AI in the Street: Drone Observatory
Logan is the “drone delivery capital of the world“ - a trial site for autonomous delivery systems. We collaborated with local people to explore the space above our heads as a street in order to provide insight into the sensory and experiential aspects of living with drones.
Logan is a peri-urban township in Queensland, Australia. It has a population of approximately 380,000 people and is one of the fastest growing local government areas in the country. Logan has also been named “the drone delivery capital of the world.”
Since 2019, the city has been a major trial site for autonomous, commercial drone delivery systems. These trials are run by the California-based company Wing Aviation, a subsidiary of the multinational giant Alphabet Inc.
In practice, the trials involve eligible residents becoming enrolled as live-users for Wing’s app-based delivery platform. The app works much like other delivery services such as UberEats or DoorDash. After signing up for the service, customers use the app to place and pay for their delivery orders. Once the order is received, items are packaged at local base stations (called “nests”), then attached to a drone and delivered to customer households using the drone’s autonomous navigation system. On arrival, the package is lowered by a winch, automatically detaching from the drone before it returns to the nest. Delivery time in the trial zones are incredibly fast, taking an average of 10 minutes, with the fastest ever delivery— from order placement to arrival at doorstep — as 2 minutes and 47 seconds.
The aim in Logan has been to develop an AI observatory for “streets in the sky,” extending the concept of the street to include the space above our heads and not just the ground beneath our feet.
We invited everyday publics who live in drone delivery trial sites to provide insight into the sensory and experiential aspects of living with drones — from the convenience of fast delivery, to impacts on small businesses, and the feeling of being a “guinea pig” for big tech innovation.
“We were just guinea pigs. Let’s test the skies, let’s test and see if this can work. Let’s prove to the bean counters back in the US that we can make this work. And then they did, and then for all of sudden to say we’re not going to deal with you any more we’re going to deal with Coles and DoorDash and whoever, it’s quite disappointing. They’ll say today we’re doing this, tomorrow we’re doing that. We’re usually the last people to know”
Maz, Logan small business owner.
Research team: Thao Phan (CI) , Jeni Lee (film maker)
Project funded by Warwick BRAID Collaboration Agreement through Warwick University; Kings College London; University of Edinburgh; The Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge; Careful Industries Limited and Monash University.
Film selections
Contact: Thao Phan
Email: Thao.Phan@anu.edu.au