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FAA Clears UPS Delivery Drones To Fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight 32

Posted by BeauHD from the heads-up dept.
In a press release today, the Federal Aviation Administration said UPS delivery drones are now allowed to fly longer distance flights beyond the sight of ground operators. "This is the kind of move that opens the door for drone delivery companies like Wing, FedEx, and Zip to deliver packages across a wider area and service more customers," reports The Verge. From the report: UPS Flight Forward, a UPS subsidiary focused on drone delivery, can now deliver small packages beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) without spotters on the ground monitoring the route and skies for other aircraft, using SwissDrones SVO 50 V2 drones. The FAA also announced authorizations for two other companies to fly beyond sight for commercial purposes. That includes uAvionix Corp. and, last week, infrastructure inspection company Phoenix Air Unmanned.

UPS first received government approval to operate its drone service in 2019, the same year the FAA authorized Alphabet's Wing service to operate commercially. The company first focused on building a drone delivery network for US hospital campuses.
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FAA Clears UPS Delivery Drones To Fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight

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  • I wonder how long it will take the crows to figure out they sometimes carry food and that the wire makes great nesting material
  • Use the buzz Luke. Close your eyes. Use the buzz.

  • For what it's worth (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xlsior ( 524145 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2023 @07:51PM (#63828832) Homepage
    ...A never-ending flock of drones departing a giant warehouse in the middle of nowhere seems VERY far off, but there is a far more practical way to use drones for delivery of small packages: instead of a warehouse, use a moving truck as their home base.

    A delivery driver could simply slowly drive a truck with a modified roof through a neighborhood, automatically launching drones with packages whenever they get close to the delivery address. Drone drops package on the porch or backyard, flies back to the moving truck to pick up the next package to deliver when they get close. No need to get out of the van or even stop, which could greatly increase the # of deliveries per driver per hour, as well as reducing the necessary flight distance of the drone which cuts down its fuel needs and interception risk.
    • A package cannon would be more fun though
    • Take it another step, and an autonomously driven truck, delivering goods from a fully automatic warehouse using drones is the end goal.
      Once capitalism removes the need for labour completely shareholder value is going to go through the roof.
      • Now if only they can find someone employed and who has money to pay for their goods and services. Or maybe the rich can just sell stuff to each other while the rest of the population starves.
        • Or we might end up with a bipolar America. The rich who has all of this super high tech stuff and who lives in ultra luxury, and the rest who are bartering and living like the medieval days and reading by oil lamp at night. This is a very desirable future, is it not?
        • That's the flaw in capitalism really isn't it? If everybody tries to do it, we all lose.

    • That will only work in rural areas. In an urban area people will complain about a van launching drones outside their house. They'd have to do it in designated spots .. not sure where that'll be feasible unless they dished out a lot of cash.

      • "That will only work in rural areas. In an urban area people will complain about a van launching drones outside their house." It's much worse than that. The street people who are gacked up on drugs and think the CIA is after them will see this, get ultra excited, and blow a gasket. Then these vans, and possibly the house where the van launched the drones in front of will be the target of violence by the unhinged maniac that is witnessing physical 'proof' of his dillusions play out right in front of him or

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      use a moving truck as their home base

      In this particular case, I don't see that happening.

      UPS is not using some modest-sized quadcopter. The drone they are using [google.com] is a scaled-down helicopter with a rotor diameter of nearly 3 m [10 ft] and a payload capacity of 40 kg. It's primary use in the marketplace is inspecting power lines or search-and-rescue. The manufacturer [swissdrones.com] indicates it needs a crew of two to operate (presumably, one to fly and the other to operate the payload).

      You'd have to turn a deliv

  • Yeah, now that they've nailed beyond non-visual line of sight they can move on to beyond visual line of sight. Got it.

  • Is'nt a dron delivering an UPS super-heavy vecause of the tranformer and the battery? I think this is a recipe for disaster!

    • The reason flying cars likely won't (and shouldn't) take off, so to speak because people can't even handle 2d land driving. Giving them access to airspace will end in disaster. Yes, there are Cessnas, etc but usually they are piloted by people who know what they are doing, and very few people fly a Cessna as a whole. The other problem is the massive security upgrades that would have to be made to prisons and open air warehousing facilities to keep the flying cars out. The whole thing will be a nightmare.

  • Correction (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Woeful Countenance ( 1160487 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2023 @09:37PM (#63828970)

    They're actually SDO 50 V2 [swissdrones.com] (as in Swiss Drones Operating AG), not SVO. The FAA press release [faa.gov] got it wrong, though the official announcement [faa.gov] got it right. Would be a bit of a hassle if the FAA accidentally certified the wrong thing.

    These are also not the battery-powered toys people typically think of as "drones". They're powered by gas turbines, look like helicopters, and weigh 42 kg (92 pounds), plus up to 40 kg (88 pounds) of payload. If one fell on you, it would hurt.

    For deliveries, there are also these fixed-wing [techcrunch.com] remotely-operated, not-completely-autonomous drone aircraft. Company started by delivering drugs to remote locations in Africa; looks like they have since expanded their operation, benefiting from COVID-19.

  • I wonder how long before people take these things down with guns and such for the "free l00t", or like the actual Bird scooters, people are annoyed to no end by these things. A human pilot inside the craft tends to discourage this behavior a bit more because of possible murder charges.

  • Unless you live near an airport, a government building, an embassy, a military base ... ...or there is nowhere to land, or it has to fly over crowds .... ..or if it has to fly over tall buildings
    etc... etc ...

  • This should be a laugh. Capitalism is going to struggle to make autonomous drones profitable, because there will be no workers around to implement work-arounds for free.
    Don't maintain or repair your delivery truck? The driver will brake earlier to accomodate the worn pads, apply correction to the misaligned steering , squint through the dirty windshield that the broken wipers don't touch, tie doors shut when the locks are broken and so on. And all for free.
    You can force a human to risk his health lifting a

  • Before the FAA passed regulations on December 12th 2017 I used to launch my fixed wing drones on BVLOS missions. It was a blast. My airplanes had a Pixhawk Flight controller, had a flight time of 45 minutes and top speed in a tail wind was 65mph. The airplane was made of EPO foam, balsa, and some carbon fiber parts. I had flights logged over 9 miles out flying along a rocky coastline at 600ft. I haven't been able to enjoy the hobby since then. After the FAA passed the regulations I concentrated on
  • I do not want that flying over my house. .. man it's powered by an 11kw turbine. 191lbs, what can go wrong ? My drones and fixed wing airplanes barely weigh over 1lb. Some of them are actually 250g with batteries.

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