There has been news in the UK this week that the postal service, Royal Mail, is looking at introducing mail delivery drones to its service. This would be focused on supporting rural and isolated communities, such as small islands off the coast of Great Britain. It would reduce the need for as many members of staff, as well as be more environmentally friendly by producing fewer emissions. 

There are certainly many benefits to this, as communities will have better links with the mainland and as such have more efficient service, but I worry that this system could be open to abuse. If a system is more autonomous, it will have fewer people watching and maintaining it by nature. While this might not be a concern to larger delivery drones such as these, for smaller drones that deliver individual packages there is potential for people to hijack or attack drones as they go about their work. 

Am I worrying over nothing, and should I embrace this emerging technology with open arms? This is designed to make supply chains and delivery services more efficient, so we should be supporting these kinds of developments. We live in a world where we want everything immediately; we live in an on-demand world. Therefore, any device or system that allows us to receive items or services as quickly as possible should be welcomed.

Maybe this is not something we need in big cities, such as London or Tokyo. I have seen examples of delivery drones used in rural Africa to deliver medicines and food supplies to communities that are difficult to reach by road. As we continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and need to vaccinate members of the population, could this be a faster way of supporting the planet? Other medical uses could benefit from these systems and reduce the time that we need to wait for major surgeries or transplants.

What do you think? Would you like to have your mail delivered by drone every morning, or is this another technology that might invade our privacy and do more harm than good? Let me know in the comments below!

Let's review some of the vocabulary from this column: 

Rural – countryside, outside of the city
Autonomous – something that operates without human help
To hijack – to take over by force
To embrace with open arms – to like an idea a lot and want to use it