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This article strikes me as a bit naive and overly cynical at the same time. I research, build and fly "drones". There is no question the technology now "hobby g

This article strikes me as a bit naive and overly cynical at the same time. I research, build and fly "drones". There is no question the technology now "hobby grade" will make the jump to industrial within maybe 2 years. What is really lacking to them is areospace efficiency, and computer science. All the most popular software and hardware to date was mostly written or built by tinkerers and RC aficionados, not computer science and areospace industry leading professionals. You can get an article circulated by badmouthing the hottest tech news, but in this case, it's just a bad misleading article with little basis in truth. Also the government just opened 6 commercial testing zones, and the FAA just laxed some of the regulations regarding commercial UAV experimentation and flight. Note that these moves happened at lightening speed for the government. Just weeks ago it was illegal for a company to fly with out FAA clearance and a pilots license. This is going to happen. I believe Amazon or Google are the most well positioned to make it happen. Not only is Amazon talking about introducing drones, it's also entertaining the idea of making UPS or FedEx strictly Business2Business enterprise, as Amazon would be handling the final leg of delivery ultimately to the customers door. I haven't heard anyone mention anything about this. Personally, as bicyclist living in NYC, I can't wait until those disgusting aggressively driven diesel delivery trucks are moved to the strap yard, replaced by the distant buzz of a battery operated drone army. Also to correct the inaccuracy presented in the article. The drones will be the final leg of the package journey, not the mid term. They will fly maybe 10 miles max, with a top speed of maybe 60 mph max within a city, not, 120 miles from city to city. It will start in one city like Amazon Fresh, and then 2 or 3 more years after that. Not every city all at once like the article insinuates then points out would be impossible. One city with in 5 years still makes Amazons plan a success and it makes this article completely wrong.

michaelt 13y ago
I research, build and fly "drones". Great, maybe you can bring some information to the discussion. For the type of drone you are best informed about, what is the maximum round trip flying range, assuming you adjusted the weight of batteries to maximise flying range and there was no wind and no worries about radio range or line of sight? What about if you were carrying a 1 lbs / 0.5 kg payload in the outbound direction? What would the round trip time and average flight speed be? What would the retail cost of such a drone be, if I wanted to order a kit today?
- skorgu 13y ago
  I'm not the parent poster and I don't know how representative of the current state of the art but here's a quadcopter going 12km (~7 miles) one way with an unspecified 'hd camera' payload [0]. They claim 88 minute hover endurance. I don't know if ~tripling that performance is in the realm of non-breakthrough engineering improvements but it seems at least order-of-magnitude close. [0] http://www.uasvision.com/2013/06/25/unmanned-microdrone-crosses-the-alps/ http://www.uasvision.com/2013/06/25/unmanned-microdrone-cros...
- beambot 13y ago
  I'll add a few questions: - Can you ensure safe failure modes for your in-flight drones? - Who assumes liability when your drones crash? - What is the blade tip speed during operation? What precautions do you take when flying in populated areas?
  - skorgu 13y ago
    I'm not the original asker but these seem to have obvious first-draft answers: - Add rotors. The demo video showed an 8-rotor drone, I can imagine that building it as a pair of parallel quad rotors from the power supply point of view would give you quite a bit of control even at a 50% loss. A single-engine loss is obviously fairly small beans. I'm emphatically not an expert so this is armchair engineering. - I don't know why anyone would ask this question. The answer is trivially obvious (the operator of the drone, whichever legal entity that ends up being modulo whatever insurance they certainly have). Obviously "it could crash" is hardly novel in other delivery services and yet they seem to survive the liability question without issue. - Probably quite dangerous. I imagine you want to fly quite high for cruising for obstacle-avoidance and noise anyway so 90% of your distance this isn't a problem. I think the answer here is "don't hit people" just like with existing forms of transportation (or more realistically "be as careful about not hitting people as your liability insurance continues to reward you for").
    - ericd 13y ago
      Yep, the 8 rotor setup is largely for redundancy. There are examples of quads flying with half of their rotors damaged, albeit in a very degraded sense. And with regards to the blade speed, you can make it largely a non-issue by using shrouds/wire mesh. People don't worry about the blade speed of a floor standing fan even as they brush up against it.
pjbrunet 13y ago
Interesting comment (upvoted) but... "I can't wait until those disgusting aggressively driven diesel delivery trucks are moved to the strap yard, replaced by the distant buzz of a battery operated drone army." Distant buzz? Are you sure about that? Drones sound like insects, yuck.

michaelt 13y ago

I research, build and fly "drones". Great, maybe you can bring some information to the discussion. For the type of drone you are best informed about, what is the maximum round trip flying range, assuming you adjusted the weight of batteries to maximise flying range and there was no wind and no worries about radio range or line of sight? What about if you were carrying a 1 lbs / 0.5 kg payload in the outbound direction? What would the round trip time and average flight speed be? What would the retail cost of such a drone be, if I wanted to order a kit today?

skorgu 13y ago
I'm not the parent poster and I don't know how representative of the current state of the art but here's a quadcopter going 12km (~7 miles) one way with an unspecified 'hd camera' payload [0]. They claim 88 minute hover endurance. I don't know if ~tripling that performance is in the realm of non-breakthrough engineering improvements but it seems at least order-of-magnitude close. [0] http://www.uasvision.com/2013/06/25/unmanned-microdrone-crosses-the-alps/ http://www.uasvision.com/2013/06/25/unmanned-microdrone-cros...
beambot 13y ago
I'll add a few questions: - Can you ensure safe failure modes for your in-flight drones? - Who assumes liability when your drones crash? - What is the blade tip speed during operation? What precautions do you take when flying in populated areas?
- skorgu 13y ago
  I'm not the original asker but these seem to have obvious first-draft answers: - Add rotors. The demo video showed an 8-rotor drone, I can imagine that building it as a pair of parallel quad rotors from the power supply point of view would give you quite a bit of control even at a 50% loss. A single-engine loss is obviously fairly small beans. I'm emphatically not an expert so this is armchair engineering. - I don't know why anyone would ask this question. The answer is trivially obvious (the operator of the drone, whichever legal entity that ends up being modulo whatever insurance they certainly have). Obviously "it could crash" is hardly novel in other delivery services and yet they seem to survive the liability question without issue. - Probably quite dangerous. I imagine you want to fly quite high for cruising for obstacle-avoidance and noise anyway so 90% of your distance this isn't a problem. I think the answer here is "don't hit people" just like with existing forms of transportation (or more realistically "be as careful about not hitting people as your liability insurance continues to reward you for").
  - ericd 13y ago
    Yep, the 8 rotor setup is largely for redundancy. There are examples of quads flying with half of their rotors damaged, albeit in a very degraded sense. And with regards to the blade speed, you can make it largely a non-issue by using shrouds/wire mesh. People don't worry about the blade speed of a floor standing fan even as they brush up against it.

pjbrunet 13y ago

Interesting comment (upvoted) but... "I can't wait until those disgusting aggressively driven diesel delivery trucks are moved to the strap yard, replaced by the distant buzz of a battery operated drone army." Distant buzz? Are you sure about that? Drones sound like insects, yuck.