Amazon's Drone-Delivery Dreams Are No Joke (backchannel.com) 147
Backchannel's Steven Levy reports that Amazon "has a site at an undisclosed semi-rural location where it attempts to simulate the possible obstacles that drones will face in real-world deliveries." Amazon's drones reach speeds of 60 miles per hour, and can perform a 20-mile round trip, which makes Amazon believe they could especially useful deliveries to the suburbs, some rural areas. "The facility features a faux backyard and other simulated locations where drones might have to drop off their cargo." An anonymous reader quotes their report:
"For a while, we were missing clotheslines," says Paul Viola, an AI expert who is charge of Prime Air's autonomy efforts. Now, Amazon's vehicles have a "Don't Hit Clotheslines!" rule in their code. There's even a simulated dog (though not a robot) that Amazon uses to see how the vehicles will respond to canine threats... Amazon is also planning for urban deliveries, with the idea of landing drones on rooftops [and] eventually it might expand to multiple deliveries per expedition, or even take returns back to the warehouse...
All of this is done without human intervention. Drones know where to go and how to get there without a human sitting at a ground station actually flying the plane... [A]n Air Prime technician can order a drone to land, but ultimately the drones are autonomous. Amazon envisions that eventually it will have sort of an air traffic controller monitoring the flight patterns of multiple drones.
If something goes wrong, "the first rule of Amazon drones is to abort the flight, returning to base or even carefully finding a landing spot from which to send a rescue signal. 'If it doesn't seem safe, it will land as soon as safely possible,' says Gur Kimchi, who has headed the Prime Air team for four years. (He previously worked at Microsoft.)"
All of this is done without human intervention. Drones know where to go and how to get there without a human sitting at a ground station actually flying the plane... [A]n Air Prime technician can order a drone to land, but ultimately the drones are autonomous. Amazon envisions that eventually it will have sort of an air traffic controller monitoring the flight patterns of multiple drones.
If something goes wrong, "the first rule of Amazon drones is to abort the flight, returning to base or even carefully finding a landing spot from which to send a rescue signal. 'If it doesn't seem safe, it will land as soon as safely possible,' says Gur Kimchi, who has headed the Prime Air team for four years. (He previously worked at Microsoft.)"
Not just amazone... (Score:1)
It isn't a joke... (Score:5, Funny)
And I'm not laughing (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'm worried about however is safety and security surrounding drone delivery. Buying a drone off the shelf still won't allow you to easily deliver parcels to a location outside your line of sight 5 miles away. But Amazon is solving that problem right now. Great huh?
Only ... I can't be the only one who's thought about the possibilities of hijacking
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Terrorists are actually fairly slow at coming up with novel ideas. It literally took terrorists something like 100 years from the advent of automatic firearms to come up with and popularise the idea that you can simple grab a gun and spray bullets at a crowd in an enclosed space.
Let's not help these people by posting clever ideas online.
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Terrorists are actually fairly slow at coming up with novel ideas. It literally took terrorists something like 100 years from the advent of automatic firearms to come up with and popularise the idea that you can simple grab a gun and spray bullets at a crowd in an enclosed space.
Let's not help these people by posting clever ideas online.
OK, how did this get modded up. The idea of "spray and pray" is pretty much as old as the automatic weapon itself. The first man portable sub machine guns were invented in WWI, circa 1915. They were used to mow down rooms full of people in the 1920's.
Terrorists aren't stupid. You're only kidding yourself if you think otherwise. Most terrorists tend to be highly educated because most of them from the middle east are young men who have trained to be an engineer but ended up finding out there aren't any goo
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Could you refer to any non-military mass-shootings in the 1920's, or even any mass shootings prior to the 2000's outside of war zones and colonies? I'm not talking about gangsters moving down a few people. That happens all the time. I'm talking about civilians/terrorists murdering 50+ civilians with guns.
You know, educated people are not necessarily more clever or inventive than uneducated people.
If terrorism happened because of this lack of opportunity that you describe we would be facing a massive wave of
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They are already using drones in Syria with explosives. So your theory is garbage.
That is bad bad news then, since it probably means they'll do the same in Europe and the US within the next few years.
The fact remains that terrorists tool a long time to realise that they could simple use guns. This terrorist attack seems to have been the first in history where upwards of 100 people were trapped in an enclosed space and gunned down by terrorists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: And I'm not laughing (Score:3)
It appears you're being sarcastic though I can't figure out why. Why should Amazon be any more responsible for the misuse of drones than any other drone manufacturer is? Do you think Ford should also be responsible for people driving into crowds?
Jeff Bezos is not as bad as Donald Trump... (Score:3)
Remote control over drones can ALWAYS be eliminated or hijacked [google.com] by radio frequency interference.
Technology ALWAYS has failures, like those at Three Mile Island [wikipedia.org], Fukushima Daiichi [wikipedia.org], and Chernobyl [wikipedia.org].
Amazon drone delivery: nine ways it could go horribly wrong [telegraph.co.uk]
I don't want drones near where I live. Will drones be allowed near where Jeff Bezos lives?
9 ways drone delivery can fail. Any others? (Score:3)
1) What if communication is hijacked?
2) There are many, many dogs that would jump on a drone trying to land a package.
3) There are children would try to capture a drone. Mom! I found a plane in our yard!
4) A drone would be REALLY, REALLY ANNOYING to a lot of people. Why? A drone would compromise their safety. A drone would emit scary noise. Many, many people in the U.S., a nation of gun owners, would shoot at a drone. Even c
Shortcomings on Amazon web pages indicate... (Score:2)
"Amazon has hired some of the best engineers and expert researchers in the world for this."
I feel doubtful about that. I see shortcomings on almost every Amazon web page. If managers at Amazon don't see or don't fix those, what chance is there they will solve far more difficult problems?
Even intensely developed technology fails. (Score:2)
I'm sure everyone understands the issue. If there can be huge problems with extraordinarily expensive, intensely managed technology, it is even more likely that there will be problems with technology that is not getting a lot of oversight.
Drone technology is not getting much oversight. I haven't seen any stories discussing the 9 issues I mentioned.
People feeling superior often act nasty. (Score:2)
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Rural deliveries; from base trucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Drones executing rural deliveries, launched from some sort of 'base truck' a human drives to a central location to launch and monitor multiple drones. That's pretty much the only use case for drone delivery.
Of course, a fully functional delivery system is symmetrical -- you can send stuff _back_ using the same channel. The base truck should also accept the farmer's *own* drone returning a non-functional item to Amazon.
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"Jake, I love the tacos, k? They--they're maybe the best tacos I've ever had. It's just that... well, I think if I had to choose between the tacos, and the mail, I'd have to choose the mail."
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I am deeply skeptical about aerial drones because (a) apartments, (b) residences have boundaries. They may be visible (like fences and gates), but they exist for a purpose. Would anyone like a cargo drone with six propellers whirring close to their children's heads? Perhaps children who are playing with their own drone in the backyard? Further, Amazon is sure to be followed by other shopping sites and third party logistics providers - all with their own drones crossing residential boundaries willy-nilly.
So
Obligatory Ace Ventura (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Ups is working on a modified delivery truck with a drone dock station. The driver stops at a stop loads the drone the drone flys off and the driver does a stop or two with the drone returning. Charge or swap batteries and move on to the next stop.
Personally ballet I see that happening first as drones have horrible range and Amazon can work with ups to make the deliveries quicker
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I blame autocorrect for inserting ballet into that last sentence. Not sure how else it got there.
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How I am able to do that, baffles me.
Even better, I am able to that in a couple of (human) languages.
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Yes, that's more likely, perhaps with one or two modifications:
(a) a robotic picking system (loads package on drone automatically)
(b) land-based drones not aerial
(c) multiple drones per base truck
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Drones executing rural deliveries, launched from some sort of 'base truck' a human drives to a central location to launch and monitor multiple drones. That's pretty much the only use case for drone delivery.
Of course, a fully functional delivery system is symmetrical -- you can send stuff _back_ using the same channel. The base truck should also accept the farmer's *own* drone returning a non-functional item to Amazon.
I can actually think of a lot of use cases, such as rapid delivery when it would take a truck or van hours to reach from a distribution centre. In England this could be a lot of places. The problem is ensuring they have a safe place to land, the weather and are clear of any other flight paths. However none of these use cases are economical. Ultimately that is what is stopping drone based deliveries.
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In fact you won't 't even find me on and SM site so don't bother trying.
Given that we don't actually know who you are in the first place (i.e. you posted as an AC), it's pretty unlikely that anyone was going to do so anyway! ;-)
Amazon envisions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like any business, Amazon's envisions becoming as profitable as possible which means they aim for 100% automation because automation doesn't need to be paid. Capitalism itself is really just an optimization problem where you extract as much money from people while giving the least amount of it back. However, like humanity working to exhaust a natural resource, businesses will too hit a point where they find themselves in trouble because of the lack of balance they have created in the economic ecosystem. Those with authority are either ignorant of this fact or simply don't care. Automation can either be our liberator or our destructor and it's up to us to decide that while we still can.
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A more optimized delivery system benefits us all.
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Except those displaced by optimization...
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Except those displaced by optimization...
They have an opportunity to do something more useful.
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Except those displaced by optimization...
They have an opportunity to do something more useful.
Such as?
Previous "revolutions" have ended up creating jobs, But unlike this one, their purpose was not to destroy jobs.
So yes, this revolution will create some jobs, but not even at a 1 job destroyed/1 job created level, because if even that level is reached, this revolution will be a failure.
It is coming however, and nothing is going to stop it. We need to have intelligent people come together and plan for a future where most of humanity does not work for a living, yet are adequately supported.
Unf
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Previous "revolutions" have ended up creating jobs, But unlike this one, their purpose was not to destroy jobs.
Yes, things like farm machinery and freight trains absolutely were intended to destroy jobs. Likewise laundry machines. And don't forget all of the file clerks, paper industry employees, and sheet metal workers at file cabinet manufacturers out of work because of computer systems. Such things have been destroying jobs for many decades, even centuries, now.
... fewer babies being had.
The solution is: enough prosperity to bring about what it always does
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Previous "revolutions" have ended up creating jobs, But unlike this one, their purpose was not to destroy jobs.
Yes, things like farm machinery and freight trains absolutely were intended to destroy jobs.
They were intended to increase productivity and make processes faster or even possible. You weren't going to get much across the country with a wagon train. That would take months, and nothing perishable could be shipped. And farmers certainly appreciated the machinery, as subsistence farming is deadly work.
And don't forget all of the file clerks, paper industry employees, and sheet metal workers at file cabinet manufacturers out of work because of computer systems. Such things have been destroying jobs for many decades, even centuries, now.
Jobs have been destroyed for a log time now. But your idea that people switched from paper to computerized storage because the purpose of that switch was specifically to get rid of jobs is pretty interesting. I'm really skeptical that anyone said "Let's get rid of sheet metal workers - we'll start using computers!"
Unlike today, when there is an active search to specifically eliminate all labor. The solution is: enough prosperity to bring about what it always does ... fewer babies being had.
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Early in my career I had a shared administrative assistant. If I wanted, I could have just dictated memos and email to her, she would have printed out any response and walked them over to my desk. But because I was comfortable with a computer and can type at least as quickly as I can talk, there was little need for her. Soon after the company was reorganized and she was gone. (The boss still had one, but then later on both he and his assistant were gone too)
One thing I really miss about her was the ability
Re: Amazon envisions... (Score:1)
Heh? We already don't work for a "living". Most of our jobs are for creating things far above "living".
Entertainment, toys, speed boats, video games , etc. People will keep wanting more experiences and other people can always provide value there.
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Heh? We already don't work for a "living". Most of our jobs are for creating things far above "living".
The Sunday morning pedant show has arrived, I see.
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And went stright over your head. There will always be more to do because we can always think of more things to do. We'll be producing enough to live. So it will generally work out.
'Working out" takes many different forms. It might be that humanity enters a golden age, and people do more or less what they want to do without worrying about starving.
Ot it might mean that the surplus population is turned into fertilizer.
Either way works the problem. Given the current folks in office, my money is on fertilizer.
Actually, we can still have full employment (Score:5, Interesting)
Humanity doesn't really have to support people who never contribute. (Most people will retire or whatever, and some will never be fit to work).
1) Shrink the work week. (I consider this nonviable because it is wasteful)
We can shrink the "work week" to almost nothing. Then everyone needs to "work" at those few jobs which are still essential. You just divide up the work smaller and smaller. I think this is a stupid idea, because the overhead on learning the skills tends to infinity.
2) Employ everyone in jobs that can't be automated. This means people working in arts, and maybe the sciences (if that remains unautomated), eradicating the last of the diseases that still afflict humanity, etc. This means that the people who control resources will have to demand *far far* more arts and science than they currently do. Yet in an abundance society, there will be effectively more resources to demand creative output from people than there are people. Seems like no problem, it just takes willingness to put resources to use this way. This way, we can keep "work or die", but there *has* to be a commitment from those who control resources to *accept* whatever creative work can be done by the people that are alive. This is by far my preferred vision of human future, thanks Marshall Brain for the inspiration. It preserves motivation to continue creative work instead of allowing humanity to descend to total meaningless existence.
3) Provide handouts with no expectation of work. This *may* work out well, I don't think it's a proven fact that people won't do creative things without threat of starvation. I think some will be driven to create despite having all necessities handed to them.
Good outcome or bad depends only and solely on the greed of those who control resources. If they want to hog all the resources to themselves, far beyond their needs, then yes, it'll be a mass slaughter. If they want to allow humanity as a whole to use the available resources is some more equitable way, then it could end up as a paradise.
--PeterM
Re: Actually, we can still have full employment (Score:2)
I don't think I've ever heard someone seriously say that "work or die" is their dream for the future.
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I don't think I've ever heard someone seriously say that "work or die" is their dream for the future.
It's a cool, edgy, business-managemently disruptive way of saying "protestant work ethic".
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1) will work until someone who actually enjoys working, or desires money/compensation more than leisure time comes along and skews the numbers in their favor. There are enough of these people out there that companies can compete for them. They end up setting the standard and the rest of us are dragged along.
2) I think this is exactly what is happening. Look at people who blog, produce YouTube video, sell "adventure" travel packages and other entertainment. But they haven't hit mainstream yet. Everyone who p
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it could end up as a parasite. - FTFY.
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Such as?
Imagine two people born in 1800 that are discussing what kind of jobs would be available in 2000, after they're being told about the level of automation there will be. I doubt they'll get more than 1%. The fact that you or I can't imagine what people will be doing instead, doesn't mean that new jobs won't be created.
For instance, I run a small business, but my skills are limited to a certain area, and I can't afford to hire anybody else. Maybe with smarter technology, I can get a robot to help me with the
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Such as?
Imagine two people born in 1800 that are discussing what kind of jobs would be available in 2000, after they're being told about the level of automation there will be. I doubt they'll get more than 1%. The fact that you or I can't imagine what people will be doing instead, doesn't mean that new jobs won't be created.
Problem is, if net new jobs are created, the robotic recolution will be considered a failure. Except for dangerous occupations, the goal of robotic replacement is not to make thnings safer or faster or better, it's to eliminate jobs.
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Historically, when we eliminated jobs, we wound up with spare workers that did something else. No net job loss, we just produced more. (Of course, this process was neither immediate nor painless.) If we can eliminate jobs with automation, and find new productive things for the displaced workers to do, that's one thing. The fear with the robotic revolution is that robots will do most of the jobs that low-skill humans can do.
The individual goals are to make more money, not to eliminate jobs. If a mach
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Logically, what would happen to our society if the "top 1%" in any field increased 10- or 50-fold? Would employers still still hire the people that were in the 80th pe
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Their dreams of drone delivery will work until it becomes urban sport to nail the drones with slingshots, BB guns, rocks, etc. It is just be a new target for juvenile delinquency.
They can shrink the eco system (Score:3)
Re: Amazon envisions... (Score:5, Insightful)
Government does not create wealth, but it uses force to extract it from people that create wealth.
And then your post fell to the same level as the one you responded to.
So NASA creates no net wealth? How about research in medicine which is mostly funded by government? How about major loans that are almost fully backed by the government? How about police officers keeping an area safe for commerce? Or the military keeping shipping lanes safe?
The list goes on... There is a lot of stuff that capilitism just doesn't approach at all to create wealth because of the amount of invest involved, even if very low on risk.
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You won't make a dent in Roman_mir, he has an almost religious Libertardian ferver. Logic, history, economics and anthropology have all been tried, and he seems immune to them all. Capitalism is his god, and nothing should limit it.
I believe it was him who once told me that water pollution would be nonexistent if the waterways had owners, since the owner would sue. I asked, "So what if the owner of the Cuyahoga River just takes a fee to allow the chemical plants to dump their waste in it?" He replied
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Capitalism is private ownership and private operation of resources.
How entirely myopic.
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That's the definition. How can a definition be myopic?
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It's like he was talking about the Space Shuttle Challenger without talking about it's disastrous end when I was specifically talking about the disastrous end.
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Forgot the clothesline (Score:2)
It seems unlikely researchers will be able to anticipate every obstacle an unmanned delivery vehicle would encounter in a simulated model.
Ultimately, it will come down to an equation: additional loss of packages and UAVs + UAV cost and maintenance is less than or equal to conventional human delivery services.
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I wonder if they remembered overhead phone, and cable service lines, and assuming they did, why this software didn't recognize clothes lines as an obstacle.
It seems unlikely researchers will be able to anticipate every obstacle an unmanned delivery vehicle would encounter in a simulated model.
Ultimately, it will come down to an equation: additional loss of packages and UAVs + UAV cost and maintenance is less than or equal to conventional human delivery services.
I wonder if they remembered overhead phone, and cable service lines, and assuming they did, why this software didn't recognize clothes lines as an obstacle.
It seems unlikely researchers will be able to anticipate every obstacle an unmanned delivery vehicle would encounter in a simulated model.
I'd love to see them try to deliver in my neighborhood. A wooded area, where the only open spaces are where the roads are, and even then, trees in the canopy and wires. and a lot of birds, some of the bigger ones don't like drones either. The only open space where a drone can fly is about along the roadways and sidewalks. Which are all designed to not be on a roadway grid. The airspace doesn't clear up until about 40 meters off the ground. And many of the affluent neighborhoods in my area are using this mod
Re:Forgot the clothesline (Score:2)
I'd love to see them try to deliver in my neighborhood.
Likewise. Unlike you, I don't live in a wooded area however, I live in the greater London area. My road, as are many (most?) round here isn't exactly tree-lined, but there are no shortage of trees on the road itself. Also, most of the houses are connected to overhead telephone wires. The pavements (sidewalks for you US folks) are not especially wide (not like US ones) and often have people walking on them (quite unlike US ones!). Front gardens are smal
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It's up to the customer to designate a suitable landing spot for deliveries. If you can't find one on your property then you simply won't have the option to receive deliveries this way.
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It's up to the customer to designate a suitable landing spot for deliveries. If you can't find one on your property then you simply won't have the option to receive deliveries this way.
No kidding.
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I'd love to see them try to bring these new-fangled automobiles to my neighborhood! A wooded area with no open spaces and a lot of birds.
There is a reason we don't share roads and flying machines. In my neighborhood, the drone would have to either hva to follow the road at car height, in which case, the delivery should be by autonomous vehicle not a flying machine.
My point is, that despite your trying to turn this into a get off my lawn statement, drones are simply not a good choice for delivery method in many places. I suppose in a development that was at one time a farmer's field, with no trees, underground services, and a non-reaction
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Sounds like a thiefs dream come true (Score:3)
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Except the first logical thing for a signal loss by a drone is to try to autonomously regain the signal by climbing upward while moving backward towards the location of the last known good source of signal.
I.e. Moving out of the range of "puppies". Which just happen to be illegal jamming devices.
Puppies keep barking... drone just videos the fucker and contacts the police. Autonomously.
Good thing for "puppy" owners and makers is that I'm fairly certain no one at Amazon thought of that, because I'm a lateral
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I meant 6 generations... or was that 7?
Amongst many generations...
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Noise is a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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Seriously. The first time I heard a drone in a park I nearly punched the operator. Flying lawnmower. Have they made drones any quieter these days?
A few rich communities will complain (Score:2)
Or, as that Dilbert guy said (ironically now that his politics have changed): You can get used to anything if somebody force you to.
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The obvious solution is to use self-driving road vehicles instead. The infrastructure is already in place in all developed countries.
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Which, incidentally, is why flying cars will never take off (apologies for the pun). Humans are much heavier than Amazon packages, so the flying car would be correspondingly louder.
Re:Noise is a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Current deliveries are done by trucks, are drones louder than trucks?
Not necessarily louder, but a much more annoying frequency spectrum.
First Commercial Drone Delivery Service (Score:5, Interesting)
These guys at Zipline [flyzipline.com] deliver emergency medical supplies to remote clinics in Rwanda. Not sunscreen to suburbanites. Anywhere within 120 kilometers of the base can receive a delivery of blood, vaccines, or other medical supplies within an hour of sending a text message, a trip that can take most of a day by road (if the road is even passable at that moment).
The trip is fully automated, just input the coordinates of the destination and the package is on its way at 100 kph. This is not a demonstration or beta project, they're currently in full operation in Rwanda and testing in other countries. The day they start to set up shop in Peru I'm retiring and going to work for them.
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That's awesome. But let's keep in mind that in Rwanda the alternatives to drones are much less effective than in the US.
territorial birds will attack these... (Score:3)
...and it'll result in downed drones and birds.
They Need A Landing Beacon (Score:2)
Amazon isn't going to send a Prime Air drone to just anyplace; it will only send a drone to Amazon Prime customers. That said, Amazon needs to provide a landing beacon for the drone to use. I would envision the beacon as something about the size and shape of a bathroom scale. The beacon would be linked via some wireless method.
When the customer orders something with Prime Air delivery, the customer's PC would transmit an authentication code to the beacon, as received from Amazon when the order is placed
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Not necessary. Automated video recognition is too good for that to be needed in this day and age. Customers will just print out an Amazon logo on a standard sheet of paper and lay it down. Maye with a QR code for high-value deliveries, but probably not. These things are fairly loud, you'll know when your delivery arrives.
Front porch theft (Score:1)
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What's the benefit of getting free products that you destroyed with a shotgun in order to acquire?
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Of course.... (Score:1)
Hmmm.... Do I get to keep.... (Score:1)
Can I shoot down a drone that is passing over my house (and keep the payload) as a toll for using my airspace?
Can I keep the pkg that was incorrectly delivered to my house?
(What also works is to replace the "Can I" above with "I will".)
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Roof of apartment and office buildings, not the roof of your trailer.
BTW, the drug smugglers on the southern border are using trebuchets for delivery already.