40 ms·
That doesn’t make it better. The cable hangs down from the crane and thus the rest of the structure is still nearby. The drone should be well clear of any obstr
by JCM9 1y ago
That doesn’t make it better. The cable hangs down from the crane and thus the rest of the structure is still nearby. The drone should be well clear of any obstructions precisely to avoid this sort of thing from happening with hard-to-see ancillary obstructions. Something went really wrong here with the tech.
- jahsome 1y agoI'm genuinely curious what you'd define "nearby" and "well clear" as in concrete numbers. For the sake of clarity: I am not arguing against your point, nor am I defending Amazon or the tech in any way shape or form.
- lawlessone 1y agonot under it at a minimum lol
- burkaman 1y agoA human operator would see a moving crane and say "that's a construction site, I'm going to go around". They would not fly directly under a crane even if it visually looked clear. In this case the crane was actively lowering something, so the drone not only missed the cable but it flew directly in between the crane and a visible object hanging in the air below the crane. For concrete numbers, I would say stay 50 yards away from construction equipment, and always laterally or above, not below. Honestly these drones are enormous so I think "don't go under" can just be a blanket rule. They can't be going under trees or bridges or overpasses either, they're too big. Edit: Also, the drones themselves should be far enough apart that if one crashes the other has time to react and stop or change course. I don't have a concrete number there, it depends on their speed and acceleration, but they shouldn't be flying so close that if one crashes they all will.
- appreciatorBus 1y agoIn non-drone aviation, we require vehicles to be separated from each other by 5 nautical miles horizontally and 2,000 feet vertically. Additionally every area of the planet they fly over has an MSA figure - Minimum Safe Altitude - which is supposed to guarantee 1000 feet clearance over any obstacles or terrain. Both of these allow healthy margins of error, whether that error is from a human pilot or ATC, or from computer systems - either in the vehicle or the ground. I'd argue these would be a great place to start for drone aviation. If such limits make drone burrito or toilet paper delivery expensive, that seems fine.
- jahsome 1y agoJust what I was looking for. Thanks for the context!
- CamperBob2 1y ago5 miles sounds pretty ridiculous, TBH. These things aren't moving at Mach 3.
- bell-cot 1y agoAt a mere (say) 240mph, 5 miles is 75 seconds. Talk to an experienced pilot about how short a time that is, when a bottom-10% pilot is trying to figure out some problem with his instrumentation, or has set his radio to the wrong frequency, or whatever.
- mr_toad 1y ago> At a mere (say) 240mph, 5 miles is 75 seconds. The world record holder for a quadcopter drone is 224 mph. Not many drones can beat 100 mph. According to one article I found Amazons drones can manage 50mph.
- bell-cot 1y ago5 miles at 50mph would give only Amazon 360 seconds to fix the bug that caused the first drone to crash. Or figure things out enough to get the second drone into manual override mode.
- spaqin 1y ago100mph is probably around the top speed for home built FPV quadcopters with 5 inch propellers; that's neither uncommon or expensive. Amazon's drones are probably built for efficiency though so they will go slower than that.
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- JCM9 1y agoFor manned flight instrument approaches the FAA has very nuanced math that defines this which typically comes down to a few hundred feet. That translates pretty well here too. Amazon will need to explain to the FAA why they were flying anywhere near this crane let alone that close and below the hight of its support structure. There’s no real defense for doing something that stupid.