the renovation, the couple removed, cleaned and reused all the exterior brick. They also reconfigured some of the living spaces, opening the kitchen to the living room for a more modern layout. It took more than a year just to install the millwork in the screening room, said Moreland.

The contractors are now putting the finishing touches on the property, he said.

The “La La Land” actress has a track record of buying and selling her homes for significantly more than she paid. In 2022, she sold her blufftop Malibu, Calif., home for $4.425 million after buying it for $3.25 million in 2018, according to property records.

Last year, she sold her home in L.A.’s Comstock Hills neighbourhood for $4.3 million, significantly more than the $2.3 million she paid in 2019.

Austin saw an influx of new residents during COVID, but many of those are now returning to the East and West coasts, particularly workers in the tech sector.

While the market “has come down to earth a little bit” since the pandemic-era boom, Moreland said, he has seen a number of $20 million-plus deals over the past few months.

Moreland has the listing with colleague Diane Humphreys.

Drones Are Poised To Reshape Home Design

Landing pads, special mailboxes and more: A future where delivery drones buzz through neighbourhoods could prompt architects and builders to rethink.

The actress and her husband, comedy writer Dave McCary, spent more than three years restoring the house, which is one of the priciest properties for sale in the Texas city.