Zooming In: What Do People Really Think of Delivery Drones?

Delivery drones are just another brick in the automation wall that's hurtling towards us all. If (when) they come into popular use they have massive potential to disrupt current logistical methods across a number of industries. There are a whole bunch of pro's and con's, but at the rate they are being developed it seems that the broad mantra is that automated delivery, speed and convenience, even if there is a cost, is "what people want". The Brandwatch React team looked to social data to see if we could verify whether or not delivery drones were something people looked forward to experiencing or something, like autonomous cars, that's discussed with more skepticism. We tracked around 64,000 mentions of delivery drones, and related terms, across social media from 1 May to 27 June 2017. They fluctuated enormously by day, from 200 to 5,000 mentions, with spikes occurring when big news stories about developments occurred.