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Very much not excited or looking forward to drone and aerial vehicle/taxi/Uber visual and noise pollution. This isn't progress, this is selling out our well-be

Very much not excited or looking forward to drone and aerial vehicle/taxi/Uber visual and noise pollution. This isn't progress, this is selling out our well-being and environment so that a few people can get rich.

elil17 3y ago
I also don't like how the rich get away with things - but is that the case here? Zipline's drones are probably better for the environment than ground vehicles because they are small, light, and electric. They're also supposed to operate at 55 dB for people on the ground - similar to how noisy a delivery van is.
- ericmay 3y ago
  Yea I definitely think it's the case here. The thing about the delivery van is that it doesn't go away, we just add additional noise with the delivery drone. Delivery vans can be made to be electric as well to bring the noise down further and so you actually just get loud drones and quiet delivery vans. But the delivery drones are just one aspect. We're also going to get these flying taxis and those are going to suck too. Why invest or pay to maintain roads or highways or to build and improve sidewalks, bike lanes, busses, or rail lines when you can just take your air taxi directly to your landing spot and make sure to avoid contact with any humans along the way. A good lens that you can use to examine this technology is whether the drones and air taxis are additive or subtractive. Good technology tends to be subtractive, i.e. an iPhone replaced a lot of unnecessary things (of course it had some downsides). Sidewalks and bike lanes are another good example of subtractive technology. Additive technology would be something like a heated seat subscription, or these air taxis and drones. We're not really improving anything we're doing today, we're just adding to it. It's like feature creep.
  - elil17 3y ago
    It's not clear to me why you think they won't reduce delivery van usage. It's hard for me to imagine that they would not. I'd also argue that more environmentally friendly, faster, potentially less expensive delivers are an improvement on what people are doing today. Air taxis are very different from a regulatory perspective (greater safety requirements) and from an engineering perspective (much heavier payloads). I don't really see this authorization as evidence that they will be approved in the future.
    - ericmay 3y ago
      > It's not clear to me why you think they won't reduce delivery van usage. It's hard for me to imagine that they would not. Sorry, I should have been more clear. I anticipate that they will have an effect, and that effect may be reduced usage, but I don't envision any reason they will totally replace delivery drivers. More likely, they'll complement delivery drivers. > I'd also argue that more environmentally friendly, faster, potentially less expensive delivers are an improvement on what people are doing today. Faster deliveries already happened. Even faster deliveries for the routine stuff that you buy seems like a needless feature. I know I don't need a set of wine glasses the same day or same hour, and if I did then I'll just plan better or deal with it. Especially if the trade off for me enjoying my back patio or something involves watching humming drones wizzing buy all day so someone can get some cheap plastic stuff delivered to them an hour faster... How do we get something faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly anyway? There's a trade-off somewhere. Maybe it's worth it, though I doubt it. It's hard to buy the environmental angle here when you could instead just reduce consumption. It seems more like greenwashing. Once you take away the environmental angle, you can see (or at least I do) how absurd the whole proposal of "drone delivery" really is. There could be some other, fantastic innovations though that really are subtractive instead of additive. Generally speaking if we aren't eliminating the usage of 1 or more things though we should be skeptical of the technology.
    - lotsoweiners 3y ago
      Sometimes when I’m doing yard work in the front yard I’ll notice the Amazon delivery truck come on my street. I’ll watch as it stops at about other or maybe every third house on the street and delivers something. I live in a suburban neighborhood with dozens of other streets very similar to mine. There are hundreds more streets like mine in the neighborhoods surrounding mine and I’m imagining a few handfuls of Amazon trucks are hitting these streets each day. Then I imagine the amount of drone’s required to replicate even a portion of these Amazon deliveries and it starts to make my head spin. I can imagine some use cases for the drone deliveries but there is no way I can imagine it replacing much of the current delivery system.
ChicagoBoy11 3y ago
Did you even watch the video? It specifically addresses the noise pollution question, and is one of their very significant engineering feats. Obviously, it is yet to be proven at scale, but if it works as the vision and developments so far indicate, it would be a net reduction in noise pollution compared to our current infrastructure which executes these deliveries.
- ericmay 3y ago
  It's not just noise pollution, it's visual pollution as well. Pretty soon they'll attach little advertisements to them and cameras and when they fly by your window as your enjoying your morning cup of coffee it'll ID you and slow down a little, track your eyes, make sure you see that Amazon or Costco sells coffee for $14, give you a score, send you an email, and send you a flyer in the mail. They'll know when your backyard is in need of watering, and maybe they'll even see that your garden isn't doing so well and send you ads for fertilizer or alert local gardening companies to stop by and talk about how whatever is really harming your tomatoes and they've got just the solution. Being noisy and annoying is just the very tip of the development iceberg here. Can a delivery driver do some of this stuff today and so why haven't they done it yet? Sure. And idk, it'll just take time. The UAV platform is going to be a lot better for this kind of nuisance.
  - elil17 3y ago
    This kind of seems like a sci-fi scenario, not something that is likely to happen. If lawn-care companies wanted to do targeted advertising based on how your lawn is looking, they can already use satellite imagery for that. They don't need drone cameras. These drones also aren't going to fly by your window. They fly above the height of houses, trees, etc. - and they are too small ads you could see from that height
    - 93po 3y ago
      It's not sci-fi, it's happening today. Go to an Amazon Fresh store and look around - they have literally hundreds of cameras, and several cameras pointing at every single section of shelving. They are tracking your behaviors, how long you stand in a particular place, how you walk around the store, when you touch items, when you put items back, how long you look at an item, whether you're likely reading the label, the list goes on. Companies have also had, for like a decade now, advertisements in places like malls with cameras to track engagement and how often people look at it and what number of people look at it. Amazon Fresh also started sending me flyers in the mail after I visited a single time. I get them multiple times a week.
supergeek 3y ago
Wing/plane drones are substantially quieter than quadcopter drones. I'm out flying RC with folks all the time and it's genuinely hard to hear an RC plane from more than 100 feet away, and these are handbuilt planes flying for fun.
- ericmay 3y ago
  Yea but I don't want to see or hear them at home. There's enough noise pollution as it is with people revving motorcycles and the like or whatever other peacocking people waste time doing.
tim333 3y ago
There's quite a good video on "Drone Delivery Was Supposed to be the Future. What Went Wrong?". It's been a decade since Bezos launched drone deliveries but it hasn't taken off for a number or reasons including air traffic control around airports, people living in flats and the difficulties of getting a drone to find a safe spot. On the other hand Uber Eats type guys on ebikes have proved a practical solution. https://youtu.be/J-M98KLgaUU https://youtu.be/J-M98KLgaUU

elil17 3y ago

I also don't like how the rich get away with things - but is that the case here? Zipline's drones are probably better for the environment than ground vehicles because they are small, light, and electric. They're also supposed to operate at 55 dB for people on the ground - similar to how noisy a delivery van is.

ericmay 3y ago
Yea I definitely think it's the case here. The thing about the delivery van is that it doesn't go away, we just add additional noise with the delivery drone. Delivery vans can be made to be electric as well to bring the noise down further and so you actually just get loud drones and quiet delivery vans. But the delivery drones are just one aspect. We're also going to get these flying taxis and those are going to suck too. Why invest or pay to maintain roads or highways or to build and improve sidewalks, bike lanes, busses, or rail lines when you can just take your air taxi directly to your landing spot and make sure to avoid contact with any humans along the way. A good lens that you can use to examine this technology is whether the drones and air taxis are additive or subtractive. Good technology tends to be subtractive, i.e. an iPhone replaced a lot of unnecessary things (of course it had some downsides). Sidewalks and bike lanes are another good example of subtractive technology. Additive technology would be something like a heated seat subscription, or these air taxis and drones. We're not really improving anything we're doing today, we're just adding to it. It's like feature creep.
- elil17 3y ago
  It's not clear to me why you think they won't reduce delivery van usage. It's hard for me to imagine that they would not. I'd also argue that more environmentally friendly, faster, potentially less expensive delivers are an improvement on what people are doing today. Air taxis are very different from a regulatory perspective (greater safety requirements) and from an engineering perspective (much heavier payloads). I don't really see this authorization as evidence that they will be approved in the future.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    > It's not clear to me why you think they won't reduce delivery van usage. It's hard for me to imagine that they would not. Sorry, I should have been more clear. I anticipate that they will have an effect, and that effect may be reduced usage, but I don't envision any reason they will totally replace delivery drivers. More likely, they'll complement delivery drivers. > I'd also argue that more environmentally friendly, faster, potentially less expensive delivers are an improvement on what people are doing today. Faster deliveries already happened. Even faster deliveries for the routine stuff that you buy seems like a needless feature. I know I don't need a set of wine glasses the same day or same hour, and if I did then I'll just plan better or deal with it. Especially if the trade off for me enjoying my back patio or something involves watching humming drones wizzing buy all day so someone can get some cheap plastic stuff delivered to them an hour faster... How do we get something faster, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly anyway? There's a trade-off somewhere. Maybe it's worth it, though I doubt it. It's hard to buy the environmental angle here when you could instead just reduce consumption. It seems more like greenwashing. Once you take away the environmental angle, you can see (or at least I do) how absurd the whole proposal of "drone delivery" really is. There could be some other, fantastic innovations though that really are subtractive instead of additive. Generally speaking if we aren't eliminating the usage of 1 or more things though we should be skeptical of the technology.
  - lotsoweiners 3y ago
    Sometimes when I’m doing yard work in the front yard I’ll notice the Amazon delivery truck come on my street. I’ll watch as it stops at about other or maybe every third house on the street and delivers something. I live in a suburban neighborhood with dozens of other streets very similar to mine. There are hundreds more streets like mine in the neighborhoods surrounding mine and I’m imagining a few handfuls of Amazon trucks are hitting these streets each day. Then I imagine the amount of drone’s required to replicate even a portion of these Amazon deliveries and it starts to make my head spin. I can imagine some use cases for the drone deliveries but there is no way I can imagine it replacing much of the current delivery system.

ChicagoBoy11 3y ago

Did you even watch the video? It specifically addresses the noise pollution question, and is one of their very significant engineering feats. Obviously, it is yet to be proven at scale, but if it works as the vision and developments so far indicate, it would be a net reduction in noise pollution compared to our current infrastructure which executes these deliveries.

ericmay 3y ago
It's not just noise pollution, it's visual pollution as well. Pretty soon they'll attach little advertisements to them and cameras and when they fly by your window as your enjoying your morning cup of coffee it'll ID you and slow down a little, track your eyes, make sure you see that Amazon or Costco sells coffee for $14, give you a score, send you an email, and send you a flyer in the mail. They'll know when your backyard is in need of watering, and maybe they'll even see that your garden isn't doing so well and send you ads for fertilizer or alert local gardening companies to stop by and talk about how whatever is really harming your tomatoes and they've got just the solution. Being noisy and annoying is just the very tip of the development iceberg here. Can a delivery driver do some of this stuff today and so why haven't they done it yet? Sure. And idk, it'll just take time. The UAV platform is going to be a lot better for this kind of nuisance.
- elil17 3y ago
  This kind of seems like a sci-fi scenario, not something that is likely to happen. If lawn-care companies wanted to do targeted advertising based on how your lawn is looking, they can already use satellite imagery for that. They don't need drone cameras. These drones also aren't going to fly by your window. They fly above the height of houses, trees, etc. - and they are too small ads you could see from that height
  - 93po 3y ago
    It's not sci-fi, it's happening today. Go to an Amazon Fresh store and look around - they have literally hundreds of cameras, and several cameras pointing at every single section of shelving. They are tracking your behaviors, how long you stand in a particular place, how you walk around the store, when you touch items, when you put items back, how long you look at an item, whether you're likely reading the label, the list goes on. Companies have also had, for like a decade now, advertisements in places like malls with cameras to track engagement and how often people look at it and what number of people look at it. Amazon Fresh also started sending me flyers in the mail after I visited a single time. I get them multiple times a week.

supergeek 3y ago

Wing/plane drones are substantially quieter than quadcopter drones. I'm out flying RC with folks all the time and it's genuinely hard to hear an RC plane from more than 100 feet away, and these are handbuilt planes flying for fun.

ericmay 3y ago
Yea but I don't want to see or hear them at home. There's enough noise pollution as it is with people revving motorcycles and the like or whatever other peacocking people waste time doing.

tim333 3y ago

There's quite a good video on "Drone Delivery Was Supposed to be the Future. What Went Wrong?". It's been a decade since Bezos launched drone deliveries but it hasn't taken off for a number or reasons including air traffic control around airports, people living in flats and the difficulties of getting a drone to find a safe spot. On the other hand Uber Eats type guys on ebikes have proved a practical solution. https://youtu.be/J-M98KLgaUU https://youtu.be/J-M98KLgaUU