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A really good reason to make renting drones obsolete. For example delivery drone are useless to buy for end users. Even trailing action cam drones are useless for end user to some degree, you can rent them when vacation or skiing. But is there a really reason for to buy a drone for end user other than leisure. Near future home and todays home ideas both may be useful.

Edit: My world build is realistic, so its not much differs from real world.

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    $\begingroup$ Is there anything different about your setting? Maybe batteries are lighter and cheaper, making the drones more affordable. Or maybe there's something different socially, like everyone is likely to be sued and want evidence, or the government encourages it so they can spy on people. Can't really make those suggestions without knowing the setting, though, because they would have a huge impact. $\endgroup$
    – Morgan
    Commented Nov 2, 2020 at 10:49
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    $\begingroup$ Near-future drones will be able to do so much more than deliver packaves and action-cam sports. You might have a: drone vacuum, drone lawnmower, cleaning drone, laundry drone, anti-drone security drone, insurance "dashcam" drone, emergency medical drone, luggage drone, pet-caretaker drone, personal combat drone, surveillance drone, privacy drone, cooking drone, cosmetics drone, healthcare drone, etc. The possibilities are limitless and I suspect, like most people have a smartphone today, in 20 years everyone will have a personal swarm of multifunction drones $\endgroup$
    – Dragongeek
    Commented Nov 2, 2020 at 12:48
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    $\begingroup$ I would propose a VTC as this should be responded with a very long list of functions that drones can or will be able to perform. There are dozens of possible applications. Especially if by 'drone' you don't mean just flying multicopters but all sort of robots that could perform a moltitude of useful tasks in every sort of environment. As @Dragongeek already pointed out. $\endgroup$
    – Duncan Drake
    Commented Nov 2, 2020 at 14:34
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    $\begingroup$ I really don't understand what you're asking. Is it just a buy vs rent decision, or are you asking whether there's any reason for most houses/people to have a drone, period? (For the latter, the answer is an obvious no, at least if you limit "drone" to the commonly used meaning rather than a synonym for robot.) $\endgroup$
    – jamesqf
    Commented Nov 2, 2020 at 16:57
  • $\begingroup$ Broadly, no. Usefully, what research have you done and how would your built world differ from ourn? $\endgroup$
    – Robbie Goodwin
    Commented Nov 8, 2020 at 1:10

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Is there really a reason to buy a car? Renting exists. Trains, planes, buses exist.

The answer is, as usuall, affordability and human un-willingness to compromise and adjust themself to bigger group.

You listed 2 reasons to not have a drone.
Delivery - Using drones require business to have drones. And they will have limited number of them. So you would need to wait for "next available slot". But if you have your own you can make the delivery yourself. Ordering from 3 places require 3 different drones. While you need just one.
Leisure - again, finite amount of drones to rent or even places that rent them. YOu can rent by hour and after you return it you think "damn it would be good to have one right now". Or you just need to do something extra to return it (for example go into "fly home" zone which is 20 miles away from you).

By owning drone you make the drone avaiable for your needs. You can use it for delivery, photo taking, dog walking. You decide. You don't relay on other people tools to be aviable for you because you have your own.

And as with cars there will be people who have just one and still rent special equpiment. Or have none and order taxi, travel by plane etc. By the vast majority of people will have a multi-purpose drone that can assist kids on the way to school and pickup groceries on it's way back.

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subject OC-1365203964, to your new residence. as part of your mandatory reeducation, you have been assigned a personal tutor drone who will teach you everything there is to know about being a good citizen, including the three daily praise rituals for Big Brother.

This drone will never leave your side and can alert us of any unauthorized discussion with the untutored. it is also armed with military-strength tasers, rubber bullets and lethal rounds. It is in your best interest to never upset The Party.

I could see a couple reasons why a dictatorship would impose a personal drone on every single one of its citizens. Enforcing the laws, a quick way to spy on people, a direct way to stop any dissidents and unwanted people,...

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    $\begingroup$ “It is in your best interest to never upset The Party.” - As the party is infallible and benevolent it cannot be upset. I believe you mean “Actions taken contrary to the instructions of The Party should be avoided in order to prevent self-harm.” Please report to your nearest re-education centre to receive your party-mandated self improvement package. $\endgroup$
    – Joe Bloggs
    Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 14:31
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Home security drones are very good examples for why every house may have a drone for them. They provide constant recording around your house, they can have motion detectors and even a small taser gun in case your political setting allows for it. They have high mobility, and look to the people from any angle to see their faces in case they are trying to hide and they can track active targets. When people in the home are not sleeping, they can use the drone for leisure purposes.

These drones can also have an AI assistant implemented in them and serve as the brain of the house for home entartainment and security. If needed they can travel to local shops and business places for delivery too.

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  • $\begingroup$ But a great many people live in places where "home security" is not even an issue. $\endgroup$
    – jamesqf
    Commented Nov 2, 2020 at 16:59
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Safety & Privacy:

I think your question is more about why people should own vs. rent/loan drones rather than why we should have them.

In a future where drones became invasive and disruptive, photoing everyone at all times, possibly being hacked frequently and used for crimes and murder, you could have deeply restrictive laws about where drones can go and how they can operate. Drones have come to replace many vital functions in your society, but if every flying drone has to have a traceable owner who is legally responsible for how it is used, there is a strong motive for people to buy one for themselves. If you want to have delivery, there are no more delivery drivers due to drones, and now the delivery drone industry is out of business. Each drone legally needs an operator, so running the family drone becomes a real job opportunity.

Poor families have to get near-obsolete drones that constantly break, while rich folks have the latest models and multiples. There would still be a small business model for drone "rental" but the drones would need to be under a personal control at all times and the rental place would be on the hook for the actions of their clients.

This is laborious, as people have gotten used to autonomous drones, so the pressure would be to make off-line drones immune to hacking, only then the individual drones need to be smarter in order to do all the things they could before. They will start resembling the classical "household" robot from classical science fiction stories.

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How the heck else are you going to get your mail!?

I mean, who wants to pay the Postal Service \$5 a delivery (or \$80/month flat-rate) for their human to drive their truck for "the last mile" to your mailbox, when you can just send your drone to the post office for free? What's more, your drone can do the same with lightweight pickups from FedEx, UPS, Office Depot, Aldi, even the auto parts stores. Amazon... I am not paying \$500/year for Prime-to-your-door, no thanks.

All the restaurants of course will abide. I mean if you don't have a drone, Dominos only charges $2 for their drone to deliver, the problem is, then you're stuck eating Dominos. Send your own drone, you can get Uno's pizza, or heck... dim sum!

Some people also like how, when you send your own drone, the vendor doesn't get to know where you live, or even what your real name is.

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    $\begingroup$ Sorry, but the US Post Office has already solved the problem of having to deliver to people who live in remoter rural locations. They have clusters of boxes located at the junction of major roads and the minor ones people actually live on, and deliver the mail to those boxes. For some friends of mine, it's about a 4-mile drive from their house to the box. And to get stuff directly from stores or takeout restaurants, you'd better have really improved batteries, since it's about a 70 mile/100 km round trip. $\endgroup$
    – jamesqf
    Commented Nov 3, 2020 at 3:08
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Delivery drones

"Delivery drone are useless to buy for end users"

No they're not. Delivery drone is the exact reason for everyone to own one.

The difference is people order online and send the drone to go fetch it instead of waiting for the store drone to deliver.

Perhaps the businesses don't want the liability and additional expense of running a fleet of drones. If a business runs the drones, their liability doesn't end until the package is delivered. If the customer owns the drones, the business' liability ends when the drones picks up.

People would benefit by getting their deliveries quicker. Your personal drone heads to the supermarket directly, picks up automatically your orders and flies back home as where waiting for the store drone could involve a wait time in the delivery queue

It would be like sending a self drive car to pick up from a McDonalds drive thru

enter image description here See Bunnings Snag by Drone

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