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Surely, given that drones can nowadays deliver heavy ordnance into distant trenches undetected, an amazon drone should be able to perform a similat feat?

by hoseja 2y ago

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> given that drones can nowadays deliver heavy ordnance into distant trenches undetected You’re baselining the noise levels in a residential neighbourhood to a literal war zone.
perihelions 2y ago
"Undetected" in that context means "undetected until they're nearby". They're far from quiet. They've deployed surprisingly long-range acoustic sensor nets, for tracking them by their noise: - "Zvook’s detection ranges, though much shorter than radar, are nothing to sniff at. Drones, for example, can be detected up to 5km away. For cruise missiles, the range is about 7km. To pull this off, Zvook designed curved “acoustic mirrors” half a metre in diameter. These dishes concentrate sound waves on the microphones they cup. Most listening stations have two, for a coverage arc of about 200°. Processing takes place on an adjacent computer." https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/07/24/how-ukraines-new-tech-foils-russian-aerial-attacks https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/07/24/... (2024) https://archive.is/sQcFO https://archive.is/sQcFO
palata 2y ago
Pretty sure an amazon drone could crash on your doorstep with your ordered toothpaste before you manage to stop it, yes. Not sure that this is what you want :).
- UncleEntity 2y ago
  Not so much the Walmart ones... https://local12.com/news/offbeat/drone-shoot-walmart-delivery-amazon-hunt-man-and-destroys-arrested-firearm-rifle-pistol-gunshot-technology-military-aircraft-vandalism-lake-county-florida-sheriff-dennis-winn-9mm https://local12.com/news/offbeat/drone-shoot-walmart-deliver...
mapt 2y ago
It's about altitude and mass. A very small drone (call it 500g AUW) can deliver a pill bottle at maybe 30 meters altitude without you hearing them. Delivering a can of soda (5kg AUW), we're talking a bigger, heavier drone and maybe a hundred meters. Delivering a bag of dogfood (50kg AUW), you need to keep the rotors maybe 300m in the air. If you want to keep this quiet in closely space residences you'll need to dangle the package on a wire down from a hover, like a Mars Rover skycrane. In trench warfare, you don't need the wire, you can just drop munitions from altitude, limited only by accuracy. Every domestic drone program is operating under imposed limits on altitude and airspace. A suburban neighborhood has a significant tolerance for noise; We operate leafblowers, lawnmowers, cars and trucks. But only intermittently. If it's right next door to a droneport, the skycrane strategy doesn't help and your house is going to hear that nonstop. It seems like if they were operating from a better more remote facility, and the noise was only intermittent, people in the article might have tolerated even these ~100 pound class drones which have no skycrane and employ full descent almost to the ground (where they unceremoniously drop their contents the last ten feet). Example landing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcxfcMmdRCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcxfcMmdRCM
- bluGill 2y ago
  We can make drones quieter. However that involved compromises in efficiency.
lm28469 2y ago
Try dropping groceries from 200 meters, or hitting the front door full speed with an fpv drone. They're undetected because they're flying way too high, or way too fast for the human senses to react.

Surely, given that drones can nowadays deliver heavy ordnance into distant trenches undetected, an amazon drone should be able to perform a similat feat?

by hoseja 2y ago

Surely, given that drones can nowadays deliver heavy ordnance into distant trenches undetected, an amazon drone should be able to perform a similat feat?

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> given that drones can nowadays deliver heavy ordnance into distant trenches undetected You’re baselining the noise levels in a residential neighbourhood to a literal war zone.

perihelions 2y ago

"Undetected" in that context means "undetected until they're nearby". They're far from quiet. They've deployed surprisingly long-range acoustic sensor nets, for tracking them by their noise: - "Zvook’s detection ranges, though much shorter than radar, are nothing to sniff at. Drones, for example, can be detected up to 5km away. For cruise missiles, the range is about 7km. To pull this off, Zvook designed curved “acoustic mirrors” half a metre in diameter. These dishes concentrate sound waves on the microphones they cup. Most listening stations have two, for a coverage arc of about 200°. Processing takes place on an adjacent computer." https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/07/24/how-ukraines-new-tech-foils-russian-aerial-attacks https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2024/07/24/... (2024) https://archive.is/sQcFO https://archive.is/sQcFO

palata 2y ago

Pretty sure an amazon drone could crash on your doorstep with your ordered toothpaste before you manage to stop it, yes. Not sure that this is what you want :).

UncleEntity 2y ago
Not so much the Walmart ones... https://local12.com/news/offbeat/drone-shoot-walmart-delivery-amazon-hunt-man-and-destroys-arrested-firearm-rifle-pistol-gunshot-technology-military-aircraft-vandalism-lake-county-florida-sheriff-dennis-winn-9mm https://local12.com/news/offbeat/drone-shoot-walmart-deliver...

mapt 2y ago

It's about altitude and mass. A very small drone (call it 500g AUW) can deliver a pill bottle at maybe 30 meters altitude without you hearing them. Delivering a can of soda (5kg AUW), we're talking a bigger, heavier drone and maybe a hundred meters. Delivering a bag of dogfood (50kg AUW), you need to keep the rotors maybe 300m in the air. If you want to keep this quiet in closely space residences you'll need to dangle the package on a wire down from a hover, like a Mars Rover skycrane. In trench warfare, you don't need the wire, you can just drop munitions from altitude, limited only by accuracy. Every domestic drone program is operating under imposed limits on altitude and airspace. A suburban neighborhood has a significant tolerance for noise; We operate leafblowers, lawnmowers, cars and trucks. But only intermittently. If it's right next door to a droneport, the skycrane strategy doesn't help and your house is going to hear that nonstop. It seems like if they were operating from a better more remote facility, and the noise was only intermittent, people in the article might have tolerated even these ~100 pound class drones which have no skycrane and employ full descent almost to the ground (where they unceremoniously drop their contents the last ten feet). Example landing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcxfcMmdRCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcxfcMmdRCM

bluGill 2y ago
We can make drones quieter. However that involved compromises in efficiency.

lm28469 2y ago

Try dropping groceries from 200 meters, or hitting the front door full speed with an fpv drone. They're undetected because they're flying way too high, or way too fast for the human senses to react.