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FAA bans the use of drones to deliver packages

186 points by aritraghosh007 12y ago

drawkbox 12y ago
I'd like the US to be the innovators on drone deliveries but it looks like we'll pass that opportunity up. Maybe we can outlaw any form of driverless car as well. Just as both are getting to be new markets that could increase economic growth. Drones, if they are more efficient than truck deliveries from a cost and energy use perspective, for most things they will be the solution used. It is just does the US want that to happen here or elsewhere. Drone energy use and possible accidents will be less than truck/delivery energy use and accidents in the future.
- naterator 12y ago
  Silicon Valley and the tech sector is full of adult babies. Watching the twitter reaction to this news (and others) is pretty fascinating. You're all so doom-and-gloom the first second the government tries to regulate something. Let's not discuss the histrionics that come out on other topics. Further, you act like there could be no possible logical reason why these things should be regulated. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of onerous regulation or regulatory capture, but you guys are just a bunch of babies. I think there should be rules about drones, because I can easily think of several really fucking bad things that could happen if everyone who wants to tinker can just fly their drones around because they've got the money and know how. What happens if Amazon tries to deliver a package, but the software fucks up and the drone flies over the airport (assuming the engineers even thought of that problem in advance)? What happens when multiple business start flying drones around and they start crashing into one another, falling on people, highways, or whatever? I've seen a video where a guy decapitated himself with his gas powered toy helicopter. Are these drones going to be safe if they crash into me, or should I walk around with a shotgun? We need rules. We don't need onerous rules, but we need rules.
  - asynchronous13 12y ago
    You're absolutely right that there should be regulations. The reaction you are seeing is because the FAA is so behind the times that it hurts. This topic is just now coming into mainstream news, but it's been going on for a long long time. In 2012, Congress told the FAA to hurry up. Do you know how far behind the FAA had to be for Congress to notice that the FAA wasn't doing their job? Yeah, it's that bad.
  - hexagonc 12y ago
    I've seen a video where a guy decapitated himself with his gas powered toy helicopter There are no toy gas powered helicopters. The idea that they are toys are what gets people in trouble in the first place. Even small electric palmtop RC helicopters can cause significant injury if you accidentally fly it toward your face.
- hereonbusiness 12y ago
  Driverless cars/vehicles are a whole different animal if you ask me. Personal and cargo transportation could be a lot more efficient (especially considering energy/resource efficiency) if you took the human element out of it. Using flying drones for delivery is much more limited in scope when I think about it, you can't really haul loads with drones, each delivery has to be done more or less individually, I can't imagine that being more energy efficient than for example a driverless truck dropping off packages at designated pickup points in local communities.
lutorm 12y ago
I'm curious, do the people who think that they should be allowed to fly their unmanned aircraft without restrictions also think that they should be allowed to fly their manned aircraft without restrictions, or should the rules be different because the pilot is on the ground rather than in the vehicle itself?
- patrickaljord 12y ago
  Last time I checked, commercial manned aircraft were regulated but not banned outright. In this case, FAA is banning commercial unmanned aircraft altogether, so unless you consider banning altogether to be a regulation, I don't think your comparison stands.
- Symmetry 12y ago
  Not for lightweight craft, but then again I think that driving a car should require a licence but a bicycle shouldn't. The difference is that while it's possible to kill someone by crashing into them with a bicycle or a 20 pound drone, a car or regular airplane it's much, much easier.
- fryguy 12y ago
  There's a big difference between a 20-50 pound quadcopter travelling at 10-20mph and a 1500 pound Cessna flying at 150mph. Regulations for airplanes are strict primarily because the consequences of failure is loss of human life. Secondly to prevent damage to property due to crashes. Given that drones are unmanned, it would mean to me that the regulation on them should be less than what a manned aircraft requires. I would imagine it would be more similar to rocketry rather than airplanes.
jedanbik 12y ago
First comment, couldn't have put it better myself: N Lawrence Pfeifer "FAA Bans The Use Of Drones To Deliver Packages" "As such, the FAA wants to ban it." TechCrunch, please.
jkaljundi 12y ago
FAA has never allowed the use of drones to deliver packages. The right headline would be "The FAA does still not allow use of drones to deliver packages."
- bmelton 12y ago
  The FAA has never been asked about it before, and the law of the land is "That which is not forbidden is legal." If there's no law against it, it's allowed. In this regard, it makes the statement that they are now banning it more true than they are still banning it, because they have never expressly disallowed it in the past (to my knowledge -- if incorrect, probably renders my point moot). Class E Airspace, that which is between the surface and 2500 feet, is unregulated for the most part (except near a commercial airport, and other such caveats). I don't know the ceiling on the drones in question, or what altitudes they intended to operate within, but if within Class E, this definitely falls under the scope of a 'new' regulation.
  - cromulent 12y ago
    According to the FAA, they clarified this in 2007. No flying a UAS for commercial purposes, only one case has ever been approved. http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=76240 http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=76240
    - bmelton 12y ago
      Oops. Thanks for the clarification. That explains the yo-yo voting patterns I'm seeing on my post, I suppose.
    - DannyBee 12y ago
      at least the 2012 act requires them to allow flying UAS for commercial purposes (at the very least in the arctic, and likely elsewhere, depending on how you read it), and start a rulemaking about it
      - asynchronous13 12y ago
orasis 12y ago
Drones are really annoyingly loud. This isn't a bad thing at all.
- bramswenson 12y ago
  How quickly do you think they will get quieter?
  - radiorental 12y ago
    Depends, how fast can you run from our future robot overlords. Point being, noise should be the the least of concerns http://rt.com/news/167168-riot-control-pepper-spray-drone/ http://rt.com/news/167168-riot-control-pepper-spray-drone/
    - bramswenson 12y ago
      Well, if they are quieter, we won't hear them coming to riot control us.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Quick: http://www.wired.com/2012/07/owl/ http://www.wired.com/2012/07/owl/ That article is from almost two years ago. Use ducted fans, find ways to generate more lift at slower prop speeds.
    - tizzdogg 12y ago
      That article says they are trying to make military drones "about equivalent to a chainsaw when up close". So that's still louder than a lot of the hobby drones out there today. Having flying chainsaw-level noises everywhere will still be pretty annoying.
- mgr86 12y ago
  I cannot argue the noise aspect, but I do thing not allowing experiments in drone delivery a bad thing. I strongly suspect that self-driving cars are on the horizon. With that presumption, I suspect self-flying cars would not be far off and that the technology that would drive that would come from parcel delivering drones.
hippich 12y ago
From reading all these legal nuances I feel like next step would be to rent away for free drones to customers which they will use in turn to pickup their packages at amazon warehouses :)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- byoung2 12y ago
  That was my first thought: a Prime membership could include fractional ownership in a drone, so any delivery would be my personal fraction of a drone delivering my package for recreational purposes!
purringmeow 12y ago
I really can't see the need for premature bans. Has there been a significant amount of accidents involving the use of delivery drones? I don't think so, so why potentially limit your competitiveness? :(
- ProAm 12y ago
  Because there is a lot to consider in densely packed cities. If these interfere with public utilities but hitting power lines, or crashing into homes, or school play grounds, etc... I have no issue with them planing ahead in this scenario, and do not feel it has anything to do with competitiveness.
- sp332 12y ago
  418 U.S. military drones have crashed so far. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/22/crashes-mount-as-military-flies-more-drones-in-u-s/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/22/cr... Do you think commercial drones will be better-maintained or have more experienced pilots? I don't.
  - bdamm 12y ago
    The Air Force vets that I know say that civilian aircraft during peace time are maintained better than AF aircraft were during war time. Also, it's fair to say that the AF doesn't really care about the potential for ground casualties in the event of a mechanical failure. Let's look at it this way; how many US drones have been captured by enemy forces? Crashing is one thing; falling into the hands of an opponent who can study the device is a mission aspect that the AF and other agencies do care about. More than a handful?
    - wavefunction 12y ago
      You're saying the AF doesn't care if a drone has a possibility of crashing into our own troops? That seems to be unlikely.
      - 12y ago
bdamm 12y ago
The part I've been thinking about and don't have a good answer to is, where would the drones fly? The best answer I've come up with is directly overhead non-highway surface streets. Or put another way, where is it OK for drones to crash? I do think the FAA is too risk adverse, and they ought to allow less-limited market trials in large metropolitan areas. The current UAS plan is good but too conservative.
- NoPiece 12y ago
  But you should also consider where it is OK for delivery trucks to crash, and whether a drone crash or truck crash is more likely to cause damage or injury.
  - bdamm 12y ago
    Hence overhead non-highway surface streets. Drones are typically fairly small, smaller than delivery trucks. And hopefully the drone operators can figure out how to avoid power lines, overhead trains, etc. Wind could blow a non-functioning (or even worse, incorrectly vectored) drone off the street as it falls towards the ground. A market test could start off by declaring streets OK for overhead drone activity. I bet if the FAA opened it up to cities to decide whether it's OK for a drone to operate commercially above their streets, you'd get dozens or hundreds of cities move to allow it. Starting with Seattle.
    - cpncrunch 12y ago
      I'm not sure why you think it would be okay to fly over non-highway streets, where presumably there will be pedestrians. Already there has been an injury caused by a drone falling on top of someone (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26921504 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26921504). Regarding avoiding power lines: is that actually feasible? Either you have to program a GPS route from the warehouse to the delivery address avoiding all obstructions, or you have to use some kind of radar so that you can detect obstructions even in fog (or maybe just not operate in low visibiliity). It's not a trivial problem, and I'm not sure if the proponents have really thought it out. PS, if you're going to downvote my comment, at least explain why.
logfromblammo 12y ago
Establishment resists potentially disruptive technology. News at 11. While agencies of government have never hesitated to step in and order people about, I am somewhat concerned that they are saying "Stop that at once!" far less often, in favor of "Don't even think about it." Rather than allowing people to test the limits of their ingenuity, and intervene only when there is a demonstrable externality to be addressed, they are now issuing orders based upon an unrealized potential for harm. I think the latter demands a higher standard. You would have to be worrying about buildings burning down and people dying before I would want anyone to ban something that hasn't even been done yet. Let's ban people from building nuclear reactors in their toolsheds, yes. Maybe don't allow people to set off high-powered fireworks in the middle of a bunch of flammable homes. And let's not drive cars at high speed through suburban avenues where children, joggers, and pets may be present. How, exactly, would software-piloted package-delivery aircraft present such a severe threat to life and property that we have to conclude that they cannot possibly be operated safely? The public wants to use its airspace in a manner that benefits them. That includes noncommercial hobbyists, people such as journalists and surveyors profiting incidental to their usual work, and people earning money directly. The FAA does not get to pick the winners and losers here. That job, unfortunately, belongs to the legislature, not the executive (unfortunate in the sense that they have opted not to do their jobs, of course). FAA is either exceeding its authority, or its authority is ambiguous at a result of legal refactoring proceeding more slowly than societal development. Either way, it stops Amazon from even trying, while black marketeers will blithely use drones to make drops of contraband, and cops and soldiers will use them for illegal surveillance and ethically dubious methods of crowd control. As with so many other things, the real barrier here is how much it costs for Average Joe to buy and operate his own software-piloted drone. If you can get one cheaply enough, drones will eventually be resupplying beers from the camper to the bass boat, and the FAA will be stuck trying to enforce an extremely unpopular decision that is routinely ignored by people who have never even heard of it.
DEinspanjer 12y ago
One of the interesting pieces I picked up from the related reading to this article is that any use of FPV equipment on a model aircraft puts it square out of the exemptions as far as the FAA is concerned. If the operator does not have un-aided eyes on object at all times, they lose the protection of the exemptions afforded to model aircraft. Bleh.
- arg01 12y ago
  There are similar restrictions for flying visually or by instruments. Even flying visually you wouldn't pass your flight test if you restricted your field of view to anything like a normal camera. It's amazing how prescriptive the aviation industry is, often with demonstrable reason, so it doesn't surprise me that drones/models are also evaluated in an equally stern light. Though I think there's a good argument for exemptions the lower hazards involved.
danboarder 12y ago
Meanwhile, in Russia a pizzeria recently launched unmanned delivery: http://rt.com/news/167936-russia-drones-pizza-delivery/ http://rt.com/news/167936-russia-drones-pizza-delivery/
- vacri 12y ago
  I misread 'unmanned' in that sentence as the 'emasculated' meaning of the word, and had a mental question as to why you would make a service out of having your pizza delivered by broken, subservient men... :)
  - regulusblack 12y ago
    In Soviet Russia, pizza delivers YOU!
- BillyMaize 12y ago
  Thanks for this link. Am I reading wrong or does the article say the drone costs $15? That sounds unbelievably cheap, does anyone know how much a drone like this in America would cost?
- Grue3 12y ago
  Russia Today. It's probably fake.
derwiki 12y ago
So theoretically, I could start using a drone to deliver gifts to my friends. Non-commercial, not "free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer" right?
donatj 12y ago
> > If an individual offers free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer, FAA would construe the shipping to be in furtherance of a business purpose, and thus, the operation would not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purpose. > Surprising? No, but it is almost fun to see the government be so particular in its language Well couldn't amazon get around this by using negative shipping, whereas they pay you to ship items to you? Like pay you a penny. To me being "so particular in [..] language" just leads to loop holes.
- judk 12y ago
  Why would amazon pay you? In furtherance of a business purpose. It turns out that judges aren't stupid.
Evolved 12y ago
Advice to attempt to find a loophole or skirt the law in some way probably won't turn out good for Amazon. A better approach would be to cooperate and participate in discussions with the FAA and for Amazon to perhaps help pioneer new regulation regarding drones for commercial purposes like package delivery. Also I don't think the negative shipping part would work because isn't it still free shipping since the customer isn't paying for it? It isn't free to Amazon and that's not what the free part is for. So negative shipping is still free shipping.
fiatjaf 12y ago
They shouldn't have asked.
krschultz 12y ago
Huge win for Amazon, which never actually intended to use drones to deliver packages. The whole thing was a PR stunt designed to gain traffic on cyber Monday. Now they conviently can blame the government when they never actually invest the money to build the drones.
- headShrinker 12y ago
  I think you are wrong. I will abbreviate the article wrote on this very subject found here: http://fritzw.com/2013/12/03/theres-little-doubt-about-amazon-prime-air-heres-why/ http://fritzw.com/2013/12/03/theres-little-doubt-about-amazo... Amazon’s devices will be used for a single purpose they will be optimized in ways we have never seen in the multicopter industry. Their delivery scheme will be completely computer controlled, and will account for weather, airspeed, air density, and flight path, because they will have to. Octocopters have demonstrated their amazing flight stability and capability in the hands of tinkerers and hobbyist, and there is some question of whether a billion dollar corporation can achieve this? As soon as Amazon mentioned this, FedEx, UPS, and USPS started forming their R&D for the exact same programs. This is one of the largest, most high-tech, most optimized and automated companies in the world, and some of us are doubtful? Amazon will do this because humans are the problem. With robots, you eliminate the most irrational, chaotic, unreliable and expensive element from the equation.
  - sschueller 12y ago
    Hasn't amazon been the one to only slowly adopt warehouse automation because it is cheaper to hire humans at $10 an hour? They did buy this company that makes little robots to move shelves around but it is nothing compared to a real system like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DeT-Hj2DXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DeT-Hj2DXk
    - rtpg 12y ago
      warehouses are different. It's very costly to send a guy to people's houses. They're simply limited by the walking/running rate of the human body, and traffic.
downandout 12y ago
I envision drones as being personally owned and then sent out to do tasks like pick up things from stores anyway. Businesses just need to create places for them to land. It seems that would be fully within the scope of the rules.
tomrod 12y ago
It would be interesting to see Amazon revamp their warehouses to use these drones.
thkim 12y ago
I think this is a sensible decision until safety concerns have been adequately addressed. Innovation is great, shorter delivery time is awesome, but not at the expense of safety of general public.
beedogs 12y ago
Good. What a terrible, terrible idea. Imagine these things falling from the sky a few times a day in major metro areas.
- witty_username 12y ago
  1900s: Imagine these bulky cars hitting people. ;)
  - joering2 12y ago
    related (With cool banners from 1933): http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/ http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/
- clarkm 12y ago
  Imagine them delivering supplies to rural farmers.
  - beedogs 12y ago
    They'd need to be awfully big then, wouldn't they?
TerraHertz 12y ago
There's a fatal flaw. Even if commercial delivery drones could be engineered to not crash into people or houses, not tangle with power lines, not cause accidents on highways, and not collide with each other once they are common, there's one thing that will instantly get them banned. That will be the time someone uses a UAV to deliver 10 Oz of Semtex and a proximity sensor to someone they don't like. Exactly how are you going to stop that becoming common, if there are lots of UAVs in the air everywhere? Actually this factor is probably why they will definitely be banned before there is any commercial take-up. Because there are some powerful people who very many people don't much like. And this application will be very unpopular with the powerful.
- gluczywo 12y ago
  You can use a car packed with explosives triggered by mobile phone to target someone you don't like. It's much easier and more reliable than the short-distance drone. Should we ban cars and mobile phones?
- paul_f 12y ago
  Replace the word "drone" or "UAV" with "truck" and re-read your comment.
- rlpb 12y ago
  Let's say that I'm one of these people. It's already illegal for me to send a UAV to your house with Semtex and a proximity sensor, since trying to kill you is already illegal. What makes you think that a ban on UAVs will stop me? How will a ban on UAVs help you protect yourself from my illegal murder attempt?
Elena81 12y ago
Clach of clans
hereonbusiness 12y ago
I don't see what problem delivering packages with drones would be solving, package delivery seems already quite efficient to me. Also I suppose drones would often be able to deliver just one package at a time because of weight restrictions. I pick up most of my packages at the local post office because I live in an apartment, it's a 5 minute walk away, not really an inconvenience.
- kolinko 12y ago
  It's like saying "why use phone when telegraph is good enough". If you can order things and receive them very fast in any place, there are things that you can start ordering that otherwise you wouldn't do. It's raining and you need an umbrella, with nomsalesperson near? Order a drone. Forgot to buy mayo back in the store? Order throug drone and get it in an hour. But there once you're able to order stuff and get it within minutes, not hours or days, there are other effects that start happening. For one, you don't need to stockpile supplies anymore, or you can do things more spontaneusly. Will 40 or 100'people come to a party. Who cares, if there are not enough forks or plates, you can order them fast. Or, if you want to play in garage, you don't have to make sure that you've got all the supplies well in advance, or go to the store and back 20'times. Think how many businesses were spawned, and how much more efficient are people now that there are mobile phones, not just stationary. But ic an imagine people saying "who needs mobile, I can call when i get back home, and i've got an answering machine if someone calls when i'm away.
  - hereonbusiness 12y ago
    I'm sorry but that sounds just silly to me, planning ahead is a basic life skill if you ask me, but I get that people would pay for it, ignorance is bliss. I know I'm sounding condescending, but that's not why I'm replying to this topic, this is just one of those things that right now to me seem like the wrong direction to look at when solving peoples problems, a dead end so to speak. The whole smartphone/tablet thing is a sore point for me as well, I love the hardware but I don't like the mobile OS movement at all, I hate that there is no real push to go in the direction of something like Ubuntu for Android[1] as the devices are getting more capable. [1]http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/ubuntu-for-android http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/ubuntu-for-android
exDM69 12y ago
This is the only sensible (but temporary) decision that the FAA could have done. The next step is to research reliable methods of navigation and air traffic rules for unmanned and autonomous aerial vehicles, and when that can be made demonstrably safe, this regulation can be revisited. If FAA would have allowed commercial drone operations without further regulation, and the technology would have had widespread adoption, there would be great risks involved. Before there are the equivalents of traffic lights, air traffic control and airways and regulations to how much and what you can carry, there are risks involved. ("hello Amazon, I'd like to have 5 kilograms worth of lithium batteries, drone delivery to this busy urban address." what could possibly go wrong?) Of course, things can be relatively safe if common sense is applied, but you can't expect commercial operators to apply common sense when there are potential profits available. And common sense is not always correct either, back in the 1930s when the state of the art in aviation was relatively comparable to the state of the art in drones today, most people thought that pilots should fly by the seat of their pants and flight instruments are only supplemental (which is deadly wrong, and today all planes have doubly redundant gyroscopic instruments). The reality is that the technology to fly unmanned and autonomous drones exists but it's not mature enough to work in large scale commercial operations safely and effectively.
- sfk 12y ago
  I think the ban should stay regardless of safety. One big issue here is noise and visual pollution.
  - exDM69 12y ago
    I appreciate your opinion and recognize that there are many people who share your opinion but I can't agree. Compared to road and air traffic, it would take a serious amount of drones to match the noise and visual pollution. The pizza delivery man with his car or scooter makes more noise and takes more space than a drone would. And you have to remember that the early jet aircraft were very noisy and inefficient compared to modern jets. NACA, NASA and the FAA did some serious research and development programs in the fifties and sixties to reduce the amount of noise. Compared to "big" aviation, I think that the current drones are somewhere in between the Wright brothers and the Spirit of St. Louis - I guess there will be significant development in the near future.
kjhughes 12y ago
UPDATE: "This is about hobbyists and model aircraft, not Amazon," said Mary Osako, a spokeswoman for the Seattle-based company. The rule, she said, doesn't apply to commercial entities such as Amazon and "has no effect on our plans." The rule applies only to hobbyists and was meant to clarify what services are considered legal and what are not within that category, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown told CNET. For hobbyists, "using a model aircraft to move a box from point to point without any kind of compensation," is OK, according to the guidelines, while accepting a fee for delivery services is not. Source: http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-dont-worry-our-drones-are-still-preparing-for-takeoff/ http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-dont-worry-our-drones-are-st...
- asynchronous13 12y ago
  Not sure if Mary Osako is clueless or trying some PR angle that I don't get. Yes, the FAA statement was to clarify what is okay for hobbyists. The FAA clearly states that accepting payment takes you out of the hobbyist category and puts you into the commercial category. And there is a blanket ban if you fall into the commercial category.
aml183 12y ago
Another example of the government becoming overly involved in private enterprise. There are times when the government should become involved, but it must be done in a responsible manner. Government needs to catch up with technological innovation rather than continuing to stifle it.

186 points by aritraghosh007 12y ago

I'd like the US to be the innovators on drone deliveries but it looks like we'll pass that opportunity up. Maybe we can outlaw any form of driverless car as well. Just as both are getting to be new markets that could increase economic growth. Drones, if they are more efficient than truck deliveries from a cost and energy use perspective, for most things they will be the solution used. It is just does the US want that to happen here or elsewhere. Drone energy use and possible accidents will be less than truck/delivery energy use and accidents in the future.

naterator 12y ago
Silicon Valley and the tech sector is full of adult babies. Watching the twitter reaction to this news (and others) is pretty fascinating. You're all so doom-and-gloom the first second the government tries to regulate something. Let's not discuss the histrionics that come out on other topics. Further, you act like there could be no possible logical reason why these things should be regulated. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of onerous regulation or regulatory capture, but you guys are just a bunch of babies. I think there should be rules about drones, because I can easily think of several really fucking bad things that could happen if everyone who wants to tinker can just fly their drones around because they've got the money and know how. What happens if Amazon tries to deliver a package, but the software fucks up and the drone flies over the airport (assuming the engineers even thought of that problem in advance)? What happens when multiple business start flying drones around and they start crashing into one another, falling on people, highways, or whatever? I've seen a video where a guy decapitated himself with his gas powered toy helicopter. Are these drones going to be safe if they crash into me, or should I walk around with a shotgun? We need rules. We don't need onerous rules, but we need rules.
- asynchronous13 12y ago
  You're absolutely right that there should be regulations. The reaction you are seeing is because the FAA is so behind the times that it hurts. This topic is just now coming into mainstream news, but it's been going on for a long long time. In 2012, Congress told the FAA to hurry up. Do you know how far behind the FAA had to be for Congress to notice that the FAA wasn't doing their job? Yeah, it's that bad.
- hexagonc 12y ago
  I've seen a video where a guy decapitated himself with his gas powered toy helicopter There are no toy gas powered helicopters. The idea that they are toys are what gets people in trouble in the first place. Even small electric palmtop RC helicopters can cause significant injury if you accidentally fly it toward your face.
hereonbusiness 12y ago
Driverless cars/vehicles are a whole different animal if you ask me. Personal and cargo transportation could be a lot more efficient (especially considering energy/resource efficiency) if you took the human element out of it. Using flying drones for delivery is much more limited in scope when I think about it, you can't really haul loads with drones, each delivery has to be done more or less individually, I can't imagine that being more energy efficient than for example a driverless truck dropping off packages at designated pickup points in local communities.

lutorm 12y ago

I'm curious, do the people who think that they should be allowed to fly their unmanned aircraft without restrictions also think that they should be allowed to fly their manned aircraft without restrictions, or should the rules be different because the pilot is on the ground rather than in the vehicle itself?

patrickaljord 12y ago
Last time I checked, commercial manned aircraft were regulated but not banned outright. In this case, FAA is banning commercial unmanned aircraft altogether, so unless you consider banning altogether to be a regulation, I don't think your comparison stands.
Symmetry 12y ago
Not for lightweight craft, but then again I think that driving a car should require a licence but a bicycle shouldn't. The difference is that while it's possible to kill someone by crashing into them with a bicycle or a 20 pound drone, a car or regular airplane it's much, much easier.
fryguy 12y ago
There's a big difference between a 20-50 pound quadcopter travelling at 10-20mph and a 1500 pound Cessna flying at 150mph. Regulations for airplanes are strict primarily because the consequences of failure is loss of human life. Secondly to prevent damage to property due to crashes. Given that drones are unmanned, it would mean to me that the regulation on them should be less than what a manned aircraft requires. I would imagine it would be more similar to rocketry rather than airplanes.

jedanbik 12y ago

First comment, couldn't have put it better myself: N Lawrence Pfeifer "FAA Bans The Use Of Drones To Deliver Packages" "As such, the FAA wants to ban it." TechCrunch, please.

jkaljundi 12y ago

FAA has never allowed the use of drones to deliver packages. The right headline would be "The FAA does still not allow use of drones to deliver packages."

bmelton 12y ago
The FAA has never been asked about it before, and the law of the land is "That which is not forbidden is legal." If there's no law against it, it's allowed. In this regard, it makes the statement that they are now banning it more true than they are still banning it, because they have never expressly disallowed it in the past (to my knowledge -- if incorrect, probably renders my point moot). Class E Airspace, that which is between the surface and 2500 feet, is unregulated for the most part (except near a commercial airport, and other such caveats). I don't know the ceiling on the drones in question, or what altitudes they intended to operate within, but if within Class E, this definitely falls under the scope of a 'new' regulation.
- cromulent 12y ago
  According to the FAA, they clarified this in 2007. No flying a UAS for commercial purposes, only one case has ever been approved. http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=76240 http://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=76240
  - bmelton 12y ago
    Oops. Thanks for the clarification. That explains the yo-yo voting patterns I'm seeing on my post, I suppose.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    at least the 2012 act requires them to allow flying UAS for commercial purposes (at the very least in the arctic, and likely elsewhere, depending on how you read it), and start a rulemaking about it
    - asynchronous13 12y ago

orasis 12y ago

Drones are really annoyingly loud. This isn't a bad thing at all.

bramswenson 12y ago
How quickly do you think they will get quieter?
- radiorental 12y ago
  Depends, how fast can you run from our future robot overlords. Point being, noise should be the the least of concerns http://rt.com/news/167168-riot-control-pepper-spray-drone/ http://rt.com/news/167168-riot-control-pepper-spray-drone/
  - bramswenson 12y ago
    Well, if they are quieter, we won't hear them coming to riot control us.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Quick: http://www.wired.com/2012/07/owl/ http://www.wired.com/2012/07/owl/ That article is from almost two years ago. Use ducted fans, find ways to generate more lift at slower prop speeds.
  - tizzdogg 12y ago
    That article says they are trying to make military drones "about equivalent to a chainsaw when up close". So that's still louder than a lot of the hobby drones out there today. Having flying chainsaw-level noises everywhere will still be pretty annoying.
mgr86 12y ago
I cannot argue the noise aspect, but I do thing not allowing experiments in drone delivery a bad thing. I strongly suspect that self-driving cars are on the horizon. With that presumption, I suspect self-flying cars would not be far off and that the technology that would drive that would come from parcel delivering drones.

hippich 12y ago

From reading all these legal nuances I feel like next step would be to rent away for free drones to customers which they will use in turn to pickup their packages at amazon warehouses :)

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
byoung2 12y ago
That was my first thought: a Prime membership could include fractional ownership in a drone, so any delivery would be my personal fraction of a drone delivering my package for recreational purposes!

purringmeow 12y ago

I really can't see the need for premature bans. Has there been a significant amount of accidents involving the use of delivery drones? I don't think so, so why potentially limit your competitiveness? :(

ProAm 12y ago
Because there is a lot to consider in densely packed cities. If these interfere with public utilities but hitting power lines, or crashing into homes, or school play grounds, etc... I have no issue with them planing ahead in this scenario, and do not feel it has anything to do with competitiveness.
sp332 12y ago
418 U.S. military drones have crashed so far. http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/22/crashes-mount-as-military-flies-more-drones-in-u-s/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/06/22/cr... Do you think commercial drones will be better-maintained or have more experienced pilots? I don't.
- bdamm 12y ago
  The Air Force vets that I know say that civilian aircraft during peace time are maintained better than AF aircraft were during war time. Also, it's fair to say that the AF doesn't really care about the potential for ground casualties in the event of a mechanical failure. Let's look at it this way; how many US drones have been captured by enemy forces? Crashing is one thing; falling into the hands of an opponent who can study the device is a mission aspect that the AF and other agencies do care about. More than a handful?
  - wavefunction 12y ago
    You're saying the AF doesn't care if a drone has a possibility of crashing into our own troops? That seems to be unlikely.
    - 12y ago

bdamm 12y ago

The part I've been thinking about and don't have a good answer to is, where would the drones fly? The best answer I've come up with is directly overhead non-highway surface streets. Or put another way, where is it OK for drones to crash? I do think the FAA is too risk adverse, and they ought to allow less-limited market trials in large metropolitan areas. The current UAS plan is good but too conservative.

NoPiece 12y ago
But you should also consider where it is OK for delivery trucks to crash, and whether a drone crash or truck crash is more likely to cause damage or injury.
- bdamm 12y ago
  Hence overhead non-highway surface streets. Drones are typically fairly small, smaller than delivery trucks. And hopefully the drone operators can figure out how to avoid power lines, overhead trains, etc. Wind could blow a non-functioning (or even worse, incorrectly vectored) drone off the street as it falls towards the ground. A market test could start off by declaring streets OK for overhead drone activity. I bet if the FAA opened it up to cities to decide whether it's OK for a drone to operate commercially above their streets, you'd get dozens or hundreds of cities move to allow it. Starting with Seattle.
  - cpncrunch 12y ago
    I'm not sure why you think it would be okay to fly over non-highway streets, where presumably there will be pedestrians. Already there has been an injury caused by a drone falling on top of someone (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26921504 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26921504). Regarding avoiding power lines: is that actually feasible? Either you have to program a GPS route from the warehouse to the delivery address avoiding all obstructions, or you have to use some kind of radar so that you can detect obstructions even in fog (or maybe just not operate in low visibiliity). It's not a trivial problem, and I'm not sure if the proponents have really thought it out. PS, if you're going to downvote my comment, at least explain why.

logfromblammo 12y ago

Establishment resists potentially disruptive technology. News at 11. While agencies of government have never hesitated to step in and order people about, I am somewhat concerned that they are saying "Stop that at once!" far less often, in favor of "Don't even think about it." Rather than allowing people to test the limits of their ingenuity, and intervene only when there is a demonstrable externality to be addressed, they are now issuing orders based upon an unrealized potential for harm. I think the latter demands a higher standard. You would have to be worrying about buildings burning down and people dying before I would want anyone to ban something that hasn't even been done yet. Let's ban people from building nuclear reactors in their toolsheds, yes. Maybe don't allow people to set off high-powered fireworks in the middle of a bunch of flammable homes. And let's not drive cars at high speed through suburban avenues where children, joggers, and pets may be present. How, exactly, would software-piloted package-delivery aircraft present such a severe threat to life and property that we have to conclude that they cannot possibly be operated safely? The public wants to use its airspace in a manner that benefits them. That includes noncommercial hobbyists, people such as journalists and surveyors profiting incidental to their usual work, and people earning money directly. The FAA does not get to pick the winners and losers here. That job, unfortunately, belongs to the legislature, not the executive (unfortunate in the sense that they have opted not to do their jobs, of course). FAA is either exceeding its authority, or its authority is ambiguous at a result of legal refactoring proceeding more slowly than societal development. Either way, it stops Amazon from even trying, while black marketeers will blithely use drones to make drops of contraband, and cops and soldiers will use them for illegal surveillance and ethically dubious methods of crowd control. As with so many other things, the real barrier here is how much it costs for Average Joe to buy and operate his own software-piloted drone. If you can get one cheaply enough, drones will eventually be resupplying beers from the camper to the bass boat, and the FAA will be stuck trying to enforce an extremely unpopular decision that is routinely ignored by people who have never even heard of it.

DEinspanjer 12y ago

One of the interesting pieces I picked up from the related reading to this article is that any use of FPV equipment on a model aircraft puts it square out of the exemptions as far as the FAA is concerned. If the operator does not have un-aided eyes on object at all times, they lose the protection of the exemptions afforded to model aircraft. Bleh.

arg01 12y ago
There are similar restrictions for flying visually or by instruments. Even flying visually you wouldn't pass your flight test if you restricted your field of view to anything like a normal camera. It's amazing how prescriptive the aviation industry is, often with demonstrable reason, so it doesn't surprise me that drones/models are also evaluated in an equally stern light. Though I think there's a good argument for exemptions the lower hazards involved.

danboarder 12y ago

Meanwhile, in Russia a pizzeria recently launched unmanned delivery: http://rt.com/news/167936-russia-drones-pizza-delivery/ http://rt.com/news/167936-russia-drones-pizza-delivery/

vacri 12y ago
I misread 'unmanned' in that sentence as the 'emasculated' meaning of the word, and had a mental question as to why you would make a service out of having your pizza delivered by broken, subservient men... :)
- regulusblack 12y ago
  In Soviet Russia, pizza delivers YOU!
BillyMaize 12y ago
Thanks for this link. Am I reading wrong or does the article say the drone costs $15? That sounds unbelievably cheap, does anyone know how much a drone like this in America would cost?
Grue3 12y ago
Russia Today. It's probably fake.

derwiki 12y ago

So theoretically, I could start using a drone to deliver gifts to my friends. Non-commercial, not "free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer" right?

donatj 12y ago

> > If an individual offers free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer, FAA would construe the shipping to be in furtherance of a business purpose, and thus, the operation would not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purpose. > Surprising? No, but it is almost fun to see the government be so particular in its language Well couldn't amazon get around this by using negative shipping, whereas they pay you to ship items to you? Like pay you a penny. To me being "so particular in [..] language" just leads to loop holes.

judk 12y ago
Why would amazon pay you? In furtherance of a business purpose. It turns out that judges aren't stupid.

Evolved 12y ago

Advice to attempt to find a loophole or skirt the law in some way probably won't turn out good for Amazon. A better approach would be to cooperate and participate in discussions with the FAA and for Amazon to perhaps help pioneer new regulation regarding drones for commercial purposes like package delivery. Also I don't think the negative shipping part would work because isn't it still free shipping since the customer isn't paying for it? It isn't free to Amazon and that's not what the free part is for. So negative shipping is still free shipping.

fiatjaf 12y ago

They shouldn't have asked.

krschultz 12y ago

Huge win for Amazon, which never actually intended to use drones to deliver packages. The whole thing was a PR stunt designed to gain traffic on cyber Monday. Now they conviently can blame the government when they never actually invest the money to build the drones.

headShrinker 12y ago
I think you are wrong. I will abbreviate the article wrote on this very subject found here: http://fritzw.com/2013/12/03/theres-little-doubt-about-amazon-prime-air-heres-why/ http://fritzw.com/2013/12/03/theres-little-doubt-about-amazo... Amazon’s devices will be used for a single purpose they will be optimized in ways we have never seen in the multicopter industry. Their delivery scheme will be completely computer controlled, and will account for weather, airspeed, air density, and flight path, because they will have to. Octocopters have demonstrated their amazing flight stability and capability in the hands of tinkerers and hobbyist, and there is some question of whether a billion dollar corporation can achieve this? As soon as Amazon mentioned this, FedEx, UPS, and USPS started forming their R&D for the exact same programs. This is one of the largest, most high-tech, most optimized and automated companies in the world, and some of us are doubtful? Amazon will do this because humans are the problem. With robots, you eliminate the most irrational, chaotic, unreliable and expensive element from the equation.
- sschueller 12y ago
  Hasn't amazon been the one to only slowly adopt warehouse automation because it is cheaper to hire humans at $10 an hour? They did buy this company that makes little robots to move shelves around but it is nothing compared to a real system like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DeT-Hj2DXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DeT-Hj2DXk
  - rtpg 12y ago
    warehouses are different. It's very costly to send a guy to people's houses. They're simply limited by the walking/running rate of the human body, and traffic.

downandout 12y ago

I envision drones as being personally owned and then sent out to do tasks like pick up things from stores anyway. Businesses just need to create places for them to land. It seems that would be fully within the scope of the rules.

tomrod 12y ago

It would be interesting to see Amazon revamp their warehouses to use these drones.

thkim 12y ago

I think this is a sensible decision until safety concerns have been adequately addressed. Innovation is great, shorter delivery time is awesome, but not at the expense of safety of general public.

beedogs 12y ago

Good. What a terrible, terrible idea. Imagine these things falling from the sky a few times a day in major metro areas.

witty_username 12y ago
1900s: Imagine these bulky cars hitting people. ;)
- joering2 12y ago
  related (With cool banners from 1933): http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/ http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/murder-machines/
clarkm 12y ago
Imagine them delivering supplies to rural farmers.
- beedogs 12y ago
  They'd need to be awfully big then, wouldn't they?

TerraHertz 12y ago

There's a fatal flaw. Even if commercial delivery drones could be engineered to not crash into people or houses, not tangle with power lines, not cause accidents on highways, and not collide with each other once they are common, there's one thing that will instantly get them banned. That will be the time someone uses a UAV to deliver 10 Oz of Semtex and a proximity sensor to someone they don't like. Exactly how are you going to stop that becoming common, if there are lots of UAVs in the air everywhere? Actually this factor is probably why they will definitely be banned before there is any commercial take-up. Because there are some powerful people who very many people don't much like. And this application will be very unpopular with the powerful.

gluczywo 12y ago
You can use a car packed with explosives triggered by mobile phone to target someone you don't like. It's much easier and more reliable than the short-distance drone. Should we ban cars and mobile phones?
paul_f 12y ago
Replace the word "drone" or "UAV" with "truck" and re-read your comment.
rlpb 12y ago
Let's say that I'm one of these people. It's already illegal for me to send a UAV to your house with Semtex and a proximity sensor, since trying to kill you is already illegal. What makes you think that a ban on UAVs will stop me? How will a ban on UAVs help you protect yourself from my illegal murder attempt?

Elena81 12y ago

Clach of clans

hereonbusiness 12y ago

I don't see what problem delivering packages with drones would be solving, package delivery seems already quite efficient to me. Also I suppose drones would often be able to deliver just one package at a time because of weight restrictions. I pick up most of my packages at the local post office because I live in an apartment, it's a 5 minute walk away, not really an inconvenience.

kolinko 12y ago
It's like saying "why use phone when telegraph is good enough". If you can order things and receive them very fast in any place, there are things that you can start ordering that otherwise you wouldn't do. It's raining and you need an umbrella, with nomsalesperson near? Order a drone. Forgot to buy mayo back in the store? Order throug drone and get it in an hour. But there once you're able to order stuff and get it within minutes, not hours or days, there are other effects that start happening. For one, you don't need to stockpile supplies anymore, or you can do things more spontaneusly. Will 40 or 100'people come to a party. Who cares, if there are not enough forks or plates, you can order them fast. Or, if you want to play in garage, you don't have to make sure that you've got all the supplies well in advance, or go to the store and back 20'times. Think how many businesses were spawned, and how much more efficient are people now that there are mobile phones, not just stationary. But ic an imagine people saying "who needs mobile, I can call when i get back home, and i've got an answering machine if someone calls when i'm away.
- hereonbusiness 12y ago
  I'm sorry but that sounds just silly to me, planning ahead is a basic life skill if you ask me, but I get that people would pay for it, ignorance is bliss. I know I'm sounding condescending, but that's not why I'm replying to this topic, this is just one of those things that right now to me seem like the wrong direction to look at when solving peoples problems, a dead end so to speak. The whole smartphone/tablet thing is a sore point for me as well, I love the hardware but I don't like the mobile OS movement at all, I hate that there is no real push to go in the direction of something like Ubuntu for Android[1] as the devices are getting more capable. [1]http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/ubuntu-for-android http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/ubuntu-for-android

exDM69 12y ago

This is the only sensible (but temporary) decision that the FAA could have done. The next step is to research reliable methods of navigation and air traffic rules for unmanned and autonomous aerial vehicles, and when that can be made demonstrably safe, this regulation can be revisited. If FAA would have allowed commercial drone operations without further regulation, and the technology would have had widespread adoption, there would be great risks involved. Before there are the equivalents of traffic lights, air traffic control and airways and regulations to how much and what you can carry, there are risks involved. ("hello Amazon, I'd like to have 5 kilograms worth of lithium batteries, drone delivery to this busy urban address." what could possibly go wrong?) Of course, things can be relatively safe if common sense is applied, but you can't expect commercial operators to apply common sense when there are potential profits available. And common sense is not always correct either, back in the 1930s when the state of the art in aviation was relatively comparable to the state of the art in drones today, most people thought that pilots should fly by the seat of their pants and flight instruments are only supplemental (which is deadly wrong, and today all planes have doubly redundant gyroscopic instruments). The reality is that the technology to fly unmanned and autonomous drones exists but it's not mature enough to work in large scale commercial operations safely and effectively.

sfk 12y ago
I think the ban should stay regardless of safety. One big issue here is noise and visual pollution.
- exDM69 12y ago
  I appreciate your opinion and recognize that there are many people who share your opinion but I can't agree. Compared to road and air traffic, it would take a serious amount of drones to match the noise and visual pollution. The pizza delivery man with his car or scooter makes more noise and takes more space than a drone would. And you have to remember that the early jet aircraft were very noisy and inefficient compared to modern jets. NACA, NASA and the FAA did some serious research and development programs in the fifties and sixties to reduce the amount of noise. Compared to "big" aviation, I think that the current drones are somewhere in between the Wright brothers and the Spirit of St. Louis - I guess there will be significant development in the near future.

kjhughes 12y ago

UPDATE: "This is about hobbyists and model aircraft, not Amazon," said Mary Osako, a spokeswoman for the Seattle-based company. The rule, she said, doesn't apply to commercial entities such as Amazon and "has no effect on our plans." The rule applies only to hobbyists and was meant to clarify what services are considered legal and what are not within that category, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown told CNET. For hobbyists, "using a model aircraft to move a box from point to point without any kind of compensation," is OK, according to the guidelines, while accepting a fee for delivery services is not. Source: http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-dont-worry-our-drones-are-still-preparing-for-takeoff/ http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-dont-worry-our-drones-are-st...

asynchronous13 12y ago
Not sure if Mary Osako is clueless or trying some PR angle that I don't get. Yes, the FAA statement was to clarify what is okay for hobbyists. The FAA clearly states that accepting payment takes you out of the hobbyist category and puts you into the commercial category. And there is a blanket ban if you fall into the commercial category.

aml183 12y ago

Another example of the government becoming overly involved in private enterprise. There are times when the government should become involved, but it must be done in a responsible manner. Government needs to catch up with technological innovation rather than continuing to stifle it.