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I'm skeptical that this article is accurately portraying the FAA permission that Amazon has been granted. The FAA has been aggressive about forbidding beyond v
by TheMagicHorsey 6y ago
I'm skeptical that this article is accurately portraying the FAA permission that Amazon has been granted.
The FAA has been aggressive about forbidding beyond visual line of sight operation of drones without spotters or radar coverage. I suspect the permission is not for true BVLOS deliveries, but rather deliveries with a spotter watching the route, or BVLOS with a radar covering the entire route, or some other commercially impractical system of monitoring.
The FAA is being hamstrung by the pilots association and various other unions that are fearful that this kind of automated delivery will reduce the volume of pilot and union jobs available in America. The Luddites in DC are the most powerful force in American robot regulation today.
- claviska 6y agoWasn’t it UPS that was prototyping a series of drones that docked on top of the truck, using it as a hub to deliver packages within a short range? I could see something like that being a logical next step for this tech.
- TheMagicHorsey 6y agoThat experiment very publicly failed in a demo in front of journalists.
- paul_f 6y agoLink?
- dane-pgp 6y agoThe pilots association should instead have focused their lobbying to stop FedEx's recent development[0] rather than waste their time and money protecting the jobs of delivery drivers. [0] https://eu.commercialappeal.com/story/money/industries/logistics/2020/08/28/fedex-plane-autonomous-flight-reliable-robotics/5655258002/ https://eu.commercialappeal.com/story/money/industries/logis...