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I can understand it for some long-distanced batch delivery, by a giant drone. However, swarms of little drones flying in the sky of cities or private propertie

I can understand it for some long-distanced batch delivery, by a giant drone. However, swarms of little drones flying in the sky of cities or private properties seems incredibly irritating, however efficiently they improve deliveries.

ineedasername 6y ago
I think about the truly massive # of packages delivered all over the place and think we'll need some significant routing protocols in place before we can easily get enough drones airborne without crashing into each other. Sort of a tcp/ip for millions of drones.
- 7952 6y ago
  I don't think communication protocols are a good metaphor because they can be stateless. You can drop packets and it does matter! A better way to think about it is as a shared data structure. It is a 3d vector space with some attributes that help predict the future. Each drone has a different version of this data structure in memory. The data structure has an initial state at take-off and is updated using radio communication and sensor data. If the data structure is perfectly synchronised then planning is easy. There is plenty of sky and simple rules can be applied. But it never will be perfectly synchronised. in that sense it is like a globally distributed database. The data structure may have been edited by another drone and the change not communicated. You may have lost communication and not even realised. Local conditions may have reduced GPS quality giving you false location information. So perhaps an interesting metaphor is concurrency control. Do we lock airspace or can we have transactions? Can we partition or shard the airspace? When is consistent state required?
cameronh90 6y ago
Commercial delivery drones will likely be some form of VTOL fixed wing craft, which can be significantly quieter when cruising. Additionally they can usually fly higher which further reduces the noise pollution.

ineedasername 6y ago

I think about the truly massive # of packages delivered all over the place and think we'll need some significant routing protocols in place before we can easily get enough drones airborne without crashing into each other. Sort of a tcp/ip for millions of drones.

7952 6y ago
I don't think communication protocols are a good metaphor because they can be stateless. You can drop packets and it does matter! A better way to think about it is as a shared data structure. It is a 3d vector space with some attributes that help predict the future. Each drone has a different version of this data structure in memory. The data structure has an initial state at take-off and is updated using radio communication and sensor data. If the data structure is perfectly synchronised then planning is easy. There is plenty of sky and simple rules can be applied. But it never will be perfectly synchronised. in that sense it is like a globally distributed database. The data structure may have been edited by another drone and the change not communicated. You may have lost communication and not even realised. Local conditions may have reduced GPS quality giving you false location information. So perhaps an interesting metaphor is concurrency control. Do we lock airspace or can we have transactions? Can we partition or shard the airspace? When is consistent state required?

cameronh90 6y ago

Commercial delivery drones will likely be some form of VTOL fixed wing craft, which can be significantly quieter when cruising. Additionally they can usually fly higher which further reduces the noise pollution.