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Amazon Unveils Futuristic Helicopter-Plane Hybrid Drone for Deliveries

152 points by jason_zig 7y ago

NegativeLatency 7y ago
I haven't seen a design quite like this before, but it seems like a natural hybrid of existing Tail-sitter planes and the current popular drone configuration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter
consumer451 7y ago
> Its propellers have a slight S-curve designed to lower their noise to make them more acceptable for use in populated neighborhoods, Kimchi said. The craft is far more stable in high winds than more traditional drones, he said. Noise is my main concern with drone delivery networks. I have been playing with radio controlled aircraft for most of my life. I see drone delivery as inevitable, but living near a noisy drone delivery route could really lower quality of life for the people on the ground.
- vkou 7y ago
  > Noise is my main concern with drone delivery networks. What about 20-50 lb flying machines falling onto sidewalks, roofs, and streets? You don't see amateur RC aviation enthusiasts flying their model airplanes in the middle of the city, and I sure as hell don't want to see a corporation doing this on an industrial scale. Why not ground-based drone delivery?
  - jagger27 7y ago
    Not to mention people's heads! I have faith in agencies like the FAA to keep things safe and reasonable, and where that isn't enough NIMBYs and municipal governments will pick up the slack, no doubt.
    - derekp7 7y ago
      > I have faith in agencies like the FAA to keep things safe Has this faith been shaken by the recent 737 Max issues?
      - patrick5415 7y ago
        No. Air travel is still incredibly safe, a few high profile accidents notwithstanding.
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    Why are you downvoted? Safety is a thousand times more concerning - the drones will mechanically fail, they will hit bad weather, they will collide with birds, there will be new drone delivery market entrants and will need coordination across systems... If a drone fails at an expected operating altitude, it can kill someone easily on the ground. If it fails at height over a highway, what if it kills a bus driver or causes a tractor trailer to lose control? What if they hit electric lines? What else can go in flight corridors at the same altitudes? Do they container chemicals or voltages that first responders have to be aware of?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - zjaffee 7y ago
      There's a reason why it's taking so long for Amazon to get FAA approval for drone delivery and this is exactly why. There are people in important places asking these sorts of questions already. My guess personally, is that drone delivery will ultimately just be a tool for a self driving truck to get the package from the truck to the door. Drones are not nearly good enough as it stands today to do end to end deliveries at an industrial scale outside of maybe a few rural areas.
      - greenburger 7y ago
        The same people in important places that approved the 737 Max?
        BrandonMarc 7y ago
        Yes ... so they have experience in crashing planes, which is relevant. /s
        pwinnski 7y ago
        In the sense that they are human, yes. Even in the sense that they work for the government, which narrows the pool to 20,000,000+ But also, no. Not the same people.
  - buu700 7y ago
    Interesting point. Maybe instead we should be using self-driving cars with drones (or something ground-based, like RC skateboards) only handling moving packages from the car to the door.
    - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
      This exists: https://nuro.ai/ https://nuro.ai/
  - joshvm 7y ago
    This probably isn't for cities. I was at a conference a few years back where Prime Air gave a talk. It was quite a vague talk, but admittedly it was hilarious watching Takeo Kanade grill the speaker on technical details that he refused to elaborate on. Things have no doubt moved on, but they were talking about use cases like delivering to rural areas where people have big gardens to land in. So potentially places where sending a delivery truck miles out of the way would be expensive (e.g. a 20 minute detour to one house). That's where the interesting applications of drone delivery are. That drone is pretty big, and they're getting extra lift out of the wings which conveniently double as prop guards. Flight time is presumably at least an hour, if it can get something to a customer in half an hour (and has to get back). You'd need quite a few since each drone can therefore only make around 10-20 deliveries a day if they swap out the batteries when it lands. 30 mile round trip range is pretty decent. Also on size - you need somewhere to land it with a few metres wriggle room either side. There's no way that's going into a built up area. There's no point doing drone delivery in urban environments, the safety case is insane and you're competing with excellent existing delivery channels.
  - megablast 7y ago
    It can't be worse than the cars and trucks it will replace, which kill 40,000 people every single year in the USA alone.
    - vkou 7y ago
      How many people do Amazon delivery drivers kill/year? Pretty sure it's not 40,000.
- bongobongo 7y ago
  My main concern is the audio and video recording devices that will undoubtedly be attached to these drones (if history is any guide, likely without any disclosure). I foresee ads for rakes when Amazon notices that there are lots of leaves in my yard. I don't know why people think this is a good thing right now.
  - dzhiurgis 7y ago
    How about just force-delivering a rake with free return?
    - pwinnski 7y ago
      I admire the way you think. It's horrifying, and disturbing, but I still admire it.
  - cagenut 7y ago
    this is coming, if not already here, from satellites anyway
  - drusepth 7y ago
    My first thought was "well, maybe you do need a rake". But I guess it probably can't see into your shed/garage/etc to know whether you actually have a rake or not. Ads for things you already have are such a waste.
    - bongobongo 7y ago
      God forbid I exist for a moment without being bombarded with offers to buy products. I would gladly trade the inconvenience of not being immediately aware of rake-buying opportunities for privacy and peace of mind.
  - trophycase 7y ago
    So I can get my useless bullshit faster and cheaper!
- idlewords 7y ago
  You are right that this thing is going to be noisy as hell. I can say this without having heard it because basic physics makes hovering craft with little propellers impossible to make quiet. Welcome to the new world of a flying buzzsaw delivering your neighbor's toothpaste at 7 AM. No wonder they chose to play classical music over this video.
  - bluedino 7y ago
    It'll be quieter than a UPS truck, that's for sure.
    - MikeTheGreat 7y ago
      Yeah, but if I have enough money/income (which is a big caveat, I know) then I can have some control over the location of the UPS truck by virtue of living someplace not too close to a road. When was the last time a UPS truck drove over your house / apartment / etc?
      - dillonmckay 7y ago
        Properties owners have rights up to 500 ft from the base of the property (trespass), but this has not been litigated yet.
        MikeTheGreat 7y ago
        I did not know that. Noise-wise that's reassuring. Mind if I ask where the law comes from? I'm assuming that you're talking about the United States - is this a federal/state/local law?
        dgacmu 7y ago
        This article has more details (and notes that it's been tested legally at 83 feet): https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/07/photographer-george-steinmetz-arrest-how-much-airspace-do-you-own.amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/201...
- gist 7y ago
  > I have been playing with radio controlled aircraft for most of my life RC Helis 60 Size Gas back in the old days. You had to manually control everything. You had to built it from scratch. [1] The ones they have now are so simple and easy they are no fun at all. I wonder if you feel the same way? I am still not getting how this is possible given weather conditions and variability. [1] Electric? Only thing like that I ever saw was at the hobby shop (remember those) and it had a power cord attached and was plugged into an extension cord and being tested out back.
  - castis 7y ago
    > You had to build it from scratch Thats exactly what I'm trying to do here (sort of), I'm like 2 years in on the project and I've only just begun to actually test the thing. https://github.com/castis/currant https://github.com/castis/currant
- binthere 7y ago
  Not to mention the visual pollution it may cause. I honestly don't think this is going to fly pun intended.
- shostack 7y ago
  In addition to noise, I'm also concerned about visual clutter, particularly in residential areas. The last thing I want is to add to the power lines, airplanes, etc. with the visual noise when I'm on my deck trying to enjoy nature. Further, Amazon is a major player in the advertising space now. I'd be surprised if at some point these weren't leveraged to display ads in some format. I'm a marketer by trade, but personally that's a line I don't want crossed.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    If there is a deck there you probably can’t see nature anyway.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    I'm also concerned about visual clutter, particularly in residential areas Then don't look up in a couple of years when SpaceX has HUNDREDS of satellites ruining the night sky. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/science/starlink-spacex-astronomers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/science/starlink-spacex-a...
  - megablast 7y ago
    Ha, but once again you have no problem with ugly roads, cars and trucks? Ok.
    - roscorollo 7y ago
      Cars, roads and trucks have been around for a century, and none of us were around to discuss that. Also now we have a century worth of experience to apply to deciding to add new vehicles to our environment. And finally for the most part cars, trucks etc are primarily fixed routes - roads. We know where they are, there's planning and committees around design and disruption before they are set in place. Drones move in a 3 dimensional space, with no set routes, and very few no fly zones. Basically imagine a moped that can fly over your property or circle where you live looking for an address. Not to even mention the privacy issues, most cars are still lacking in cameras, or scanning technology. Delivery drones will need that stuff to be standard.
- megablast 7y ago
  You don't have an issue with living near a noisy road with trucks driving down it though? I don't understand that.
bongobongo 7y ago
Amazon really can't be trusted with aerial surveillance drones. Oops, I meant delivery drones.
gdcohen 7y ago
Curious how well it will deal with locating the correct place at the correct house to deliver the package? One way to achieve this might be to only use the drone after a human delivery person has delivered a package and tagged in Amazon's map database where packages should be dropped. Or perhaps the house resident uploads a picture of their house with the drop location?
- ivv 7y ago
  Maybe residents would place beacons where they want the drones to land?
  - glitchc 7y ago
    Indeed, the beacon is a landing pad that customers place in their front or backyards (ideally back). See (3) in the following link: https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a820748/amazon-prime-air-drone-delivery-service/ https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a820748/amazon-prime-air-dro... As for which house, that's via geocoding (convert postal code to GPS). Reasonably accurate for North America, unclear about other parts of the world.
- prepend 7y ago
  I think having a human take over via video for the last 30-60 seconds would work pretty well. So the drone is automated for most of the time, but still uses manual for dropping off on doorstep.
aresant 7y ago
Awesome video of the drone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HJtmx5f1Fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HJtmx5f1Fc
- pwned1 7y ago
  Unfortunately no audio of the drone itself so we can judge its noisiness.
  - derekp7 7y ago
    Even if you had audio, still can't judge the noise level unless there is a reference sound there too. Such as general highway noise.
- idlewords 7y ago
  Better soundtrack here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR9Z_w0nI74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR9Z_w0nI74
  - dzhiurgis 7y ago
    That piano soundtrack was extra creepy. All I can imagine was Bezos weird face :/
- atourgates 7y ago
  Anyone know where that video was filmed? It looks an awful lot like Eastern Washington around the Walla Walla area, but I'm sure there are other parts of the country that look similar.
  - pelagic_sky 7y ago
    Could be Washington. https://www.geekwire.com/2015/revealed-how-we-found-amazons-secret-drone-testing-site-and-a-mysterious-satellite-image/ https://www.geekwire.com/2015/revealed-how-we-found-amazons-... Meaning, they have tested in WA before.
- 7y ago
ben7799 7y ago
This is a really novel design.. few moving parts, and solves the main issue with multirotor drones.. namely that they are incredibly inefficient in terms of power required to fly. When the initial hype about Amazon drone delivery came out I remember saying it wouldn't work cause multi-rotor drones are so inefficient. This will make it work... it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode". If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs, but the battery weight is the big thing.
- Alupis 7y ago
  > it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode". That'll depend how efficient the wing is. Usually there's trade-offs when doing a hybrid design (see V-22 Osprey). Perhaps the trade-off is still a net benefit in that configuration though... > If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs Not sure, in my RC flying experience, these aircraft can't lift much weight at all. Ounces are a serious concern, let alone pounds. Adding 1/4 extra weight is a big deal for something this small and without large wings to generate lift - the rotors are going to have to do a lot of work to get off the ground. It'll probably need to be a pretty big aircraft to have enough battery carrying capacity to guarantee a safe round-trip with possible complications with wind, loiter time for safe landing, obstacle avoidance, etc, and big enough to support the 5lbs load without impacting flight characteristics too much.
  - ben7799 7y ago
    For sure you are right about it having a lot of challenges and the total weight vs battery weight vs payload weight is a huge one. But remember the wing design is competing against "no wing" so it is easy to be a huge improvement. Normal drones don't really get to throttle down and they have to do all their flight controls through engine speed adjustments. Normal flight controls use almost no power & when this thing builds up a head of steam it will be able to throttle back to cruise. It looks like a closed edge biplane when it transitions.. the closed edges help efficiency. It can probably be optimized for a very narrow speed range as well so I bet they can come up with a very nice airfoil design.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bracobama 7y ago
Could someone elaborate on what the use cases would be for something like this? I understand it will carry small items you buy off Amazon prime but that can't be the end of the roadmap for drone based delivery, can it?
- StreamBright 7y ago
  How small? Most of my Amazon shipments could be carried by such drone.
- cagenut 7y ago
  walgreens has ~10,000 locations of ~10,000 square feet of products that are overwhelmingly under 5lbs and does ~20B/year in revenue. whoever solves drone delivery will disrupt the convenience store market. its right there in the name.
martythemaniak 7y ago
https://blog.aboutamazon.com/transportation/a-drone-program-taking-flight https://blog.aboutamazon.com/transportation/a-drone-program-... Lots of talk about vision, no mention of LIDAR. Computer vision is getting better faster than LIDAR is getting cheaper, expect a lidar-less future.
- alehul 7y ago
  LIDAR provides an additional layer of safety that seems well worth the marginal cost for those producing self-driving cars, where human lives are at stake, even if not applicable to delivery drones. Do you believe that the future is LIDAR-less, or that the delivery drone future is LIDAR-less?
  - martythemaniak 7y ago
    Did you see the picture of this drone? Do you think it's incapable of killing someone?
- CardenB 7y ago
  Lidar is difficult in drones. That doesn't rule out Lidar as an important sensor in other domains. Additionally, redundancy is good. Computer vision will not be good enough to make Lidar useless for some time.
bazooka_penguin 7y ago
Wait, this guy's family name is seriously Kimchi? The drone is cool but learning Kimchi is a surname is blowing my mind
- GorgeRonde 7y ago
  I don't get the reference, would you mind explaining? On a related note, I've always been baffled by Coursera founder & ML fame Andrew Ng's name. How am I supposed to pronounced it?
  - gamegoblin 7y ago
    "Ng" is pronounced somewhat like the "ung" in "sung" but with the vowel shortened.
  - bazooka_penguin 7y ago
    A famous Korean side dish?
  - NikkiA 7y ago
    > How am I supposed to pronounced it? Push your tongue against the top of your mouth and say 'ung', it's usually close enough (also holds for the common vietnamese name of Nguyen) Specifically, it's the velar nasal phonome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velar_nasal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velar_nasal
- ctvo 7y ago
  It’s incredible, right? I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there are folks with last names like Baker, Miller, Smith, etc. that don’t even resemble food dish names! They’re occupations. Mind blown.
  - bazooka_penguin 7y ago
    Used by people who've adopted those names after being assimilated into the cultures from which those names came about. Gur Kimchi is evidently Jewish, and his name appears to be a variation of the Sephardic Jewish family name Kimhi. It evolved independently of the Korean name for their side dish, seeing as how they're from different language families
ricardobeat 7y ago
Cue Tesla critics.
- dang 7y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20107508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20107508 and marked it off-topic.
cwkoss 7y ago
Ok Google, "how do I build a faraday net for catching drones and preventing transmission after catch?"
jpm_sd 7y ago
This is very clever, but clever usually loses out to practical in the end. Zipline[0] has a delivery drone with even fewer moving parts! It looks an awful lot like an airplane. [0] https://flyzipline.com/ https://flyzipline.com/
- IshKebab 7y ago
  That doesn't look like a very practical way to drop deliveries for an individual house.
mbostleman 7y ago
Are these allowed to fly over my property? And if so, am I allowed to shoot it down? Asking for a friend.
- i_am_nomad 7y ago
  If your friend lives anywhere that’s not rural, then no, she probably isn’t allowed to shoot it down, nor should she; bullets and buckshot could end up coming down on someone else. But, if she uses a satellite TV dish to aim the output of a magnetron at that drone, well, that’s another story.
- mikece 7y ago
  Your property goes from ground level to 200 feet; above that it's effectively the domain of the FAA. I would imagine the drones would have to fly between 200 and 500 feet until directly over the delivery target otherwise they would be either violating more restricted FAA airspace or trespassing on private property (under the 200 foot boundary).
- hathawsh 7y ago
  A much more interesting attack is GPS spoofing. What is Amazon (and everyone else) doing to solve that? GPS spoofing is fairly easy using SDR. https://hackaday.com/2012/07/01/spoofing-gps-and-getting-your-own-uav/ https://hackaday.com/2012/07/01/spoofing-gps-and-getting-you... https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/gps-spoofing/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/gps-spoofing/
  - kgilpin 7y ago
    Maybe they will just prosecute people who do that?
- mft_ 7y ago
  Does your friend also object to planes flying over their property? (I would point out that the main reason people have objected to drones flying over their property is privacy: up to now, the only use-case for a drone is remote viewing – which some would find creepy/intrusive. I would posit that now drones can theoretically offer tangible real-world benefits --e.g. parcel delivery-- this will gradually fade out as an objection for most people - just as most people would tolerate a postman delivering letters to their house.)
chroem- 7y ago
The annular wing is an interesting touch. It should reduce induced drag at the low Reynolds numbers these drones typically fly at, by eliminating the wingtip vortices. I was working on a very similar design for a while, and I placed the props at the wingtips to cancel the vortices instead. Also it would be interesting to see what their power electronics look like. You get a 20x reduction in thrust demands by going from hover to flight mode, but the problem is that the efficiency of brushless motors also tends to be absolutely dreadful when you run them at 5% throttle.
- honopu 7y ago
  would it be possible to have 3 of each motor.. the one at low and the one at high.. it seems like in theory you could run all 6 to take off, but let them coast when "flying" versus gaining altitude?
  - mveety 7y ago
    That's absolutely doable, though you would have to prevent the inactive props from spinning and/or feather them to reduce drag. I don't really see variable pitch props on these though, the weight and complexity penalty would probably be excessive.
m0zg 7y ago
I'd understand the use of this in very spread-out rural areas, but for dense urban areas this is nothing more than a PR exercise to create headlines and improve hiring. Sort of like "self driving cars" and "AI" for Google. You go there to work on exciting stuff and end up getting assigned to some bullshit godforsaken backend nobody wants to work on.
inamberclad 7y ago
Very smart design. No moving parts other than the motors. Still, hitting one of these in a 152 could be fatal. Pilots are wary of drones for a reason. However, I think they'd be more receptive to the idea of Amazon using them than a random person (assuming Amazon cooperates with the FAA).
adamwong246 7y ago
Cool but I can't understand why you'd need such a delivery system? MAYBE you can imagine a scenario where you need to air lift a vial of snake anti-venom very quickly but that's a fantastical, far edge-case. Theres simply no reason that an auto-automobile can't handle 99% of deliveries. Drones can't go that far. They can only carry tiny payloads. They use a ton of energy just to hover. And lastly- they are much more dangerous than ground-based transport, for the simple reason that _they can fall from the sky_. Whats to be gained by putting deliveries in the air?
- mcqueenjordan 7y ago
  Sorry to be blunt, but you're speaking from ignorance. Take a look at statistics for cars and re-think your position on the relative safety of the two modes of transporting goods.
  - tjbarkley 7y ago
    I believe he's talking about the future when automonomous cars are commonplace.
- hop 7y ago
  Zero traffic congestion, close to free to operate, fulfillment in minutes? Under 1 hour order delivery? There’s obviously downsides like sound and then falling out of the sky, but getting anything under 5 pounds two orders of magnitudes faster is a big deal.
  - lancewiggs 7y ago
    One person is happy, thousands of others are negatively affected. This is a selfish mode of transporting goods.
    - adamwong246 7y ago
      I agree. This invention does nothing of real value. Perhaps it makes you life a bit more convenient but it's the difference between ordering a pizza in 30 minutes and ordering a pizza in 10 minutes. This can't enhance human well-being- it's simply a toy for rich techies who can afford to pay a premium to get their stuff all the faster. I wish Mr Bezos would focus on something of real value- asteroid mining and transferal of polluting industries off-world.
AstroChimpHam 7y ago
Posting about how they're going to take over delivery while being investigated for antitrust stuff is an interesting choice.
Ericson2314 7y ago
Ugh I hate designing around the stupidity of suburbs. Pnumatic tubes in dense cities: so much more efficient. It's cool but only if you stop thinking how all of this is a hack around the utter failure of planning at any interesting scale in gsi country.

152 points by jason_zig 7y ago

I haven't seen a design quite like this before, but it seems like a natural hybrid of existing Tail-sitter planes and the current popular drone configuration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter

consumer451 7y ago

> Its propellers have a slight S-curve designed to lower their noise to make them more acceptable for use in populated neighborhoods, Kimchi said. The craft is far more stable in high winds than more traditional drones, he said. Noise is my main concern with drone delivery networks. I have been playing with radio controlled aircraft for most of my life. I see drone delivery as inevitable, but living near a noisy drone delivery route could really lower quality of life for the people on the ground.

vkou 7y ago
> Noise is my main concern with drone delivery networks. What about 20-50 lb flying machines falling onto sidewalks, roofs, and streets? You don't see amateur RC aviation enthusiasts flying their model airplanes in the middle of the city, and I sure as hell don't want to see a corporation doing this on an industrial scale. Why not ground-based drone delivery?
- jagger27 7y ago
  Not to mention people's heads! I have faith in agencies like the FAA to keep things safe and reasonable, and where that isn't enough NIMBYs and municipal governments will pick up the slack, no doubt.
  - derekp7 7y ago
    > I have faith in agencies like the FAA to keep things safe Has this faith been shaken by the recent 737 Max issues?
    - patrick5415 7y ago
      No. Air travel is still incredibly safe, a few high profile accidents notwithstanding.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Why are you downvoted? Safety is a thousand times more concerning - the drones will mechanically fail, they will hit bad weather, they will collide with birds, there will be new drone delivery market entrants and will need coordination across systems... If a drone fails at an expected operating altitude, it can kill someone easily on the ground. If it fails at height over a highway, what if it kills a bus driver or causes a tractor trailer to lose control? What if they hit electric lines? What else can go in flight corridors at the same altitudes? Do they container chemicals or voltages that first responders have to be aware of?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - zjaffee 7y ago
    There's a reason why it's taking so long for Amazon to get FAA approval for drone delivery and this is exactly why. There are people in important places asking these sorts of questions already. My guess personally, is that drone delivery will ultimately just be a tool for a self driving truck to get the package from the truck to the door. Drones are not nearly good enough as it stands today to do end to end deliveries at an industrial scale outside of maybe a few rural areas.
    - greenburger 7y ago
      The same people in important places that approved the 737 Max?
      - BrandonMarc 7y ago
        Yes ... so they have experience in crashing planes, which is relevant. /s
      - pwinnski 7y ago
        In the sense that they are human, yes. Even in the sense that they work for the government, which narrows the pool to 20,000,000+ But also, no. Not the same people.
- buu700 7y ago
  Interesting point. Maybe instead we should be using self-driving cars with drones (or something ground-based, like RC skateboards) only handling moving packages from the car to the door.
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    This exists: https://nuro.ai/ https://nuro.ai/
- joshvm 7y ago
  This probably isn't for cities. I was at a conference a few years back where Prime Air gave a talk. It was quite a vague talk, but admittedly it was hilarious watching Takeo Kanade grill the speaker on technical details that he refused to elaborate on. Things have no doubt moved on, but they were talking about use cases like delivering to rural areas where people have big gardens to land in. So potentially places where sending a delivery truck miles out of the way would be expensive (e.g. a 20 minute detour to one house). That's where the interesting applications of drone delivery are. That drone is pretty big, and they're getting extra lift out of the wings which conveniently double as prop guards. Flight time is presumably at least an hour, if it can get something to a customer in half an hour (and has to get back). You'd need quite a few since each drone can therefore only make around 10-20 deliveries a day if they swap out the batteries when it lands. 30 mile round trip range is pretty decent. Also on size - you need somewhere to land it with a few metres wriggle room either side. There's no way that's going into a built up area. There's no point doing drone delivery in urban environments, the safety case is insane and you're competing with excellent existing delivery channels.
- megablast 7y ago
  It can't be worse than the cars and trucks it will replace, which kill 40,000 people every single year in the USA alone.
  - vkou 7y ago
    How many people do Amazon delivery drivers kill/year? Pretty sure it's not 40,000.
bongobongo 7y ago
My main concern is the audio and video recording devices that will undoubtedly be attached to these drones (if history is any guide, likely without any disclosure). I foresee ads for rakes when Amazon notices that there are lots of leaves in my yard. I don't know why people think this is a good thing right now.
- dzhiurgis 7y ago
  How about just force-delivering a rake with free return?
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    I admire the way you think. It's horrifying, and disturbing, but I still admire it.
- cagenut 7y ago
  this is coming, if not already here, from satellites anyway
- drusepth 7y ago
  My first thought was "well, maybe you do need a rake". But I guess it probably can't see into your shed/garage/etc to know whether you actually have a rake or not. Ads for things you already have are such a waste.
  - bongobongo 7y ago
    God forbid I exist for a moment without being bombarded with offers to buy products. I would gladly trade the inconvenience of not being immediately aware of rake-buying opportunities for privacy and peace of mind.
- trophycase 7y ago
  So I can get my useless bullshit faster and cheaper!
idlewords 7y ago
You are right that this thing is going to be noisy as hell. I can say this without having heard it because basic physics makes hovering craft with little propellers impossible to make quiet. Welcome to the new world of a flying buzzsaw delivering your neighbor's toothpaste at 7 AM. No wonder they chose to play classical music over this video.
- bluedino 7y ago
  It'll be quieter than a UPS truck, that's for sure.
  - MikeTheGreat 7y ago
    Yeah, but if I have enough money/income (which is a big caveat, I know) then I can have some control over the location of the UPS truck by virtue of living someplace not too close to a road. When was the last time a UPS truck drove over your house / apartment / etc?
    - dillonmckay 7y ago
      Properties owners have rights up to 500 ft from the base of the property (trespass), but this has not been litigated yet.
      - MikeTheGreat 7y ago
        I did not know that. Noise-wise that's reassuring. Mind if I ask where the law comes from? I'm assuming that you're talking about the United States - is this a federal/state/local law?
        dgacmu 7y ago
        This article has more details (and notes that it's been tested legally at 83 feet): https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/07/photographer-george-steinmetz-arrest-how-much-airspace-do-you-own.amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/news-and-politics/201...
gist 7y ago
> I have been playing with radio controlled aircraft for most of my life RC Helis 60 Size Gas back in the old days. You had to manually control everything. You had to built it from scratch. [1] The ones they have now are so simple and easy they are no fun at all. I wonder if you feel the same way? I am still not getting how this is possible given weather conditions and variability. [1] Electric? Only thing like that I ever saw was at the hobby shop (remember those) and it had a power cord attached and was plugged into an extension cord and being tested out back.
- castis 7y ago
  > You had to build it from scratch Thats exactly what I'm trying to do here (sort of), I'm like 2 years in on the project and I've only just begun to actually test the thing. https://github.com/castis/currant https://github.com/castis/currant
binthere 7y ago
Not to mention the visual pollution it may cause. I honestly don't think this is going to fly pun intended.
shostack 7y ago
In addition to noise, I'm also concerned about visual clutter, particularly in residential areas. The last thing I want is to add to the power lines, airplanes, etc. with the visual noise when I'm on my deck trying to enjoy nature. Further, Amazon is a major player in the advertising space now. I'd be surprised if at some point these weren't leveraged to display ads in some format. I'm a marketer by trade, but personally that's a line I don't want crossed.
- rayiner 7y ago
  If there is a deck there you probably can’t see nature anyway.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  I'm also concerned about visual clutter, particularly in residential areas Then don't look up in a couple of years when SpaceX has HUNDREDS of satellites ruining the night sky. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/science/starlink-spacex-astronomers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/science/starlink-spacex-a...
- megablast 7y ago
  Ha, but once again you have no problem with ugly roads, cars and trucks? Ok.
  - roscorollo 7y ago
    Cars, roads and trucks have been around for a century, and none of us were around to discuss that. Also now we have a century worth of experience to apply to deciding to add new vehicles to our environment. And finally for the most part cars, trucks etc are primarily fixed routes - roads. We know where they are, there's planning and committees around design and disruption before they are set in place. Drones move in a 3 dimensional space, with no set routes, and very few no fly zones. Basically imagine a moped that can fly over your property or circle where you live looking for an address. Not to even mention the privacy issues, most cars are still lacking in cameras, or scanning technology. Delivery drones will need that stuff to be standard.
megablast 7y ago
You don't have an issue with living near a noisy road with trucks driving down it though? I don't understand that.

bongobongo 7y ago

Amazon really can't be trusted with aerial surveillance drones. Oops, I meant delivery drones.

gdcohen 7y ago

Curious how well it will deal with locating the correct place at the correct house to deliver the package? One way to achieve this might be to only use the drone after a human delivery person has delivered a package and tagged in Amazon's map database where packages should be dropped. Or perhaps the house resident uploads a picture of their house with the drop location?

ivv 7y ago
Maybe residents would place beacons where they want the drones to land?
- glitchc 7y ago
  Indeed, the beacon is a landing pad that customers place in their front or backyards (ideally back). See (3) in the following link: https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a820748/amazon-prime-air-drone-delivery-service/ https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a820748/amazon-prime-air-dro... As for which house, that's via geocoding (convert postal code to GPS). Reasonably accurate for North America, unclear about other parts of the world.
prepend 7y ago
I think having a human take over via video for the last 30-60 seconds would work pretty well. So the drone is automated for most of the time, but still uses manual for dropping off on doorstep.

aresant 7y ago

Awesome video of the drone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HJtmx5f1Fc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HJtmx5f1Fc

pwned1 7y ago
Unfortunately no audio of the drone itself so we can judge its noisiness.
- derekp7 7y ago
  Even if you had audio, still can't judge the noise level unless there is a reference sound there too. Such as general highway noise.
idlewords 7y ago
Better soundtrack here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR9Z_w0nI74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR9Z_w0nI74
- dzhiurgis 7y ago
  That piano soundtrack was extra creepy. All I can imagine was Bezos weird face :/
atourgates 7y ago
Anyone know where that video was filmed? It looks an awful lot like Eastern Washington around the Walla Walla area, but I'm sure there are other parts of the country that look similar.
- pelagic_sky 7y ago
  Could be Washington. https://www.geekwire.com/2015/revealed-how-we-found-amazons-secret-drone-testing-site-and-a-mysterious-satellite-image/ https://www.geekwire.com/2015/revealed-how-we-found-amazons-... Meaning, they have tested in WA before.
7y ago

ben7799 7y ago

This is a really novel design.. few moving parts, and solves the main issue with multirotor drones.. namely that they are incredibly inefficient in terms of power required to fly. When the initial hype about Amazon drone delivery came out I remember saying it wouldn't work cause multi-rotor drones are so inefficient. This will make it work... it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode". If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs, but the battery weight is the big thing.

Alupis 7y ago
> it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode". That'll depend how efficient the wing is. Usually there's trade-offs when doing a hybrid design (see V-22 Osprey). Perhaps the trade-off is still a net benefit in that configuration though... > If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs Not sure, in my RC flying experience, these aircraft can't lift much weight at all. Ounces are a serious concern, let alone pounds. Adding 1/4 extra weight is a big deal for something this small and without large wings to generate lift - the rotors are going to have to do a lot of work to get off the ground. It'll probably need to be a pretty big aircraft to have enough battery carrying capacity to guarantee a safe round-trip with possible complications with wind, loiter time for safe landing, obstacle avoidance, etc, and big enough to support the 5lbs load without impacting flight characteristics too much.
- ben7799 7y ago
  For sure you are right about it having a lot of challenges and the total weight vs battery weight vs payload weight is a huge one. But remember the wing design is competing against "no wing" so it is easy to be a huge improvement. Normal drones don't really get to throttle down and they have to do all their flight controls through engine speed adjustments. Normal flight controls use almost no power & when this thing builds up a head of steam it will be able to throttle back to cruise. It looks like a closed edge biplane when it transitions.. the closed edges help efficiency. It can probably be optimized for a very narrow speed range as well so I bet they can come up with a very nice airfoil design.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bracobama 7y ago

Could someone elaborate on what the use cases would be for something like this? I understand it will carry small items you buy off Amazon prime but that can't be the end of the roadmap for drone based delivery, can it?

StreamBright 7y ago
How small? Most of my Amazon shipments could be carried by such drone.
cagenut 7y ago
walgreens has ~10,000 locations of ~10,000 square feet of products that are overwhelmingly under 5lbs and does ~20B/year in revenue. whoever solves drone delivery will disrupt the convenience store market. its right there in the name.

martythemaniak 7y ago

https://blog.aboutamazon.com/transportation/a-drone-program-taking-flight https://blog.aboutamazon.com/transportation/a-drone-program-... Lots of talk about vision, no mention of LIDAR. Computer vision is getting better faster than LIDAR is getting cheaper, expect a lidar-less future.

alehul 7y ago
LIDAR provides an additional layer of safety that seems well worth the marginal cost for those producing self-driving cars, where human lives are at stake, even if not applicable to delivery drones. Do you believe that the future is LIDAR-less, or that the delivery drone future is LIDAR-less?
- martythemaniak 7y ago
  Did you see the picture of this drone? Do you think it's incapable of killing someone?
CardenB 7y ago
Lidar is difficult in drones. That doesn't rule out Lidar as an important sensor in other domains. Additionally, redundancy is good. Computer vision will not be good enough to make Lidar useless for some time.

bazooka_penguin 7y ago

Wait, this guy's family name is seriously Kimchi? The drone is cool but learning Kimchi is a surname is blowing my mind

GorgeRonde 7y ago
I don't get the reference, would you mind explaining? On a related note, I've always been baffled by Coursera founder & ML fame Andrew Ng's name. How am I supposed to pronounced it?
- gamegoblin 7y ago
  "Ng" is pronounced somewhat like the "ung" in "sung" but with the vowel shortened.
- bazooka_penguin 7y ago
  A famous Korean side dish?
- NikkiA 7y ago
  > How am I supposed to pronounced it? Push your tongue against the top of your mouth and say 'ung', it's usually close enough (also holds for the common vietnamese name of Nguyen) Specifically, it's the velar nasal phonome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velar_nasal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velar_nasal
ctvo 7y ago
It’s incredible, right? I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there are folks with last names like Baker, Miller, Smith, etc. that don’t even resemble food dish names! They’re occupations. Mind blown.
- bazooka_penguin 7y ago
  Used by people who've adopted those names after being assimilated into the cultures from which those names came about. Gur Kimchi is evidently Jewish, and his name appears to be a variation of the Sephardic Jewish family name Kimhi. It evolved independently of the Korean name for their side dish, seeing as how they're from different language families

ricardobeat 7y ago

Cue Tesla critics.

dang 7y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20107508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20107508 and marked it off-topic.

cwkoss 7y ago

Ok Google, "how do I build a faraday net for catching drones and preventing transmission after catch?"

jpm_sd 7y ago

This is very clever, but clever usually loses out to practical in the end. Zipline[0] has a delivery drone with even fewer moving parts! It looks an awful lot like an airplane. [0] https://flyzipline.com/ https://flyzipline.com/

IshKebab 7y ago
That doesn't look like a very practical way to drop deliveries for an individual house.

mbostleman 7y ago

Are these allowed to fly over my property? And if so, am I allowed to shoot it down? Asking for a friend.

i_am_nomad 7y ago
If your friend lives anywhere that’s not rural, then no, she probably isn’t allowed to shoot it down, nor should she; bullets and buckshot could end up coming down on someone else. But, if she uses a satellite TV dish to aim the output of a magnetron at that drone, well, that’s another story.
mikece 7y ago
Your property goes from ground level to 200 feet; above that it's effectively the domain of the FAA. I would imagine the drones would have to fly between 200 and 500 feet until directly over the delivery target otherwise they would be either violating more restricted FAA airspace or trespassing on private property (under the 200 foot boundary).
hathawsh 7y ago
A much more interesting attack is GPS spoofing. What is Amazon (and everyone else) doing to solve that? GPS spoofing is fairly easy using SDR. https://hackaday.com/2012/07/01/spoofing-gps-and-getting-your-own-uav/ https://hackaday.com/2012/07/01/spoofing-gps-and-getting-you... https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/gps-spoofing/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/gps-spoofing/
- kgilpin 7y ago
  Maybe they will just prosecute people who do that?
mft_ 7y ago
Does your friend also object to planes flying over their property? (I would point out that the main reason people have objected to drones flying over their property is privacy: up to now, the only use-case for a drone is remote viewing – which some would find creepy/intrusive. I would posit that now drones can theoretically offer tangible real-world benefits --e.g. parcel delivery-- this will gradually fade out as an objection for most people - just as most people would tolerate a postman delivering letters to their house.)

chroem- 7y ago

The annular wing is an interesting touch. It should reduce induced drag at the low Reynolds numbers these drones typically fly at, by eliminating the wingtip vortices. I was working on a very similar design for a while, and I placed the props at the wingtips to cancel the vortices instead. Also it would be interesting to see what their power electronics look like. You get a 20x reduction in thrust demands by going from hover to flight mode, but the problem is that the efficiency of brushless motors also tends to be absolutely dreadful when you run them at 5% throttle.

honopu 7y ago
would it be possible to have 3 of each motor.. the one at low and the one at high.. it seems like in theory you could run all 6 to take off, but let them coast when "flying" versus gaining altitude?
- mveety 7y ago
  That's absolutely doable, though you would have to prevent the inactive props from spinning and/or feather them to reduce drag. I don't really see variable pitch props on these though, the weight and complexity penalty would probably be excessive.

m0zg 7y ago

I'd understand the use of this in very spread-out rural areas, but for dense urban areas this is nothing more than a PR exercise to create headlines and improve hiring. Sort of like "self driving cars" and "AI" for Google. You go there to work on exciting stuff and end up getting assigned to some bullshit godforsaken backend nobody wants to work on.

inamberclad 7y ago

Very smart design. No moving parts other than the motors. Still, hitting one of these in a 152 could be fatal. Pilots are wary of drones for a reason. However, I think they'd be more receptive to the idea of Amazon using them than a random person (assuming Amazon cooperates with the FAA).

adamwong246 7y ago

Cool but I can't understand why you'd need such a delivery system? MAYBE you can imagine a scenario where you need to air lift a vial of snake anti-venom very quickly but that's a fantastical, far edge-case. Theres simply no reason that an auto-automobile can't handle 99% of deliveries. Drones can't go that far. They can only carry tiny payloads. They use a ton of energy just to hover. And lastly- they are much more dangerous than ground-based transport, for the simple reason that _they can fall from the sky_. Whats to be gained by putting deliveries in the air?

mcqueenjordan 7y ago
Sorry to be blunt, but you're speaking from ignorance. Take a look at statistics for cars and re-think your position on the relative safety of the two modes of transporting goods.
- tjbarkley 7y ago
  I believe he's talking about the future when automonomous cars are commonplace.
hop 7y ago
Zero traffic congestion, close to free to operate, fulfillment in minutes? Under 1 hour order delivery? There’s obviously downsides like sound and then falling out of the sky, but getting anything under 5 pounds two orders of magnitudes faster is a big deal.
- lancewiggs 7y ago
  One person is happy, thousands of others are negatively affected. This is a selfish mode of transporting goods.
  - adamwong246 7y ago
    I agree. This invention does nothing of real value. Perhaps it makes you life a bit more convenient but it's the difference between ordering a pizza in 30 minutes and ordering a pizza in 10 minutes. This can't enhance human well-being- it's simply a toy for rich techies who can afford to pay a premium to get their stuff all the faster. I wish Mr Bezos would focus on something of real value- asteroid mining and transferal of polluting industries off-world.

AstroChimpHam 7y ago

Posting about how they're going to take over delivery while being investigated for antitrust stuff is an interesting choice.

Ericson2314 7y ago

Ugh I hate designing around the stupidity of suburbs. Pnumatic tubes in dense cities: so much more efficient. It's cool but only if you stop thinking how all of this is a hack around the utter failure of planning at any interesting scale in gsi country.