WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Welcome to the Deep Dive. So today we're getting 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:07.120 into something that is a pretty fundamental shift 00:00:07.120 --> 00:00:09.779 in logistics. It really is. For almost a century, 00:00:09.980 --> 00:00:12.400 right, moving packages was all about discrete 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:15.660 math. You know, nodes and edges on a graph. The 00:00:15.660 --> 00:00:17.719 class that transportation brought. Exactly. But 00:00:17.719 --> 00:00:20.519 that model just completely collapses when you're 00:00:20.519 --> 00:00:24.329 talking about, say, Puck's drone fleet in Milwaukee's 00:00:24.329 --> 00:00:26.550 historic third war. Oh, it's a combinatorial 00:00:26.550 --> 00:00:29.010 explosion. You can't. The old models for trucks 00:00:29.010 --> 00:00:32.429 and set routes, they just, they break down. You 00:00:32.429 --> 00:00:34.630 have a massive swarm in continuous airspace. 00:00:34.770 --> 00:00:37.030 So it stops being a math problem. It stops behaving 00:00:37.030 --> 00:00:39.850 like a series of individual calculations and 00:00:39.850 --> 00:00:42.469 starts behaving like a physical substance, like 00:00:42.469 --> 00:00:44.710 a fluid. So they threw out the old formulas, 00:00:44.810 --> 00:00:47.729 things like the Bobula -Forsyth calculation. 00:00:47.929 --> 00:00:50.149 Yeah, that's just for optimizing a single object, 00:00:50.250 --> 00:00:52.560 like a bullet. Here they turn to the Navier -Stokes 00:00:52.560 --> 00:00:55.039 equations. To create what they're calling laminar 00:00:55.039 --> 00:00:57.619 logistics. Right. And what's so fascinating is 00:00:57.619 --> 00:00:59.820 they stopped trying to optimize the drone itself 00:00:59.820 --> 00:01:02.140 and started optimizing the flow of the whole 00:01:02.140 --> 00:01:05.819 fleet. The city is now mapped as a, well, a porous 00:01:05.819 --> 00:01:08.000 medium. Okay, let's unpack that central analogy 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:10.659 a little bit. When you say pressure, you're not 00:01:10.659 --> 00:01:13.140 talking about air pressure. No, not at all. Think 00:01:13.140 --> 00:01:17.959 of it as logistical potential or demand urgency. 00:01:18.620 --> 00:01:20.920 So the Milwaukee public market, which is always 00:01:20.920 --> 00:01:22.540 busy, that's the high pressure source. It's the 00:01:22.540 --> 00:01:25.319 perpetual source, yes. And a customer order, 00:01:25.560 --> 00:01:28.379 say, from the Corcoran lofts, that instantly 00:01:28.379 --> 00:01:31.200 becomes a low pressure sink. The drone fleet, 00:01:31.480 --> 00:01:33.819 the fluid, just follows the steepest pressure 00:01:33.819 --> 00:01:36.439 drop. It's physics. And every fluid has friction. 00:01:36.680 --> 00:01:39.439 Exactly. Which here we call viscosity. Viscosity 00:01:39.439 --> 00:01:41.579 maps directly to the energy cost of complexity. 00:01:41.920 --> 00:01:44.079 So not just physical friction. No, it's operational 00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:47.180 friction. You lose energy from, say, Sharp, inefficient 00:01:47.180 --> 00:01:49.959 turns, those are high -viscosity movements, but 00:01:49.959 --> 00:01:52.359 also from regulatory constraints. Wait, regulatory 00:01:52.359 --> 00:01:54.620 friction? How does an FAA rule act like molasses? 00:01:54.900 --> 00:01:57.859 Okay, so take the FAA's Part 107 rule visual 00:01:57.859 --> 00:01:59.819 line of sight. An operator has to be able to 00:01:59.819 --> 00:02:02.120 see the drone. Right. We can assign areas where 00:02:02.120 --> 00:02:03.739 that's tricky, like near the Italian Community 00:02:03.739 --> 00:02:06.120 Center during a big event, an extremely high 00:02:06.120 --> 00:02:09.419 viscosity value. The solver's job is to minimize 00:02:09.419 --> 00:02:12.599 that viscous dissipation. So the path it calculates 00:02:12.599 --> 00:02:15.060 is naturally smooth, efficient, and compliant. 00:02:15.719 --> 00:02:19.159 All by itself. All by design. No need to pre 00:02:19.159 --> 00:02:21.919 -program no -fly zones in the traditional sense. 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:24.240 I love that. And it's not just drones in the 00:02:24.240 --> 00:02:26.219 air. This is a hybrid fleet, right? Multi -phase 00:02:26.219 --> 00:02:28.699 flow. That's the term. Drones are the low -friction 00:02:28.699 --> 00:02:31.740 air fluid, the free stream. The ground droids 00:02:31.740 --> 00:02:34.319 are the ground fluid stuck in the high -friction 00:02:34.319 --> 00:02:36.419 boundary layer of the street. And they can switch 00:02:36.419 --> 00:02:38.740 between them. Yes, through the condensation maneuver. 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:42.759 If the air viscosity gets too high, maybe a sudden 00:02:42.759 --> 00:02:45.280 gust of wind off Lake Michigan or restricted 00:02:45.280 --> 00:02:48.560 airspace, a drone can land on a droid at, say, 00:02:48.620 --> 00:02:51.680 Catalano Square. It transfers the package. So 00:02:51.680 --> 00:02:54.259 the mass moves from the air phase to the ground 00:02:54.259 --> 00:02:57.000 phase. And completes the last mile, even when 00:02:57.000 --> 00:02:59.960 the air is basically prohibitive. It's incredibly 00:02:59.960 --> 00:03:02.159 resilient. Which brings up the big question, 00:03:02.240 --> 00:03:04.479 right? If it's all based on physics, how does 00:03:04.479 --> 00:03:08.080 it handle, well... chaos what happens when a 00:03:08.080 --> 00:03:11.020 fire truck just you know blocks broadway yeah 00:03:11.020 --> 00:03:12.939 that's the beautiful part a traditional system 00:03:12.939 --> 00:03:15.020 would frantically try to recalculate thousands 00:03:15.020 --> 00:03:17.800 of individual paths it would be a mess a huge 00:03:17.800 --> 00:03:21.819 processing lag for sure but the fluid model it 00:03:21.819 --> 00:03:24.659 handles turbulence instinctively the blockage 00:03:24.659 --> 00:03:27.780 is like a wall appearing in the flow Physics 00:03:27.780 --> 00:03:30.680 dictates that a pressure wave instantly propagates 00:03:30.680 --> 00:03:32.960 backward through the fluid. So the drones react 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:35.180 before they even get there. They slow down and 00:03:35.180 --> 00:03:37.520 divert organically based purely on the change 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:39.819 in flow dynamics. It's true self -organization. 00:03:40.099 --> 00:03:42.800 And what about that FAA line of sight rule we 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:44.719 talked about? How does it make a drone physically 00:03:44.719 --> 00:03:47.580 stop? That's handled by what's called a visibility 00:03:47.580 --> 00:03:50.840 scalar field. As a drone nears an area where 00:03:50.840 --> 00:03:53.599 that visibility factor drops to zero, the effective 00:03:53.599 --> 00:03:55.919 viscosity in the calculation approaches infinity. 00:03:56.439 --> 00:03:58.840 The fluid just freezes. It literally freezes. 00:03:58.840 --> 00:04:01.340 Flow into that non -compliant area stops. It's 00:04:01.340 --> 00:04:03.780 a physics -based enforcement mechanism. So the 00:04:03.780 --> 00:04:06.280 real genius here, it seems, is the shift in perspective. 00:04:06.500 --> 00:04:08.580 You're not tracking individual particles anymore, 00:04:08.719 --> 00:04:11.099 that Lagrangian view. Exactly. You stop caring 00:04:11.099 --> 00:04:13.280 about the particle and start managing the total 00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:16.139 flow field, the Eulerian view. Yeah. The system 00:04:16.139 --> 00:04:18.579 becomes completely self -aware. It's incredible. 00:04:19.220 --> 00:04:21.040 And if you think about the bigger picture here, 00:04:21.660 --> 00:04:24.360 the Navier -Stokes model takes things that used 00:04:24.360 --> 00:04:27.560 to be seen as just obstacles. like wind, or the 00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:29.939 urban canyon effect, where tall buildings degrade 00:04:29.939 --> 00:04:32.860 GPS signals. It maps them. Signal degradation 00:04:32.860 --> 00:04:36.779 becomes signal viscosity. It uses these forces 00:04:36.779 --> 00:04:40.199 not as problems to avoid, but as known terms 00:04:40.199 --> 00:04:42.819 in the equation to find the truly optimal path. 00:04:42.980 --> 00:04:45.019 Which leaves you with a final thought. It does. 00:04:45.459 --> 00:04:47.620 What does it actually mean for our infrastructure 00:04:47.620 --> 00:04:50.060 when physics problems from centuries ago become 00:04:50.060 --> 00:04:52.480 the most elegant, self -organizing solutions 00:04:52.480 --> 00:04:54.600 for our most modern logistics challenges?