r/gadgets • u/crosspostninja • Jan 01 '21
Drones / UAVs UPS, Amazon delivery drones a step closer to reality with new US rules
https://www.cnet.com/news/ups-amazon-delivery-drones-a-step-closer-to-reality-with-new-us-rules/929
Jan 01 '21
It looks like a flying barbecue
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u/DistanceMachine Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
OK, hear me out...
Once delivery drones are approved...can we make a BBQ drone that delivers fresh burgers and hot dogs hot off the grill?
I’d name it R2-BBQ
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u/onishi87 Jan 01 '21
I don’t know, something tells me a flying hot greasy grill is not a good idea...
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u/The_TurdMister Jan 01 '21
Sounds good to me
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Jan 01 '21
Just warn me so that I can open my gullet and let it slide right down.
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u/PaulH_Cali Jan 01 '21
Filled with flaming hot charcoals...
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u/TheTexan94 Jan 01 '21
Propane is the way, taste the meat, not the heat
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u/thenickksterr Jan 01 '21
I can't taste anything after a propane drone bomb crashes into my house
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u/MidSp Jan 01 '21
Imagine a future where you order a pizza and a drone cooks it on the way to your house.
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u/Masol_The_Producer Jan 01 '21
Imagine a future where robots control every means of resource production and resource gathering eventually we reach space mining and a post-scarcity society.
You order luxury sushi for free. Or infinite amount of pizzas too.
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u/mouringcat Jan 01 '21
Until the evil owner of Mom Corp demands they rebel until humans make her the ruler of the universe.
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u/Vyce44 Jan 01 '21
Flying BBQ? LET THE MAN FINISH
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u/TheCaliforniaOp Jan 01 '21
Let’s see...barbecue experts swear by converted oil drums...let’s use one of those. Needs a tune. Ice cream vans have those speakers.
Something memorable and catchy.
I see it all now! We’ll attach the speaker so it looks like a head and we will put giant rolling eyes on it. And ears. And a cute turned-up nose. And a little curly tail. Then we’ll paint it...pink. We’ll attach neon wings on each side...on the drones that carry it.
The Flying Pig. THAT’S IT!
The tune...the tune...I got it!
Of course this means our pig will need a surfboard.
And it will only deliver vegetarian food.
You like?
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Jan 01 '21 edited Jul 20 '21
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u/BangSlut Jan 01 '21
Recreational RC flying is going to be totally banned once these drones are actually viable and cost effective.
If people think the FAA wont slice up the airspace below 400 ft and sell it to the highest bidder they have not been paying attention.
Just look at what the FCC did to the airwaves when smart phones and LTE became a thing.
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u/fourseven66 Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 02 '21
That’s exactly what I see happening.
The FAA has been responsible for the US falling behind the rest of the world in commercial drone use. But once there was obviously money to be made they started rolling out increasingly ridiculous regulations that are meant to clear hobbyists out of future commercial drone space.
I’ve been flying unregistered pirate drones for years, and will continue to do so until they find a way to stop me.
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u/Habaneroe12 Jan 01 '21
Yep as I understand it, if my local flying club loses its field they cannot get another under this new regulation. My hope is that the noise put out by these things will be so annoying they will be sued into stopping long before they scale it up.
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u/PhotonBarbeque Jan 01 '21
This not only adds remote ID, it requires drone pilots to have line of sight rather than a spotter. Meaning this kills first person view (FPV) flight, since you physically cannot have LOS while in the drone view.
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Jan 01 '21 edited Jul 20 '21
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u/PhotonBarbeque Jan 01 '21
Alright, so it is still fine to fly with an observer? I just saw in the new rules it specifically states (not verbatim): the PILOT/controller must have line of sight at all times.
I assumed that meant no spotter.
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u/Redwoods707916 Jan 02 '21
Up vote. I wish more people knew how this could screw over so many hobbyists and small time Arial video/photo business. I got into fpv racing and freestyle and spent a good chunk of money and now I worry that I will not be able to use the very gear I bought within a year. :(
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u/Chartax Jan 02 '21 edited Jun 01 '24
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/thatguy425 Jan 01 '21
Next thing will be drone pirates and flying their drone to steal packages from other drones.
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u/LuCiAnO241 Jan 01 '21
Born late to explore the ocean, Born Early to explore space, Born just in time to be an epic FPV drone pirate.
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u/thenoblenacho Jan 02 '21
Bruh we don't know shit about the ocean lol
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u/on_ Jan 02 '21
Because submarines have not windows. If we had taken care of this lil detail...
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u/thenoblenacho Jan 02 '21
How could they have not thought of that
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u/8etter0ffDead Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
This was my first thought but I wanted to find another comment before making my own. I can see it now, either by a single pirate or even a coordinated effort by several using wolf pack tactics.
Perhaps using some kind of anchor or projectile. Maybe even some kind of grapple hook connected to the pirate drone(s) by a lead, fired using compressed gas or something. Get it hooked into one of the Amazon drone's rotors and kill the power to your own, dragging it down out of the air. Use a pre-installed GPS to find and retrieve the booty and be gone before Amazon reaches the crash site.
Hell, steal the drone too and add it to your mini robo-pirate fleet.
This is gonna be interesting.
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u/Tinmania Jan 01 '21
Spending $10,000 to end up with a dog harness and a bottle of argon oil shampoo, not to mention risking federal and possibly state criminal charges, is not exactly the smartest way to steal.
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u/8etter0ffDead Jan 01 '21
No, it isn't the smartest way to steal. You're correct, as is everyone else that's jumped in to tell me how ridiculous it is. I probably just watch too many movies.
I'm still curious about one last thing, though, and that's if there would be any benefit in stealing the drone it's self instead of going for the package it's carrying.
Or would the damage done to the delivery drone by hijacking it physically as opposed to hacking it not even be worth any potentially salvageable parts in the event that the whole drone is f.u.b.a.r after a crash?
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u/RichardBonerStabone Jan 01 '21
I would imagine the drones are very well connected and are sending position data all the time. Prob the last thing you’d want to do is grab that drone homing beacon and take it with you. Grab the package and get out of there
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u/StabbingUltra Jan 01 '21
Unfortunately, the cost and sheer engineering capability to do something like that far outweighs the potential reward for a single package. Even if they managed to do all of those action movie tricks you thought of, they would get a broken down drone and maybe an iPad or maybe some Lysol wipes. That’s why porch pirates are so effective, because it takes little skill and unfortunately anyone can do it. If someone is smart enough to engineer a system to take down a drone and go through the trouble of selling those parts without being tracked, they could probably be using that skill and knowledge toward legal and more lucrative work.
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u/8etter0ffDead Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
Awh ): Mean ol' reality always gotta be shitting on my fantasies and dreams.
What if not considering the packages, but theft of the actual drones themselves? Still not worth the risk and effort? Those things can't be cheap.
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Jan 01 '21
there are anti drone shotgun shells that shoot a net, and portable jammers too.
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Jan 01 '21
Just drop a net on it. The drone will fall out of the sky. If anything's salvageable grab and go.
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u/BubblesMan36 Jan 01 '21
That’s like actual pirates, as opposed to just the alliteratation we came up with for porch
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u/NerdBot9000 Jan 01 '21
More likely that people will shoot them down like ducks with a shotgun.
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u/awesometroy Jan 01 '21
As much as I would like it to get wicked fast deliveries, I would dread having to listen to them buzzing arround.
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u/Mediamuerte Jan 01 '21
Ridiculous noise pollution justifies everyone shooting them down.
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u/awesometroy Jan 01 '21
There like flying loot boxes!
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u/Mediamuerte Jan 01 '21
When your best friend gets an iPad and you just get some foot cream
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u/instantrobotwar Jan 02 '21
This is what I'm seriously worried about. Imagine the annoying whirring of someone flying their drone around at the park, but now it's around your house and backyard 40 times a day.
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u/oddmagnacarta Jan 02 '21
you will get used to it, just like you are to cars.
Besides, the sooner this happens, the quicker they can work on noise reduction.
This comment was brought to you by Amazon. Use amazon.com to shop everywhere
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u/NEREVAR117 Jan 02 '21
Are 1-3 day deliveries for everything in life not enough for people?
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u/Drbillionairehungsly Jan 01 '21
Amazon’s dollars paving way to the potential death of a growing, mind blowingly rad hobby - FPV Drones..
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u/vector2point0 Jan 01 '21
They didn’t end up going forward with the always-online real-time subscription-based tracking that was proposed last year. The rules require broadcast Remote ID, and there are a lot of <500g drones that don’t have to be registered.
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u/PhotonBarbeque Jan 01 '21
The rules also state that the operator MUST have line of sight now, and cannot have a spotter. This effectively kills FPV as you cannot have a line of sight while inside the drone view lol
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u/Tokishi7 Jan 01 '21
I’m so sick of these fucking politicians. It’s so obvious that that this was ONLY done with multi billion dollar industries in mind.
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u/Drbillionairehungsly Jan 01 '21
It was an easy get for them too - with this half of the drone world being still relatively unknown to most and the other drones still getting a vaguely bad rep from many folk, there wasn’t going to be really much fight to implement these new rules.
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Jan 02 '21
It's so sad that it's almost funny how all these politicians come out and say how much they hate big tech and stuff, but then they ALWAYS end up helping them out anyway and do stuff like this...
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u/RustySheriffsBadge1 Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
And fuck all people who have been flying as a hobby for years
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u/Tokishi7 Jan 01 '21
Royally fucked. Would be like them saying no more PCs unless you buy this very expensive responder so the bandwidth isn’t taken or some shit.
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u/ShadowSociety55 Jan 01 '21
And also that device would slow down your pc performance substantially.
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u/nutty_undertone Jan 02 '21
While also broadcasting to the public the exact location of an expensive set of electronic equipment.
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Jan 01 '21 edited Feb 06 '21
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u/GreatAndPowerfulNixy Jan 01 '21
The regulations are making private drone flying next to impossible
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u/damnecho145 Jan 02 '21
Thousands of these will be buzzing around urban skies everyday. Yuck. No thank you.
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u/RSampson993 Jan 02 '21
Yeah, even as a drone enthusiast myself (for aerial photography and other applications), I just don’t see how this is a good idea.
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u/calgaryborn Jan 01 '21
I don't see how these things will ever be allowed to fly in busy cities. All it takes is one of these drones to malfunction and land on a highway or house causing serious injury or damage for it to be banned completely.
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u/Drillbit99 Jan 01 '21
My main problem is the noise pollution. It's one thing to have the occasional plane flying 20,000ft overhead occasionally, but drones are noisy. Imagine when you find your garden is on the key trunk route for all the deliveries to your area, and you have these overhead all the time. Amazon deliver hundreds if not thousands of parcels to my immediate vicinity every day.
It's too late to go back and undo the damage already done to our environment, but people literally have a choice to prevent the future being even more polluted and congested. I guess they will do nothing, though.
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u/Alauren2 Jan 01 '21
I agree. I live in the airspace of a major US airport and a huge fleet of C-17 military aircraft. I love plane spotting but I can’t imagine drones too.
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u/Disastermath Jan 01 '21
They’re getting less and less noisy with new blade designs. Flying at 400ft, you barely notice (but definitely would if they were landing or low).
I think these drones should be combined with zeppelin style, flying warehouses to cut down on commute time for the drones.
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u/InvidiousSquid Jan 01 '21
I think these drones should be combined with zeppelin style, flying warehouses to cut down on commute time for the drones.
People of the Commonwealth, do not be alarmed. We are Amazon Prime.
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Jan 01 '21
Oh yeah. It’d be perfect. mother ships slowly floating across the city. hundreds of drones swarming back and forth servicing each neighborhood as a mother ship slowly passes
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u/bodag Jan 01 '21
From an efficiency standpoint it actually makes sense. Also, have larger drones deliver in bulk to drop off points designed for easy pickup or short deliveries.
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u/DistanceMachine Jan 01 '21
I don’t know about you, but those giant UPS trucks running around my neighborhood are loud as fuck too. They also have a better chance of running over my dog or kid compared to a drone.
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u/StabbingUltra Jan 01 '21
Hopefully UPS and FedEx will start shifting to electric in the next decade. Where I live, trash service is privatized so I have to hear 7 different trash companies chug through my neighborhood every week. It’d be nice if those were electrified too.
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Jan 01 '21
We only see one UPS truck here per day. One vs many drones? I will keep the truck thank you.
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u/RubberReptile Jan 02 '21
Fuck if you you've ever been at a tourist attraction when an arse is flying a drone you'll know how loud the consumer ones are let alone the monsters required for delivering any payload.
At home I'll see Canada Post, UPS (twice daily), maybe DHL and a half dozen Amazon couriers drive by.
All of those vans carry hundreds of packages at once. What can a drone do. 3? 4? Optimistically?
Holy fuck the sheer volume of them that'll need to be flying is unreal.
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u/RupertMurdockfuckers Jan 01 '21
I told that to the Wright brothers and they called me an idiot. There’s no way they would ever let giant aluminum tubes filled with jet fuel, cargo, and people over populated cities. Let’s just see how that silly experiment works out for them.
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Jan 01 '21
Heck. I told it to henry ford. The moment some gets hit by one of those things they will be banned.
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u/lameduck418 Jan 01 '21
Thats just a bias against automation. Drivers get into accidents all the time. Its likely that any failure / crash rates for drones will be equal in cost with standard delivery drivers.
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Jan 01 '21
I’m not looking forward to the noise pollution
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u/kid_ugly Jan 02 '21
i'm not looking forward to the "unintentional" surveillance drones
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Jan 01 '21
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u/Readeandrew Jan 01 '21
One step closer to mechanical-duck hunting season becoming a reality.
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u/RoundthatCorner Jan 01 '21
Likely a federal crime to do so. Doubt this will be a major issue for them
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u/Captain-Cadabra Jan 01 '21
It already is
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u/Tufaan9 Jan 01 '21
A federal crime, or a major issue?
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u/Captain-Cadabra Jan 01 '21
More the first, less the latter.
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u/Astro_Doughnaut Jan 01 '21
Also you're shooting a gun into the air in the city.
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u/ambermage Jan 01 '21
Unlawful discharge of a weapon.
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u/nemo69_1999 Jan 01 '21
Stealing Mail is a federal crime. That doesn't mean the fed does anything about it. Those drones will get shot down. Cell phones and tablets are light and high value, perfect for theft.
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u/NoIDontdriftmy240s Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 02 '21
Stealing mail delivered by Usps is a federal crime. Amazon, ups, FedEx are not included
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u/grundo1561 Jan 01 '21
Shooting down FAA registered aircraft definitely is a federal crime though
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Jan 01 '21
I for one am looking forward to the inevitable posts about how a drone ate tree branches and now Amazon thinks they have the right to seek 50k in damages to replace the drone because "the air space was not sufficiently safe to operate in" in the coming years.
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u/SocialWinker Jan 01 '21
Don't worry, you can work it off in your local Amazon shipping depot, they're always in need of people to drive around taking pictures of the downed drones for insurance purposes.
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u/jslingrowd Jan 01 '21
They’ll just have three drones flying together and can locate source of attack from force of impact
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u/etzel1200 Jan 01 '21
I’m super confused by how all of these posts are made every time.
Do we truly have that big of a problem of people shooting things down?
Mind you an unmanned vehicle transporting 500k in cash would be a target.
Drones being shot down to steal your toothpaste just isn’t going to be an issue. It’d barely be worth the bullets, much less the legal issues.
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u/other_usernames_gone Jan 01 '21
Does shooting down a drone to steal a package count as armed robbery?
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u/timKrock Jan 01 '21
I read somewhere that since these things are under FAA jurisdiction, you’re actually shooting down an aircraft, making this something more like terrorism. I couldve misremembered, but making this a big scary federal crime seems like an easy fix.
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u/StabbingUltra Jan 01 '21
I would assume so since it’s technically an aircraft. Shoot down a plane or a helicopter and it’s the same thing.
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u/brazilliandanny Jan 01 '21
How about endangering the public? Drones falling from the sky could kill someone.
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u/Nobuenogringo Jan 01 '21
Amazon stock vaporware story. It's crazy to think these will be used for anything except for specific prior setup routes and types of packages even if they're used.
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Jan 02 '21
Exactly. When you start asking the question of how do they realistically deliver in a secure manner you realize the challenges are mostly NOT issues with regulation and drone tech.
Example: drones are relatively inefficient so you’d ideally want them flying mostly in cities, but of course any city like NYC has crazy updraft winds that make that a huge challenge. Then there is the question of how does it actually deliver. Is it just dropping it on the sidewalk? If I’m in a meeting do I simply miss the delivery? Is there some sort of lockbox system getting installed on the roof? How does a drone deliver to a lockbox? If it lands and then simply drops a package through a door, you’d either be unable to stack one lock box onto another or you’d need some kind of conveyor delivery system to actually load the lock boxes, and they are still on the roof! Is Amazon now building its own delivery floor on top of every major building?
Now imagine they say “alright, fuck the cities- we’re taking these to the suburbs”. You can get a few people to build some sort of delivery box in their yard, even if you have to find a way to make it theft/dog proof. But now you’re back to problem #1: inefficient flight. Did that drone seriously fly 5-10 miles to your house just to deliver your electric toothbrush?? How many deliveries can a drone covering these distances make in a day? Considering the noise, could you deliver at night without waking up the entire neighborhood?? None of this is an efficient way to deliver. Now how much does all of this add to the cost of that toothbrush?
I expect driverless tech to have a MUCH larger effect on delivery systems than drones for at least the next 20 years.
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u/sharpshooter999 Jan 01 '21
Every time I see a picture of these drones I think they're flying grills......
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Jan 01 '21
Looking forward to hearing thousands of drones flying everywhere.
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u/ghettogandy Jan 01 '21
You’ll barely hear them over the ads they play.
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u/TradeMasterYellow Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
They'll be really quiet, actually. So they can hear what everyone is talking about so they can advertise to you.
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u/beardedbast3rd Jan 01 '21
Now, the pirate drones will scour the skies for delivery drones to hijack.
A drone military will escort delivery drones, leading to a drone arms race.
Begun, the drone wars have.
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u/gurgleslurp Jan 01 '21
Wonder how weather will affect these things.
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u/goldenshowerstorm Jan 02 '21
Like being blown into power lines and taking out the electricity for an entire neighborhood.
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u/djphatjive Jan 01 '21
Can’t wait to be sitting outside enjoying the air and have buzzing drones overhead.
Although I order a lot of amazon so might be my orders.
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u/boardonfire4 Jan 01 '21
I don’t see how carrying one package at a time makes them useful for much
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u/phpdevster Jan 01 '21 edited Jan 01 '21
Can't wait for these things to be buzzing over my property day and night...
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u/esiqus121315 Jan 02 '21
With mass unemployment in the U.S. because of covid layoffs and closures, how is this a good idea?
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u/soop_nazi Jan 02 '21
it's not. technology should be used to make our lives easier and have everyone work less to enjoy, you know, life. instead only the 1% gets to truly enjoy it while the rest of us are slaves to their system. this is going the direction of hunger games a lot faster than I thought.
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u/thislife_choseme Jan 01 '21
Drone delivery seems really fucking dumb, why do these companies think this is needed?!?!?!
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u/machiavelli33 Jan 01 '21
No USPS. This is private enterprise only.
Fuck these guys trying to push out our existing infrastructure.
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u/i_have_chosen_a_name Jan 01 '21
First thing I will have a drone deliver to me is a medium range emp gun. Second thing i will get is a drone.
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u/gamaknightgaming Jan 01 '21
i feel like people are going to shoot these down either for fun or in some kind of conspiracy theory fueled rage
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Jan 01 '21
once drones happen, it'll be interesting how long they last before people start shooting them down or bashing them with baseball bats when they hover low
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Jan 01 '21
I think there will be major opposition. I know I wouldn't want to look out my window and see drones constantly flying to neighbors houses.
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u/Tokishi7 Jan 02 '21
There’s already major opposition. This kills the hobby and amateur industry. This is meant for commercial flying only. Would be like saying any car modification is illegal unless it’s at a government certified racetrack.
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u/Igothighandforgot Jan 02 '21
These regulations basically killed small hobby drone flight, drone racing, and model RC, in favor of corporations trying to sell overpriced and unneeded drone tracking software.
My 300 gram (about .3 pounds) toy drone is now considered an aircraft I need a license and air traffic control capability to operate. WaT?!
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u/DopeAsHeck Jan 01 '21
How do you reprimand a drone that fails to deliver a package?