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Vacations are already being soiled by people flying loud drones in areas of natural beauty, now we get to have our day-to-day skies soiled by fleets of drones d

• FroshKiller 10y ago
  I don't know about you being the only one, but personally, I certainly prefer the buzz if it means fewer vehicles on the roads every day.
  • wackro 10y ago
    I'm not sure decreased traffic will be an effect. Only increased air traffic. And more amazon sales.
  • tqkxzugoaupvwqr 10y ago
    Delivery trucks are way more quiet for each ton of goods they deliver. I’d rather have two trucks filled to the top on the road once a day instead of dozens of delivery drones delivering goods around the clock. It means the customer won’t get his toothbrush 30 minutes after ordering but at least the rest can live in peace.
    • FroshKiller 10y ago
      To be clear, I don't really give a damn about the noise either way. I care about reducing the risk of loss of life in automobile accidents.
      • ProAm 10y ago
        So more lives saved and less jobs to go around sounds like a wonderful future existence.
        • FroshKiller 10y ago
          Fewer jobs, not less, and yes, that does sound wonderful to me. You think that sounds like some kind of dystopia, there being more people alive who perhaps have to look for different jobs? Versus those same people being dead and people still doing tedious work we could automate? I think that sounds more dystopian, personally.
          • ProAm 10y ago
            Depends on your definition of global over-population and quality of life I suppose.
      • wyager 10y ago
        A negligible decrease in mortality in exchange for an intermittent high-pitched buzzing sound in any populated area... I think I'll pass on this one.
  • bad_user 10y ago
    Delivery vehicles that can be replaced by drones are what, 0.1% to 1% of all vehicles maybe? So you'll have both the same car traffic and the noise from drones ;-)
    • justinv 10y ago
      With that quick of a click to delivery, do you really think you'll have the same car traffic? The amount of times you'd need to drive to get anything would dramatically decrease.
      • stinkytaco 10y ago
        That's sort of true now. No one really has to go to Target because we have Amazon Prime Pantry, but I still see that place full of cars. I don't have any numbers, but I'm willing to bet delivery commerce has increased dramatically in the last ten years, but I doubt traffic has decreased proportionally.
      • usefulcat 10y ago
        For small items, maybe, not for anything too large for a drone to deliver.
• dabeeeenster 10y ago
  Interesting question - how quiet could a drone get? Presume they are not optimised for sound...?
  • sarreph 10y ago
    We just need to pop an anti-gravity engine on the bottom instead of using air-propulsion. Then, to reduce the visual pollution, we just cloak them with an invisibility shield. It's really that simple. I'm sure Amazon already has this on their roadmap.
  • durkie 10y ago
    I imagine these amazon drones are at least quieter than most consumer drones just based on their larger propellers. This is operating on the assumption that a larger propeller can spin slower to generate the same amount of thrust as a smaller propeller spinning faster, which might not be 100% accurate. Motor noise in general seems like it's kind of an overlooked issue though.
• smlacy 10y ago
  Agreed on the perceived futility of these efforts. Even Amazon knows its silly: "First starting with 2 customers and the moving to DOZENS!" Woo hoo good job guys! But first can we please solve the leafblower problem? Modern american suburbia is already ruined by an almost constant 120dB buzz and pollution & smell of cheap 2-stroke engine exhaust.
  • Zombieball 10y ago
    I bet someone thought the same thing when Amazon sold its first couple of books online ;)
    • wnissen 10y ago
      Or the first night FedEx operated, sorting the packages on a single table in Memphis.
  • function_seven 10y ago
    My prediction within the next 10 years, a majority of jurisdictions will ban 2-stroke leaf blowers. Electric leaf blowers are a thing now. A combination of pollution control and noise control, along with a viable alternative, will gather enough support for these bans. (I’m not sure what portion of leaf blower noise is caused by the fan vs. the engine. I suspect even if the fan creates the larger component, it’s probably less annoying than the buzz of a two stroke engine). EDIT: At the moment, I think gas powered units are still more powerful. But with battery technology going the way it is, and prices falling, I’d be surprised if a backpack electric unit doesn’t become cheap enough to rival current gas units. And even with some reduced power, users may prefer it to having to mix oil and maintain the units.
    • derekp7 10y ago
      I have a plug-in electric leaf blower, and it is very loud. Enough that I'm self conscious about using it, unless there is other noise around to drown it out.
• gamegoblin 10y ago
  According to the video, they fly ~400ft up. Can anyone with more quadcopter experience describe how noisy that is? I know they are loud when they are nearby, but 400ft is far.
  • sp00ls 10y ago
    At 400ft up, you're not going to hear a thing. Would wager that even if I told you it was there you would not be able to locate it in a timely manner, let alone be annoyed by it.
    • athenot 10y ago
      At 400ft, you can't really hear a modern car on modern pavement. But you certainly can hear a busy street. One single drone may not produce a lot of noise but a whole group of them might be a different story.
    • lostlogin 10y ago
      Isn't 400 their max ceiling by regulation? Presumably they don't want to breach their operating rules so actually fly somewhat below this?
      • sp00ls 10y ago
        Probably, but I am unsure what part of the regulations they are required to follow. I'm more familiar with human operator/FPV drones, mainly racing quads. Even if they're only flying at 300ft to be safe I still very much doubt you will hear anything. My race quads are pretty loud but in my experiences with larger slower moving ones they can be pretty quiet once a short distance away from you is reached. Mostly attributed to the props being larger, slower spinning, and less aggressive.
  • yellowbkpk 10y ago
    It depends a lot on the wind and the size/shape of the propellers. When I fly my DJI UAVs up near 400 feet above ground on a zero-wind day it's very easy to hear when I'm outside. When they get to be ~500 feet away it's much harder to hear. I've never been inside while flying, but my wife says she can't hear it when she's inside. On a breezy day, the wind through the trees covers most of the noise while I'm outside, but the variation in the noise when the flight computer is compensating for wind makes it a little easier to pick out. Bottom line: you'll probably be able to hear these large Amazon UAVs when you're outdoors and when they're within 500 feet of you.
• mason240 10y ago
  I wonder if future conventions will have business drones only flying over existing surface streets when possible. Buzzing over the street in my neighborhood is a lot less intrusive than flying directly over my house. Obviously it would be a longer route, but maybe the trade off would be worth it.
  • jerf 10y ago
    It's possible they'd have no choice: https://aviation.uslegal.com/ownership-of-airspace-over-property/ https://aviation.uslegal.com/ownership-of-airspace-over-prop... Note I'm explicitly making a vague, handwavy argument in the direction of current laws about property owners and their ownership of the airspace over their property, as I am not anywhere near expert enough to opine on how that would precisely manifest in this case. I'm only opining that there exists already law that matters.
• spullara 10y ago
  You won't be able to hear them on their way to the destination, only near the takeoff and landing.
• pseudometa 10y ago
  Both the noise and sight of drones is unpleasant. I can't imagine rich people wanting a stream of drones flying over their homes. One more thing poor people will have to put up with in the future.
• plandis 10y ago
  How loud is a drone at 400 ft? Louder than cars driving down a road?
• kbenson 10y ago
  Don't worry, I predict drone sniping will become a new favorite vandalism of the youth. For those on the more nefarious side, theft from drones will probably be common. Bring it down in your vicinity, take the payload.
  • toby 10y ago
    Any youth who can hit a small object 400ft away moving 50mph has far more lucrative options than drone theft.
    • kbenson 10y ago
      It has to come down to deliver. Even if doing roof deliveries, if they are on a roof within a building or two, they won't be that far away from the drone. Plenty of young people put good skills to use in stupid ways until they get older (and some never hit "until"). Sometimes it's how they develop those skills in the first place. The big reason why I think this is likely is the same as why I think it's more likely with autonomous car package delivery. An employee is a wildcard in the equation, they may care above all reason about the crime, and that can be the difference between easy money and going to jail.
      • woobar 10y ago
        Or they can start delivering to the places where they already leave packages at the door w/o issues.
    • pmoriarty 10y ago
      What about using a drone to take down another drone? Also, a drone need not be taken down by physically attacking it. Its command and control system could conceivably be hacked.
  • madamelic 10y ago
    Probably the same amount as package theft. If I wanted to, I could just walk around and take packages off as many stoops as I wanted. Why don't I? Because it is illegal. Of course 'youths' are going to do dumb things but I am doubtful theft from drones are going to become illegal. Although that brings up the point of stealing packages using drones for anonymity.
• mirekrusin 10y ago
  They sound like mosquitoes in my head, have to agree.
• joering2 10y ago
  I'm with you, but imagine all those horse-lovers in the time of motorization boom where cars used to be much nosier than today. Eventually sooner or later you will have state/gov/some department to regulate how much noise those can make.
• dawnerd 10y ago
  I wonder how much the tech can change to reduce the noise. Maybe something similar to what Noctua does with their computer fans. It just seems like all the research has gone into making the props as powerful as possible while using the least amount of energy. If I recall correctly, the Dyson air dryer was tuned to sound more like white noise than just a noisy fan. Maybe that's a solution too.
• libeclipse 10y ago
  I guess we shouldn't have planes or cars either because they make noise. This is a massive step forward technologically for consumers. With every new technology I've noticed that there's always that croud of people that oppose it, talking nostalgically of the good old days when we didn't have phones or the internet. Just for a second can we marvel at what has been accomplished here? Deliveries aside, ordinary people can buy, or even make, devices that _fly_. Actually fly. How anyone can just take it for granted and then dismiss it by saying it makes noise is beyond me.
  • DSingularity 10y ago
    We as technologists need to also learn to think beyond the technology. We need to think about broader impact of our tech. Especially social and psychological impacts. Why not? We have the tools. The only barrier sense to be our ego. We view something as net positive and as a technical marvel and become upset at any suggestion that there maybe be done undesirable consequences. I know this won't be the popular opinion here. But the least we can do is learn to engage these kinds of thoughts. Perhaps middle ground can be found. Dismissing them helps nobody.
  • stinkytaco 10y ago
    > I guess we shouldn't have planes or cars either because they make noise. But we've adapted our cities to accommodate this. We have zoning rules, traffic engineering, sound barriers, and so on to accommodate or redirect this noise and those solutions have been developed over the last century. We had the same problem with cars when they were first on roads [0]. You can't expect people not to have a problem with drones until we are able to adapt our planning and design to their existence. [0] For more on this, I recommend Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City by Peter Norton.
• satysin 10y ago
  Vacations are already being soiled by people driving loud vehicles in areas of natural beauty, now we get to have our day-to-day countryside soiled by fleets of cars and trucks delivering popcorn.
• apsec112 10y ago
  Cars are already ubiquitous and really, really loud. We tend to forget this because we're all so used to it. From the first values I could find with decent sourcing, at a distance of 25 feet, a car driving by at reasonably high speed is 77 dB, while a drone is 65 dB. I live 500 feet from a freeway, with lots of buildings between here and there, and I can still hear clearly hear the traffic indoors with windows closed.