Drone Deliveries on the Rise
QUEST: Now, there's little doubt commercial drones are on the rise. Come on and look some of the uses have been put to. Some of them can film disaster zones, some of them can deliver sushi as Jim Boulden discovered in London. They do it rather badly. Some can carry Amazon parcels - or at least that's Amazon's hope, and in Dubai, there's even a drone plan that will ultimate deliver government papers, documents, identity cards to citizens thus saving costs. It's all rather interesting. None of them do it terribly well, but now Facebook wants to use them to deliver the internet. Mark Zuckerberg who is reportedly in talks about (Joe Maker) says they can be used to provide web access anywhere on the planet he wrote on a blog. Today we are sharing some of the details of work Facebook's connectivity is doing to build drones, satellites and lasers to deliver the internet to everyone. Sounds to me a bit like cashing in on an idea. It's not only the giants who are jumping on the drone wagon. A man in San Francisco is testing a drone delivery service. Joshua Ziering is taking advantage of a judge's ruling making it legal to fly commercial drones in the United States. The Federal - the FAA - is trying to overturn on safety grounds. In the meantime, Ziering firm quickly is testing how drugs can be delivered from - to homes - in a relatively easy way. Look at the way in which they would say they would do it. Joshua Ziering joins me from San Francisco. OK, so your idea is to deliver simple things like medications and the like. The drone flies down, stops 20 feet away, you buzz the person out, they swipe and it drops them on the head. Basically that's the idea.</s>JOSHUA ZIERING, FOUNDER, QUIQUI: That's absolutely right.</s>QUEST: So, why do you think it's a viable idea and why is it a runner?</s>ZIERING: Well, one of the things that we wanted to do is we wanted to make sure that, you know, a populated area we have the ability to deliver things quickly. So, what would - what could we deliver quickly? We could deliver pharmaceutical items and where could we do it? We picked San Francisco's Mission district to start with.</s>QUEST: What I don't understand is explain what the advantage of a drone delivering something versus the mail service?</s>ZIERING: Well, so we're going to aim to do most of our deliveries in under 15 minutes. We're not stopped by traffic or construction, we can fly over all of those problems and deliver you your product very quickly.</s>QUEST: And are these drones remote controlled in real time or do you program it and send it on its way while you get ready with the next one?</s>ZIERING: They're autonomous so they'll be flying without the help of a person.</s>QUEST: So it's not like we see with these military things where somebody's with a joystick going `round the corner, up the street, down the lane?</s>ZIERING: Not at all.</s>QUEST: What if it - what if it goes wrong?</s>ZIERING: What if it goes wrong, well I'm glad you asked. One of the things that we've been working on in QuiQui is redundancy. We want to be able to handle failure gracefully, and those who know me will say that I've been handling failure gracefully for years. So, we're going to try our best to make sure that nothing goes wrong.</s>QUEST: Isn't this one of those cases that the critics will say - maybe even critics like me will say - `oh, it can't work, oh, it'll never work, oh, it'll all end in tears, oh, what a terrible idea,- and yet I'd have been probably one of the first people saying the same thing about the electric telephone and the light bulb. We just necessarily can't see the future in the way that maybe you can.</s>ZIERING: Well, I think that the problem we're facing is one of culture and technology, and in the last two weeks even we've seen an unbelievable rise in the technology and the culture coming together to create a viable environment for drones.</s>QUEST: So, the FAA lost a court case, drones can fly - the FAA's appealing but we'll pull that to one side. When do you deliver your first aspirin tablet by drone?</s>ZIERING: We're aiming to deliver our first one by July.</s>QUEST: Right. By July. I won't hold you to them, and I will make it clear as well of course that you're not delivering narcotics, you're not delivering something that could be stolen - or would have value - and if it does land on their head, it won't hurt anybody, correct?</s>ZIERING: That's absolutely right.</s>QUEST: OK. If you start delivering bricks, let me know and I'll get out of the way. Thank you very much. Good to see you, sir. Nice to see you. Jenny Harrison is at the World Weather Center and joins us now. Deliveries by drones, Ms. Harrison. You can get the weekly wash and the weekly shop by drone.</s>JENNY HARRISON, WEATHER ANCHOR FOR CNN INTERNATIONAL: I tell you, it's an interesting idea, isn't it? I wonder how much the weather will play a part, Richard, in the --</s>QUEST: Oh,</s>HARRISON: -- successful delivery.</s>QUEST: -- why didn't I think about asking that a moment ago?</s>HARRISON: Yes.</s>QUEST: I should've thought - I should have -</s>HARRISON: What if it's a windy day, a rainy day, a foggy day? I don't know.</s>QUEST: Well foggy wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter in fog because -</s>HARRISON: Was I not listening?</s>QUEST: it goes straightaway through.</s>HARRISON: Oh, well OK. OK. Yes, rainy, windy. We've got quite a lot of all that actually in Europe as we head into the weekend, Richard. I'm going to start by showing you the satellite. In particular, we've had more of this very heavy rain work its way across the Mediterranean. The last few hours of course it is moving eastward. So Greece has really picked up some pretty impressive totals. Twenty-one millimeters of rain in just six hours. That's a big amount in a short space of time. And also, some more big hail. Not as big as the hail we had in Italy yesterday, that was five centimeters. But this as you can see is still pretty big at three centimeters in diameter. So that system continuing to work its way eastwards, and then we've got more rain on the rain on the way across the southwest, but also northern sections of North Africa we'll see some rain, some thunderstorms as well. It's really the middle sections of Europe as we go through the weekend that we'll see the best weather. That's where the high pressure is because we've got this cold air piling down from the north and the east, so we're going to see any moisture turning to snow here as well in the next couple of days. And then although it's milder toward the west, we've got more rain on the way. And still some fairly blustery winds across the northwest as well. It's all coming in though from this mild direction. But as you can see, some gusts reaching 50 or 60 kilometers an hour from time to time. Not bad, but a little bit blustery. This is showing you the cold air across eastern areas. Good temperatures across central and western areas. And of course with the high pressure in control, it's just really pushing all that cold air well off land areas. So look at what it does to temperatures with that mild area in place. Look at this - Berlin 18 on Saturday and Sunday, the average is ten. Warm days ahead in Warsaw, the high temperature 14 on Sunday and very nice. In Bucharest 21 on Monday and 13 is the average there. But this is a very unsettled weather pattern, so you've got all this snow across the east. Colder air generally in place and then more rain across much of the northwest, and in particular, the southwest. So, temperatures on Saturday looking and feeling pretty respectable - 20 Celsius in Paris, 18 in Rome - good now the rain is cleared away, and 18 Celsius there in Berlin. Now if you're elsewhere around the world, but you want to know of course what is going on as well, so - It's in New York, we've got quite a bit of rain working its way. Some severe thunderstorms actually in southern sections of the U.S. on Saturday. Sao Paulo we've got sort of scattered showers in between the sunny spells and then for Buenos Aires we've got more in the way of thunderstorms there on Sunday for you. And then heading across to Tel Aviv and Cairo, we've got some good temperatures, particularly in Cairo. Look at this - temperatures here by Sunday 26 under good, clear sunny skies and also Rio, the usual sort of temperatures for this time of year. In then finally just to round things off, heading down to Africa in Johannesburg - again, not a bad Saturday. Thunderstorms likely on Sunday. Richard.</s>QUEST: Oh, I always do appreciate to know these things. Nairobi looks a bit toasty at 28 degrees as well and as for Lagos, 32 degrees. You need a sparkling water.</s>HARRISON: Yes you will.</s>QUEST: Jenny Harrison.</s>HARRISON: Have a nice weekend.</s>QUEST: Have a good weekend, see you next week. Now, one other story to bring you. General Motors said it would replace the faulty ignition switch in more than 800,000 models. Ninety-five thousand faulty switches were sold to dealers and aftermarket wholesalers between 2008 and 2011. It's another scandal for GM of course. And next week, Mary Barra, the new chief executive of GM, is giving evidence or giving testimony before the U.S. Congress. A bad day for Blackberry on Wall Street. After the break, we'll explain how the company plans to get out of its smartphone struggle. This is "Quest Means Business."