When Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, recently announced on 60 Minutes that the company is exploring the possibility of delivering small packages by drone, he drew mostly incredulous reactions. Yet, as IESE’s Evgeny Kaganer, Associate Professor of Information Systems explains, perhaps Amazon’s idea is not so far-fetched.
While you should not expect to see small unmanned planes peppering the suburban skies any time soon (the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA in the U.S., has yet to work out regulations for such drones), Kaganer explains that this and other possibilities represent the evolution of robotics from the industrial sphere to the consumer.
"Are we actually on the cusp of a similar consumerization wave in robots technology?" asks Prof. Kaganer. Based on how technology has been evolving, maybe we will start to see the really cool and powerful things robots do today for manufacturing find their way into our day-to-day, he continued. Home delivery by drone may just be the tip of the iceberg.