Amazon Delivered Its First Customer Package By Drone (usatoday.com) 90
Amazon legally delivered its first Prime order in the United Kingdom last week and is preparing to enter a pilot testing period for drone delivery in rural areas in the country in the coming weeks. From a report on USA Today: The test took place within five miles of its Cambridgeshire drone testing facility outside the university town of Cambridge. The test was done with the approval of Britain's Civil Aviation Authority, which Amazon says plans to allow it to deliver to rural areas once it has amassed sufficient safety data. The test of Prime Air, Amazon's would-be service to deliver packages up to five pounds in 30 minutes or less, took place on Dec. 7, Amazon said. It was for an Amazon Fire TV and bag of popcorn and took 13 minutes from the moment the customer clicked "order" to package delivery. So far the trial includes only two customers who live near Amazon's testing facility. The company hopes to add dozens who lives within a few miles in the coming months. There will be no surcharge for 30-minute drone delivery for these customers, the company said. The Seattle-based company has made available a video of the delivery.
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I think if they hovered over people's property they would get shot more often.
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I think if they hovered over people's property they would get shot more often.
UPS trucks are not much of a challenge but those Amazon drones are a whole other story. Those suckers are fast and manoeuvrable, which is why I have an auto targeting 100KW EMP gun on the roof of my truck. It's given a whole new meaning to the word 'wardriving'.
Re: Taking bets (Score:2)
Is there any reason the drones couldn't stick to the roads or other "neutral" air spaces?
Slightly less efficient than a straight shot, sure, but a whole lot cheaper than replacing drones and quelling rumors of peeping into windows.
Re:Taking bets (Score:5, Insightful)
People steal from UPS trucks all the time if the driver is not attending the packages. (leaves the truck open and walks away).
Not just UPS... but anything really.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The drone, by virtue of not having a driver is always 'unattended'.
I can can see drones getting downed by birds. (I recall we had swallows nesting in a tree near our front door one year... they'd dive bomb anyone who came by...) I wouldn't be surprised to see them downed by theives running their own drones and taking them out midair, and then packages stolen. Fun and profit.
And when they malfunction, how will they avoid crashing into things and damaging property or injuring people? Even a 5 pound device falling from 15 feet and crashing into a person or a car is pretty serious. Not to mention after a crash, the goods will probably be stolen... possibly the drone itself too.
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https://www.rt.com/viral/36724... [rt.com]
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The union UPS drivers may be the ones to shoot down the job killing drones.
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UPS Suck. Whenever they 'deliver' a package to me, *I* am the one driving up to 30 miles to collect the parcel myself.
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UPSuck (tm.)
Re:Taking bets (Score:4, Interesting)
In the UK it might be a while because a lot fewer people own a gun and those that do are less inclined to break firearms laws. There is also a lot more acceptance of surveillance (something some people in the US will accuse Amazon of if they fly over their land, especially if camera equipped).
Here in the US, more guns, more people willing to fire guns... yeah... it won't take long before someone claims it is invading their sky rights and shooting it down over privacy rights (or some teens just doing it for a lark).
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You're looking at it all wrong - the UK has long needed a driver for gun-ownership. This is it! "woohoo! Ima get me some lightweight electronics (Cletus' voice.)
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I'll put money on first lawsuit because kid found adult toy and pornography in woods after wind storm.
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In the UK, it will be a while.
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Taking bets on the date of the first drone shotgun casualty....
Unless you could prove it was attacking you, that sounds like a good way to lose your shotgun licence here in the UK.
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First Item Delivered (Score:1)
It was another drone. At this rate, the sky will mimic the horde of flying Sentinels in the Matrix.
All fun until it gets hijacked (Score:5, Funny)
I would like to predict that eventually robbing a drone in mid-flight will occur. Have you ever seen seagulls trying to steal a piece of food from each other mid-flight?
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We don't have our extreme laws protecting the US mail without reason.
Out of interest, do the deagulls obey the law in the US?
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We don't have our extreme laws protecting the US mail without reason.
Out of interest, do the deagulls obey the law in the US?
I don't think it's legal to fly over someone and crap on them, so I'd have to say seagulls break the law daily.
And I would like to predict (Score:1)
Before a mid-air robbery occurs, we'll see at least one of these crash and injure, if not kill, a human.
Imagine what a sixty pound weight falling from 400 feet would do to a person. 27kg at 9.8 m/sec^2 has a force of 265 Newtons, falling from 122m, delivers 32,330 Joule's of energy. An order of magnitude less than getting hit by a car at 60mph, but still plenty lethal.
Apart from the other criticisms (Score:2)
I won't deny it looks very cool. But I'm still holding out skepticism to how well this delivery model scales up to the volume amazon truly deals with.
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There is a flat square with a type of qr code that each customer is given before hand. the drone lands on that square.
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Well you don't know much. Airspace is a public asset. Rules are set by the FAA (in the US) and something along those lines in the UK. You don't own the sky....
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You own the sky up to a certain height. You can't avoid trespass by jumping. How high, vs the very low ceiling for drone operation, will vary by location. The straightforward solution for Amazon is to fly mostly along roads.
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I feel the same way. Maybe smaller yards will be impossible. Perhaps their main concern is reducing costs to rural areas that have less population and more land. Not sure, but personally I never cut my grass "enough" and have a ton of trees and whatnot that could be tricky.
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Apart from the very tired "But what about if someone shoots it down/steals it" criticism, I couldn't help but wonder to myself what happens if the land and/or landscaping around the property is less than ideal.
I think the big problem is range. Landing the drone is fine out in the sticks, where people can prepare a small landing area clear of anynearby trees and wires easily. But in the sticks there aren't many houses within the operating range of the drone precisely because of that space. In a city, you ha
Ducted fan blades? (Score:2)
I wonder how these drones avoid collision with other air users?
I wonder why drones always seem to have open-ended propellor blades, rather than ducted fan blades. Multiple spinning knieves, a hazard to all around (even if light and soft).
Aren't ducted blades more efficient, even when the "duct" is a ring fused to the ends of the blades and spinning with them.? (That's like a continuous tip vane, reducing the air that goes around the tip, so you can use it in place of the last portion of the blade, which p
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You would have to stick your fingers in the blade. But it's a fool's game to underestimate stupid.
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I wonder how these drones avoid collision with other air users?
I wonder why drones always seem to have open-ended propellor blades, rather than ducted fan blades.
Simple: a free spinning prop is roughly twice as efficient as a ducted fan and weighs considerably less.
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Actually, it's the other way around. Props can be better than ducted fans while cruising, but ducted fans are considerably better for high-thrust low-speed operation such as Ntra-copters.
From Wikipedia article on Ducted Fan [wikipedia.org]:
In some cases, a shrouded rotor can be 94% more efficient than an open rotor. The imp
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ducted fans are considerably better for high-thrust low-speed operation such as Ntra-copters.
Nice theory, but reports of increased duration due to changing from free spinning to ducted fans appear to be conspicuously absent.
BTW, what's an ntra-copter?
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Nice theory, but reports of increased duration due to changing from free spinning to ducted fans appear to be conspicuously absent.
Are there reports of trying and failing? (I'm not a drone flyer or engineer myself and am not hooked into the rumor mill.)
BTW, what's an ntra-copter?
Partly a typo (of Nra-...). Partly intended to be a generic for "quadra-, hexa- octo-, etc- copter".
Maybe "N-copter" might be better?
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Nice theory, but reports of increased duration due to changing from free spinning to ducted fans appear to be conspicuously absent.
Are there reports of trying and failing?
The net isn't overflowing with failure reports either, except the occasional attempt to use EDF's for quadcopters, which fails pathetically because the ducts are optimized for high speed flight, never mind that it is well known that free props outperform EDF's for horizontal flight. I suppose the reason that there aren't a whole lot of published attempts to compare ducted fan hover endurance to (larger, equivalent thrust) free prop performance is, the effort appears doomed from the start. [wikipedia.org]
Executive summary:
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Executive summary: disk loading trumps tip losses.
Not really, since disk loading on a ducted versus a non-ducted propeller is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
This treats the load as if the disk is evenly loaded. Within a type of fan this is good for comparison.
In a ducted fan it is also a good approximation of the actual loading on any patch of the swept area. In a
Amazon legally delivered its first Prime order (Score:2)
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We did this in 2010 and only the local paper cared (Score:2)
I didn't order this... (Score:2)
Smug video (Score:2)
It'd be easy to say "the sky's the limit." But that's not exactly true any more, is it?
Says the smug-sounding voice over.
Only it is the limit, because drones don't work outside an atmosphere, do they?
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Give it up. The word drone is now more commonly associated with small multi-copters than anything else. English isn't held to a standard by a committee.
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Re:When did /. become so negative nancy? (Score:4, Informative)
Especially for solutions in search of problems.
Like those horseless carriages. No one has a problem with horses. Those things just fuddle the road. Waste of time if you ask me.
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In general Slashdot is probably about 75% luddites and 25% science/tech supporters.
New tech always gets crapped on here.
Stunt (Score:2)
Why does Amazon keep putting out these stupid drone delivery theatre videos? Yes, a quadcopter can lift a 5 pound box and fly 20 minutes out, 20 minutes back with it. And land in a big farmer's field as shown in the video. Now let me see, the market consisting of farmers living 7 miles from an Amazon warehouse dispatch center is how big exactly? Is there even one? And don't forget, this thing will need to be flown with cell coverage for the operator video... there's no way it's going to land autonomously in
Uhh (Score:1)
So, I forget - when these become widespread - are we allowed to shoot them down if they stray over our property? /me considers moving to a drone-traffic nexus
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Uhh; how do I report that preview doesn't .... preview - it displays something which is not always identical to the posted view?
Faster doodads (Score:1)
Now they can get their doodads even faster! No need to wait until tomorrow to get your crap and put it in the corner. Now you can pay for it and get it very quickly, and put it in the corner.