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Every 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

Every 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 ago
Presumably 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 ago
  There 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 ago
    Where'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.
- DoctorBit 7y ago
  You'll understand when you're older.
tantalor 7y ago
You are aware aerial photography is legal and common?
- yomly 7y ago
  Right but what happens when you have coverage that is refreshed every hour or even less? You then have another surveillance network, one which is very hard to opt out of
  - zawerf 7y ago
    I think we're way past that point already. Everyone with a phone already has their location tracked at least by their phone company. You might've even given it away to other companies willingly: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline https://www.google.com/maps/timeline. I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech. We got better traffic jam maps. And maybe a handful of criminals who forgot to leave their phone at home got caught. I think this is one of those things that people growing up with the tech won't think anything of it (mom wants to always know your location) but old geezers will reminisce of a time where we still had to call a landline and talk a friend's parents first to see if they are home.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      > I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech. Honestly the last time I saw a drone, the most annoying thing about it was its noise. I can't imagine them buzzing around all the time simply because of that.
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
        You get at least as much noise from living in a city.
        mehrdadn 7y ago
        Yes, in some parts of cities, and not everyone lives or wants to live in a city.
mgraczyk 7y ago
Although every new technology comes with negative and unforeseen consequences, history tells us that on the whole, new technology is desirable. Even though the photograph changed the intimacy and privacy of face to face interaction, and the electric streetlight made public spaces artificial and impersonal, these new technologies certainly did more good than harm. We should embrace the good that will come from new technologies. I for one and looking forward to a future where my packages are delivered quickly and securely, and I'm willing to accept that as a side effect Google will have slightly better ads.
- hatchershoes 7y ago
  > and I'm willing to accept that as a side effect Google will have slightly better ads. This is so out of touch that I have to assume you are trolling or work for "ALPHABET". At least that would be an explanation.
  - mgraczyk 7y ago
    Nope, I used to work there on non-ads, so I know that they are not doing anything nefarious and also that targeted ads have higher conversion rates. I often have packages stolen or undelivered, so Ads and advertising companies are like #9999 on my list of things that I'm worried about when I think about deliveries.
  - shadowgovt 7y ago
    When calculating "out of touch," it's worth keeping in mind that Hacker News is its own bubble (and tends to skew further in the privacy-paranoid direction than the public average).
- dchichkov 7y ago
  The consequences of this technology are quite obvious. Noise pollution. Flying camera systems pollution. Drone pollution. There are also obvious privacy issues - if such drones will ever allowed to become commonplace, some percentage of drones will probably look like Fedex, but would be operated by other actors. I think, proper application of such drones could be emergency services. Perform emergency delivery, use drones to establish a temporary passage for an emergency vehicle, ...
0xffff2 7y ago
I’m a researcher in this field. First, do you have any evidence that routes are unrestricted? I’m not involved in this particular test, but my guess is that there are extremely specific restrictions. In the more general case, the US government (primarily NASA and the FAA) are actively working on coming up with the regulations that will cover this on a permanent basis, and they will absolutely consider privacy among literally hundreds of other factors.
- pacala 7y ago
  The core premise of the technology is delivery to every home. To deliver to every home, you need to have a camera pointed to every home, and their neighbors, and the people / cars on the street. Not sure what your point is, are you proposing drones are going to fly blind due to some regulation? Can _you_ provide evidence of such regulation? Are you asking us to trust megacorps to not make maximum use of their surveillance data? When they've been caught time and again with the hand in the privacy cookie jar? When they turned the Internet into a 24/7 panopticon, with every web page carrying tens of surveillance beacons connected to the motherhive?
  - tzs 7y ago
    Restricting routes to following existing streets would limit the privacy issues considerably. A drone following the street should not need to look at much other than the what is on or next to the street. Compare to no route restrictions, where you would probably have the drones flying over people's back yards, which would be a considerable reduction in privacy.
    - propogandist 7y ago
      if drones are just following existing streets, there's nothing innovative with drone delivery... it will just be ridiculously more inefficient than todays modes of delivery. No sane vendor will agree to these sort of terms and these companies do not care about privacy, they are all in the data mining and advertising business.
ravenstine 7y ago
Our drone with deep learning noticed your front door has an old style doorbell with no camera. Would you like us to notify Amazon to ship you a Ring doorbell?
- SquishyPanda23 7y ago
  I'm not sure if you're joking, but I know people who are working on a startup to do basically this.
shadowgovt 7y ago
Could be a great source for fresh high-resolution Maps data.
sameerds 7y ago
Why do drones need visual aids when flying to the destination? I can imagine an autonomous car needing to "look" at things because humans and human-defined conventions are involved. Can the drone simply not position itself using GPS, mobile networks, wifi access points etc? The camera might be required only when it is time to slow down and drop the parcel.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Aircraft need to be able to see other aircraft so as not to collide with them. Especially so if you foresee a future where delivery drones are as common as cars. They also need to avoid obstacles that aren't on their digital maps, like newly erected cranes, and moving things like birds, parachutists and gliders. Of course, you could argue they don't need to store the videos they take, or transfer them off the drone, other than a last-60-seconds-flight-recorder for crash investigation.
  - DerekRobot 7y ago
    I'm guessing the camera isn't used for aircraft separation since nearly everything has ADS/B now.
    - btreecat 7y ago
      ADS-B out is only required for manned aircraft flying in and out of controlled airspace. There are some other exceptions as well IIRC for gliders, ultra lights and some others.
  - btreecat 7y ago
    >Aircraft need to be able to see other aircraft so as not to collide with them. Especially so if you foresee a future where delivery drones are as common as cars. Cameras are not being used for this job. >They also need to avoid obstacles that aren't on their digital maps, like newly erected cranes, and moving things like birds, parachutists and gliders. Cameras can be used for these, however it's better to use other sensors as the primary means of detection.
- 7y ago

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 ago

Presumably 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 ago
There 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 ago
  Where'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.
DoctorBit 7y ago
You'll understand when you're older.

tantalor 7y ago

You are aware aerial photography is legal and common?

yomly 7y ago
Right but what happens when you have coverage that is refreshed every hour or even less? You then have another surveillance network, one which is very hard to opt out of
- zawerf 7y ago
  I think we're way past that point already. Everyone with a phone already has their location tracked at least by their phone company. You might've even given it away to other companies willingly: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline https://www.google.com/maps/timeline. I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech. We got better traffic jam maps. And maybe a handful of criminals who forgot to leave their phone at home got caught. I think this is one of those things that people growing up with the tech won't think anything of it (mom wants to always know your location) but old geezers will reminisce of a time where we still had to call a landline and talk a friend's parents first to see if they are home.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    > I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech. Honestly the last time I saw a drone, the most annoying thing about it was its noise. I can't imagine them buzzing around all the time simply because of that.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      You get at least as much noise from living in a city.
      - mehrdadn 7y ago
        Yes, in some parts of cities, and not everyone lives or wants to live in a city.

mgraczyk 7y ago

Although every new technology comes with negative and unforeseen consequences, history tells us that on the whole, new technology is desirable. Even though the photograph changed the intimacy and privacy of face to face interaction, and the electric streetlight made public spaces artificial and impersonal, these new technologies certainly did more good than harm. We should embrace the good that will come from new technologies. I for one and looking forward to a future where my packages are delivered quickly and securely, and I'm willing to accept that as a side effect Google will have slightly better ads.

hatchershoes 7y ago
> and I'm willing to accept that as a side effect Google will have slightly better ads. This is so out of touch that I have to assume you are trolling or work for "ALPHABET". At least that would be an explanation.
- mgraczyk 7y ago
  Nope, I used to work there on non-ads, so I know that they are not doing anything nefarious and also that targeted ads have higher conversion rates. I often have packages stolen or undelivered, so Ads and advertising companies are like #9999 on my list of things that I'm worried about when I think about deliveries.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  When calculating "out of touch," it's worth keeping in mind that Hacker News is its own bubble (and tends to skew further in the privacy-paranoid direction than the public average).
dchichkov 7y ago
The consequences of this technology are quite obvious. Noise pollution. Flying camera systems pollution. Drone pollution. There are also obvious privacy issues - if such drones will ever allowed to become commonplace, some percentage of drones will probably look like Fedex, but would be operated by other actors. I think, proper application of such drones could be emergency services. Perform emergency delivery, use drones to establish a temporary passage for an emergency vehicle, ...

0xffff2 7y ago

I’m a researcher in this field. First, do you have any evidence that routes are unrestricted? I’m not involved in this particular test, but my guess is that there are extremely specific restrictions. In the more general case, the US government (primarily NASA and the FAA) are actively working on coming up with the regulations that will cover this on a permanent basis, and they will absolutely consider privacy among literally hundreds of other factors.

pacala 7y ago
The core premise of the technology is delivery to every home. To deliver to every home, you need to have a camera pointed to every home, and their neighbors, and the people / cars on the street. Not sure what your point is, are you proposing drones are going to fly blind due to some regulation? Can _you_ provide evidence of such regulation? Are you asking us to trust megacorps to not make maximum use of their surveillance data? When they've been caught time and again with the hand in the privacy cookie jar? When they turned the Internet into a 24/7 panopticon, with every web page carrying tens of surveillance beacons connected to the motherhive?
- tzs 7y ago
  Restricting routes to following existing streets would limit the privacy issues considerably. A drone following the street should not need to look at much other than the what is on or next to the street. Compare to no route restrictions, where you would probably have the drones flying over people's back yards, which would be a considerable reduction in privacy.
  - propogandist 7y ago
    if drones are just following existing streets, there's nothing innovative with drone delivery... it will just be ridiculously more inefficient than todays modes of delivery. No sane vendor will agree to these sort of terms and these companies do not care about privacy, they are all in the data mining and advertising business.

ravenstine 7y ago

Our drone with deep learning noticed your front door has an old style doorbell with no camera. Would you like us to notify Amazon to ship you a Ring doorbell?

SquishyPanda23 7y ago
I'm not sure if you're joking, but I know people who are working on a startup to do basically this.

shadowgovt 7y ago

Could be a great source for fresh high-resolution Maps data.

sameerds 7y ago

Why do drones need visual aids when flying to the destination? I can imagine an autonomous car needing to "look" at things because humans and human-defined conventions are involved. Can the drone simply not position itself using GPS, mobile networks, wifi access points etc? The camera might be required only when it is time to slow down and drop the parcel.

michaelt 7y ago
Aircraft need to be able to see other aircraft so as not to collide with them. Especially so if you foresee a future where delivery drones are as common as cars. They also need to avoid obstacles that aren't on their digital maps, like newly erected cranes, and moving things like birds, parachutists and gliders. Of course, you could argue they don't need to store the videos they take, or transfer them off the drone, other than a last-60-seconds-flight-recorder for crash investigation.
- DerekRobot 7y ago
  I'm guessing the camera isn't used for aircraft separation since nearly everything has ADS/B now.
  - btreecat 7y ago
    ADS-B out is only required for manned aircraft flying in and out of controlled airspace. There are some other exceptions as well IIRC for gliders, ultra lights and some others.
- btreecat 7y ago
  >Aircraft need to be able to see other aircraft so as not to collide with them. Especially so if you foresee a future where delivery drones are as common as cars. Cameras are not being used for this job. >They also need to avoid obstacles that aren't on their digital maps, like newly erected cranes, and moving things like birds, parachutists and gliders. Cameras can be used for these, however it's better to use other sensors as the primary means of detection.
7y ago