What they're proposing is illegal in Australia too. There's really strong regulation about what you can and can't do with a drone and this falls strongly into the "can't" category. I know this because I've tried.
All drones have to be human piloted under our current regulations. So the autonomous thing is illegal for a start. Secondly flying aircraft of that size at low altitudes over populated areas is also illegal. And flying them at high altitudes without a transponder is illegal, and they're too small to carry a transponder.
I bet someone from CASA (our FAA equivalent) sees this article and gives them a nice little visit.
It's not mentioned in the Pando piece, but in coverage in the SMH in Australia, they state they're seeking CASA approval and will not start operating until they have it.
Do transponders have to be large? Obviously most current ones are made to fit avionics racks, but is there a reason why one couldn't be made as small as a cell phone?
The principal issue appears to be broadcast power. The smallest one linked below (weighing ~400g without a power supply) has a burst power output of 130W (compared to a cellphone which might have an output power of ~2W). The actual amplifier itself wouldn't be huge (although heat dissapation could be), but there's a lot of capacitors and power supply circuitry needed to deal with that sort of power output. The size of all the components basically depends on what the duty ratio is - if it's a few uS every second, then it would be much easier to shrink than if it has to broadcast ten or hundreds of times a second.
I can't conceive of a future where drones don't make up a huge portion of deliveries. They're not very big so organising airspace shouldn't be too difficult (they could stick to specific altitudes, routes etc.). Given the lack of obstacles and the fact that they're automated, speed of delivery would be improved along with time of delivery predictions. Amazon must be looking at this pretty hard, same day delivery could become what, 10 minute delivery?
It is just me or does this seem like a cheap way to "buy" a drone? I assume they have done something to discourage people walking off with their hardware?
That is an interesting concern. Any passerby can grab the drone while it's landing, and there's no way to know who did it. Constant camera feeds would help but you can still hide your face.
From the video what he described was that the drone lowers the package (apparently it stays out of reach) and if someone tries to pull the package and the drone the drone supposedly let's go of the package. This was not demonstrated in the video.
The amazing thing about using a bike messenger for textbook delivery is they could actually go inside buildings like dorms or leave packages at reception desks. They can also carry 30+ pounds of textbooks.
I'm familiar with the RFC. The (sad?) thing is, I'm being serious. If you use autonomous drones they could drop the drive into a receptacle for upload, and scootch over to pick up a drive going the other way (if needed). Whenever the drone needs to recharge, it drinks power from a landing area.
This is no a widely applicable data transmission method, but for the people that need it, they would really need it. Data sizes grow larger, but running fiber through cities is time-consuming and expensive. This would be a reasonable alternative.
There are limits, of course, on the kind of data you'd want to transmit in this way, since it would be fairly easy to intercept. OTOH it is more secure since interception is trivially detectable. So "vast amounts of data, relatively short distances, where detecting interception is more important than preventing it". Sounds like a viable niche to me!
Back home, I used to live in an area that had the occasional jet fighter flying over from the nearby military airbase. Yeah.
Noise pollution isn't a new problem, and I'm pretty sure drones like this will be the least contributor, especially if they're electric, especially if they fly high enough.
Power lines, objects like cars and people and pets on the ground, pools - I wonder how these things will avoid doing damage. Frankly I would be pissed if they drop things on my head or my car.
Not a problem. Multicopters ascend and descend entirely vertically, so programming them to climb straight up to around 500 meters, go to the designated drop point and descend straight down would eliminate all obstacle concerns. It's probably low enough for avoiding fixed wing air traffic too, unless you are around an airport.
Finding a clear drop point is easy (lawns, for example), and the drone can sound some alarm to let pedestrians know its landing.
Well in that case, I am eagerly waiting for when this is generally available to deliver my order from the local Indian or Vietnamese restaurant. I will even build a landing platform for it and register its coordinates for efficient and fast delivery of my rogan josh or pork rice noodle soup.
The idea of registered landing platforms is actually pretty good.
They don't even have to be on private property, but maybe a platform every ~100m or so would be enough. If you order something you get a code or maybe can use your phone to get the delivery from the drone.
That would make the "where to land" and "how to drop the payload" much easier.
until there are competing services and they crash into each other at 500m altitude. or municipality adds tax by selling height corridors to the highest bidder
There is way too much skepticism in this thread. The sky is huge. If you've ever flown an aircraft in VFR conditions, you've seen that there is plenty of space and you would not need a very complex system to ensure separation. Drone flights could be reserved to areas close to the ground (where manned flight is prohibited) and all drones could be equipped with dually-redundant parachutes to bring them down safely in the event of a failure. This is just a quick-and-dirty suggestion; put in some effort and you'll get even better results.
This is the future, the limiting factory is battery tech and aerodynamic drone design (which is a key problem with quadcopters - they are incredibly inefficient; you need wings during level flight for efficient operation).
I don't think this technology will be very useful for illicit purposes until there are enough drones in the sky to get lost in the crowd. They're not particularily inconspicuous when they're buzzing around.
Drones have been used for drug deliveries since 2009, at least. It's an obvious technology to get small things across borders. The unmanned submarines are how it scales to larger shipments.
Source: "And just last year, criminals piloted a $600 remote-controlled quadcopter over a Brazilian prison fence to deliver cell phones to the incarcerated, as was also done in a 2009 attempt involving a drone to deliver drugs to prisoners in the U.K."
It seems a bit ridiculous, but if not this specific business (delivery of text books by drone) I could see this type of delivery method become very useful for all sorts of materials, legal and otherwise.
I know the sensors are fairly good, but you would soon have to organize some sort of traffic lane type system if the drones were popular, would you not? (thousands or millions, not hundreds)
Jokes aside, in Greece we have a HUGE market for Gyros (the Greek burger counterparts) delivery. But as of now, a guy comes to your door, so we can be in pajamas, working on your laptop, etc. I don't know how this drone could safely land in those narrow streets, but if it could oh boy, it would be disruptive.
I hate to say it to Zookal, but we've done this in the small Italian town of Verbania since 2010. There was even an article in the local newspaper, Eco Risveglio. Email me at my username +gmail if you want a copy of the article.
They can also talk to Kite Winters in Melbourne if they want confirmation from a more local source, she saw it.
Well, I think this is cool. Nice use of technology to make life easier for the seller and buyer. Maybe they have some hurdles to get it approved, but at least they're giving it a go.
Are these UAVs from flirtey completely autonomous ? I could see a ton of use case for moving medicines in third world countries where roads are poor, assuming they have a long range.
I wonder how this compares in total efficiency to traditional truck-based delivery. I could see it going either way -- trucks can presumably move more goods further per unit energy, but you can't take full advantage of that unless your destinations are fairly close together. Otherwise hauling everything with you for the whole trip becomes rather more of a liability.
Drone delivery can be done entirely autonomously, with drones receiving packages from an automated feeder and landing on charge pods between delivery rounds. The drones themselves are quite cheap and the only wear item is the battery.
I think the future is fully automated routing of parcels in a network. This is a way of solving the last mile problem for a particular kind of place, but it doesn't build an actual network. In that sense the transmission medium is less important than the standards that allow interchange.
It's an interesting thought. In just-in-time manufacturing, the contracts between supplier and consumer can already be onerous enough to make shipping parts by helicopter the Right Thing To Do if there's a delivery hold-up.
All drones have to be human piloted under our current regulations. So the autonomous thing is illegal for a start. Secondly flying aircraft of that size at low altitudes over populated areas is also illegal. And flying them at high altitudes without a transponder is illegal, and they're too small to carry a transponder.
I bet someone from CASA (our FAA equivalent) sees this article and gives them a nice little visit.