[Improve the Daily Life] Houses with Embedded Logistic Pipes

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Running a family, doing weekly shopping costs Alice some time. And she forgets items even though she's keeping shopping lists on her mobile devices.

Retailers such as Amazon does send goods to home, but the postmen always came when there's nobody at home. There are several solutions to this problem. But Alice is thinking about a more convenient one.


It would be great if daily needs could come out of a pipe inside the house, just like water running out of tap. Alice orders the items online, retailers or manufacturers send off the goods to the destination via the pipe. After a short while, the pipe sends a notification, Alice can just open the end of the pipe, the goods are ready to be unpacked.

Those pipes should be reasonably sized,  otherwise they take up too much space, and it won't be easy to transport the goods inside the pipes.

There are certainly items too big for such pipes, such as washing machines, refrigerators, etc. But people do not buy those item very often, it's okay to let those big items come with a truck. The pipes are basically there for daily needs and small items, such as groceries, clothing, stationary, small appliances, etc.

How to drive the goods inside the pipe? There are many possibilities. The fastest option might be something like small packages on magnetic rails inside a vacuum environment, just like the vacuum tube trains proposed for people transportation in USA. But this option will be very expensive to implement.

All in all, this new system will require significant modification to the existing housing infrastructure. Not very realistic for now, but not bad to experiment it within some small scale.

I looked around, something called Pneumatic tube has already been in use for more than 150 years!!! Maybe it's time to consider building similar systems for daily use.  




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