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Google Wing Launching US Drone Deliveries with FedEx, Walgreens
- thelazydogsback 7y agoThe connotations of "drone" are not great. (The next word in the bi-gram would be "strike"...) Maybe we can go back to "UAV" or pick another term for non-militarized, commercial delivery.
- Bonooru 7y ago"UAV" has stronger military connotations for me. I'm not sure it's inherently better. Maybe something entirely new is better? "AAV" Autonomous Ariel Vehicle, or something similar?
- sdinsn 7y agosUAS (Small Unmanned Aircraft System) is what the FAA uses
- 0xffff2 7y agoOr just UAS, since the UAM air taxis that are coming and are largely being lumped in with these deliveries aren’t very small at all. For what it’s worth, at NASA the official term is (s)UAS, but we use that and UAV, drone, etc interchangeably has in day to day conversation. As long as it’s clear what you’re talking about, the exact word is really not that important.
- throwaway744678 7y agoNot sure about the connotations: flying toys (Parrot and the like) are heavily marketed as drones and seem to sell fine.
- 0xffff2 7y agoIn 2006 a “drone” carried hellfire missiles. At some point in the last decade, that shifted and now a drone is a small hobby quad-copter. Language is funny.
- outworlder 7y ago> The connotations of "drone" are not great. (The next word in the bi-gram would be "strike"...) Maybe we can go back to "UAV" or pick another term for non-militarized, commercial delivery. You have your connotations backwards. You'll see no consumer drones marketed as UAVs, but plenty of military drones are called that.
- thelazydogsback 7y agoYeah, I can see that. Too bad because "drone" also has the connotation of "dumb" or "slave", which is the opposite of what you want an autonomous vehicle to be that's sharing your airspace. (It makes more sense in the remotely-piloted case, as in the military versions.) But words take on their own lives, and I guess there are now "drones".
- Robotbeat 7y agoDrones must fly below 400 feet and thus are not sharing the airspace with crewed vehicles (which fly above 500 feet).
- thelazydogsback 7y agoYes - literally your airspace...
- penagwin 7y agoDepends: > Maximum altitude of 400 feet above ground level (AGL) or, if higher than 400 feet AGL, remain within 400 feet of a structure. You can also apply for a waiver.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sdinsn 7y agoThe word that the FAA uses is sUAS (Small Unmanned Aircraft System). As long as it is under 55 lbs. is counted as a sUAS under FAA regulations.
- thomasjudge 7y agoIs that pronounced "soo-ass"?
- hellothree23 7y agoheh heh 'pilot program'
- KerryJones 7y agoas an investor I bet Wing will "soar"
- kart23 7y agoThis service is really gonna take off.
- Robotbeat 7y agoSeeing the specs of Google Wing (backed by much more capital), I'm yet more impressed with Zipline drone. Wing has about 10km round-trip (unclear if that's radius or total distance traveled), while Zipline has about 80km radius or 160km round-trip range. Wing has a speed of about 60mph (then slows to a hover for extending the package) while Zipline travels at 80mph. And not just serving a small city of 20,000 but Rwanda, a nation of 12 million (and now much of Ghana, population of 28 million, and soon the state of Maharashtra in India with a population of over 100 million). I really think the catapult and parachute approach is significantly more effective than the hover-and-deploy one is. There are some marginal advantages to hovering, but the drawbacks in range, efficiency, time, and annoyance to the neighbors outweigh them. The advantages to hovering may be relevant in dense cities, but these are exactly the places which would not want lots of drones flying around everywhere (certainly not hovering like that). Still, much safer than delivery vans and I hope Wing is successful.
- mrfusion 7y agoWouldn’t packages end up on your roof with a catapult and parachute approach?
- radar 7y agoWouldn't variations in wind be a non-starter for catapults?
- mastax 7y agoThe catapult launches the drone, not the package.
- Fabricio20 7y agoThe catapult launches the drones into the air, which then parachute the package to the location. Real Engineering [1] and Wendover Productions [2] have really nice videos about their system currently deployed in Rwanda. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEbRVNxL44c [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnoUBfLxZz0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnoUBfLxZz0
- swiley 7y agoMultiroters seem like such an inefficient way to do this, why is everyone doing that rather than a fixed wing aircraft? I know in the mid 20th century some mail was delivered this way using manually piloted aircraft and very little ground crew (none had to be active when the package was picked up or dropped off.)
- joatmon-snoo 7y agoZipline is doing fixed wing. (Incidentally, they're mentioned in the top comment right now!)
- Jyaif 7y agoBack in 2014 Google was using fixed wings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRTNvWcx9Oo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRTNvWcx9Oo They must have changed for good reasons.
- jonas21 7y agoIt appears to be a fixed-wing aircraft that also has rotors, to hover as it makes the delivery. Assuming there's not a suitable space to land and take off again and you don't want packages randomly parachuting to the ground, this seems like the best way to do it.
- bseidensticker 7y agoIt's both. Fixed wing when travelling, multi rotor hover when dropping off.
- flavor8 7y agoI'd guess maneuverability. A multi rotor can stop or radically change direction in a much shorter distance than fixed wing. Also hovering.
- Pyxl101 7y agoThe drone needs to land to deliver the package. Most consumers don't have airstrips in their front yard.
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- paul7986 7y agoSo in the pic it carries one package? So the sky is going to be littered with drones delivering packages in ten to 20 years? Present day that seems ridiculous and unattractive!
- not_a_cop75 7y agoI'm sure they said the same things about planes and cars some 100 years ago.
- wrkronmiller 7y agoThey may not have been wrong about cars. Probably not planes either for people living near takeoff/landing flight paths...
- brobdingnagians 7y agoI lived under the flight paths near LAX for awhile. It was incessant and obvious, all the time. Aircraft engines are hard to ignore and they would rattle the windows (which were sound resistant). One of my goals in life is to never live somewhere like that again. It isn't bad until you live under a major one, then you realize it can be a constantly present annoyance.
- TheRealSteel 7y agoWhoever said it about cars was right.
- sushid 7y agoBetter than horses loitering around everywhere, right?
- TulliusCicero 7y agoCars are definitely much more common in cities now that horses were around, say, 1900. Most people just walked. Cars also seem to have exerted a much greater impact in terms of getting cities to design themselves primarily around themselves (probably because of that popularity).
- mLuby 7y agoWhy aren't they using ducted fans? I thought they're more efficient than naked props and they certainly look more safe.
- btreecat 7y agoDucted fans pointed downward are not particularly good for forward flight.
- dukoid 7y agoMy one prediction for the future: drone delivery mini platforms next to windows (with 2d "barcodes" printed on top) will be the most visible sign of the 20s -- comparable to satellite dishes in the 90s
- bduerst 7y agoIt's more likely you'll have centralized drone delivery hubs - i.e. one place in your apartment building - rather than every window or patio having a delivery spot.
- yalogin 7y agoEvery drone is going to record everything using multiple cameras and send them to their backend. That is quiet disconcerting. There are no legally set paths for the drones so they are free to go everywhere and see everything. Amazon and Google are probably salivating more at the prospects of getting these videos than the actual delivery itself. I am concerned about startups in the bay and even more so about companies from China and elsewhere that create these drones. At least with Google and Amazon we can cry foul and pressure them into not doing somethings. With the rest of the ecosystem its a free for all.
- btreecat 7y ago>Every drone is going to record everything using multiple cameras and send them to their backend. Certainly not in the near future, and probably not ever for delivery drones. Such systems would require unreasonable additional payload. Everything a drone can see is in public, same as any other camera man, airplane, helicopter, or satellite.
- GordonS 7y agoPresumably the videos will mainly be overhead views - what kind of nefarious uses do you fear they could put such images to? (genuinely curious; I had the same thought, but I'm not sure why)
- arcticfox 7y agoThere was the application of tracking vehicles for fighting crime that has been proposed. With enough data, you can "rewind" and "fast forward" time to see where criminals came from, who they coordinated with, etc. All well and good as long as they're criminals... But there's nothing to ensure it's used for that. Imagine Uber God mode for all vehicles.
- caf 7y agoWhere's the commercial imperative in that, though? The challenge isn't to work out disturbing applications for this kind of aerial surveillance - that's easy - it's to work out profitable applications that would cause a business to want to invest in it.
- wavefunction 7y agoI hate the idea of polluting the open air with the noise and visual pollution of drones, though I guess we're killing off the birds so we need something to replace them so why not a drone delivering an impulse purchase of chapstick. How utterly depressing.
- rkagerer 7y agoIf drone delivery takes off, I'm curious how weather will impact the sector. E.g. One week drones deliver 60% of goods in a city, but the next one rains all week with wind and storms - suddenly demand for human deliverypeople spikes.
- btreecat 7y agoCurrently they will be sticking to daylight hours and calm enough weather. Also due to the valley here, they will have to worry about days with low clouds due to temperature inversions. I see drones as one of the potential solutions to last mile delivery, co-existing with other technologies.
- rkagerer 7y agoSo they'll need a bunch of on-demand, part-time delivery partners willing to take up the slack when drones can't fly? Sounds like they'll still need to employ (if indirectly) enough humans to meet peak demand.
- gnicholas 7y ago> Walgreens said in a release that 78% of the US population lives within 5 miles of one of its stores Perhaps, but I imagine a decent chunk of these folks are in places like NYC, which probably won't see drone delivery from retail Walgreens stores. I wonder what percent of the population lives within 5 miles of a suburban Walgreens, which might conceivably be able to offer drone-based delivery.
- yskchu 7y agoThe system is pretty neat - here's a video of it in action in Canberra (Australia) earlier this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKErmCN78S8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKErmCN78S8
- cmroanirgo 7y ago"Google-affiliated drone delivery service found to be exceeding noise limits" https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/canberra-delivery-drone-noise-levels-revealed/11503262 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-12/canberra-delivery-dro...
- dasKrokodil 7y agoIs anyone selling an anti-drone drone yet?
- m1nes 7y agoMmm... probably cancelled in two years.