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Transportation United States

US To Allow Small Drones To Fly Over People at Night (reuters.com) 165

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Monday said it is issuing long-awaited rules to allow for small drones to fly over people and at night, a significant step toward their use for widespread commercial deliveries. From a report: The FAA is also requiring remote identification of most drones, which are formally known as unmanned aerial vehicles, to address security concerns. "The new rules make way for the further integration of drones into our airspace by addressing safety and security concerns," said FAA Administrator Steve Dickson in a statement. "They get us closer to the day when we will more routinely see drone operations such as the delivery of packages." The race has been on for companies to create drone fleets to speed deliveries.
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US To Allow Small Drones To Fly Over People at Night More

US To Allow Small Drones To Fly Over People at Night

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    • Proof by literary reference?

      Just because a fictional story, has some cause that seemed to escalate to some major disaster. That doesn't mean that we should avoid such thing, just keep an eye on its progression to make sure it doesn't go that far.

      Genetically Modified Corn could be in theory be altered to be unfit for human consumption. However, it takes just a little effort to make sure that any such experiments are controlled, and limited.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Don't be so sure about the corn. We already have unapproved GMO corn that was never supposed to be for human consumption in the food supply. We *THINK* it's all removed now...

      • Nope...but these rules will also make it much more difficult for the amateur to own and fly drones without new special equipment (for the tracking and tracing of them) and fees, etc.

        It helps the larger company's, but harms the amateur and small business folks (real estate shooters, etc).

        Regulation kills a fun hobby.

  • Will the rules cover ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Monday December 28, 2020 @02:31PM (#60873204)

    Will the rules cover issues such as noise, either making the drones fly high enough or have some type of noise muffler? Will there be restrictions on camera images to address privacy concerns?

    Aside from regulations, how will the delivery companies figure out where to land and drop off the packages? Some housing, such as apartment complexes, likely need some interaction with humans or a new protocol to drop off packages. What if there is bad weather like rain or unplowed snow? Boxes can't be left in those damaging conditions (maybe the boxes have to be weatherproofed?).

    Since air transit is easier to detect, will drone deliveries make it easier for thieves to track deliveries? One rule "requires drones to broadcasts [sic] remote ID messages via radio frequency broadcast". Even if the messages are encrypted, the signals cannot be concealed.

    • Cue the drone thieves in 3, 2...

      I think a concern is that rogue drones will 'appear' among the legal drones and instead of dropping packages off they will be picking them up... Everyone will need a one-way drop off point, probably sold at a hefty profit from the delivery companies.

      • I am having a guinea pig cage delivered to my house today! Am I worried itâ(TM)s going to get stolen from my porch? Nope, because what self respecting thief would steal random stuff?

        My point is that what you describe would be a fairly sophisticated operation and that will not be worth it for arbitrary Amazon crap.

        • I am having a guinea pig cage delivered to my house today! Am I worried itâ(TM)s going to get stolen from my porch? Nope, because what self respecting thief would steal random stuff?

          My point is that what you describe would be a fairly sophisticated operation and that will not be worth it for arbitrary Amazon crap.

          Don't all/most thieves steal random stuff because they have no easy way to figure out what's in the boxes before stealing them?

          I wonder if being able to see boxes as they fly through the air might allow thieves to focus on higher-value packages, i.e., boxes of certain sizes or shapes.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tragedy ( 27079 )

            I think the point the GP was making is that the average "porch pirate" is a long, long way from being the kind of sophisticated master criminal who could set up an automated drone-based package theft system. Not to mention that the actual delivery points for packages are probably going to involve some sort of small designated landing pad with beacons and monitoring cameras, etc. meaning people will know when their packages have arrived and they will be able to monitor them. For that matter, they could have

      • Far more chance of the drones being stolen than the drones being used to steal...

    • You put a giant ( 2ft square ) plastic QR code on your lawn - that was given to you by the shipper - and the drone uses that as a drop off point as long as there is no obstacles like trees and stuff. You wonâ(TM)t even get the QR code, and be eligible for these types of deliveries, unless itâ(TM)s clear from a sat image that you have the space for it.

      This is primarily for the suburbs and exoburbs. The urban environment isnâ(TM)t even being contemplated by most companies.

      This is the plan of a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jhecht ( 143058 )
        Checking out local conditions in advance makes a lot of sense. I wonder how many people in older suburbs with trees and overhead utilities will qualify?
      • Range and payload capacity of small drones seems far too limited for this to be much use, beyond a few exceptional cases (e.g. delivering small packages such as medicines to inaccessible-by-road locations)

        • No, not true. The âoeAmazon planâ is to start with numerous small warehouses in new communities. Packages come to the warehouse at all hours and are delivered by drones 24/7 . These locations also act as pickup and return drop off points so Amazon owns the entire end to end delivery and return path ( and it makes it nearly impossible for anyone to compete ).

      • The urban environment isnâ(TM)t even being contemplated by most companies.

        In an urban environment, there are Amazon Lockers where customers can pick up packages. These are often located in convenience stores or at private mailbox locations.

        The obvious solution would be to have the drones deliver to these locations. The drone drops the package, a robot (or perhaps a human attendant) puts it into a locker, and then an alert with an unlock code is texted to the recipient.

        • Itâ(TM)s cheaper and more reliable to service lockers using a truck. In some places these trucks can be automated and handled by an attendant at an affiliated business - like a grocery store or whatever - but in larger cities an Amazon truck with a human will continue to service these lockers for decades to come.

    • At altitudes above 200' ( 60 meters ) drones become somewhat difficult to hear. At 300', I have to really focus to hear it.
      You won't hear it at all from inside your home unless it lands in your yard. ( See below )

      Rules are already in place in most States about camera imagery and / or audio.

      Example: Texas laws state absolutely no imagery or recordings of any kind may be obtained via a drone platform without
      express consent of the property owner. You can use a camera to help fly around, but you can't take

      • Drop off points will likely be a controlled facility similar to how UPS / Fedex pickup locations work today so folks don't help
        themselves to the package or the drone itself while on the ground. I have doubts these are going to land at your home with
        your package.

        But isn't that what happens right now with home deliveries to front doors? That's too bad if drones aren't going to mean home deliveries. I would prefer a delivery of a package to my fenced-in backyard, as the chance of theft is much less.

        I wonder how the economics of delivering to drop-off points works for drones versus trucks. I would imagine that the truck is much more efficient due to carrying many boxes. Wouldn't drones only have an advantage over trucks for unmanned delivery for single, relatively

        • One concept is a hybrid system: A truck will drive into a neighborhood and then launch dozens of drones to fan out and drop off the individual packages. The truck could still deliver big stuff the old-fashioned way.

        • I'm imagining there are a large percentage of orders that weigh less then 7lbs. Maybe not a majority but a lot. If you have a fleet of drones doing all the tiny boxes then you can save your more expensive options for the heavier items.

          Got to figure there are a lot of liability issues for drones but also a lot of liability issues for human delivery as well. It may turn out drones have fewer accidents and more successful deliveries then a human driver who has to deal with many other humans.

          Maybe Amazon won't

    • You've watched how they handled covid right? We're going to do nothing, and anyone who gets hurt or killed will be marginalized under the category of "Sorry people died, but I needed my 12" 300hp vibrator. The economy has to come first, right?"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The chances of having equipment good enough to track drones in flight and the knowledge to use it is pretty low. Most theft is opportunistic, a parcel spotted in the open somewhere and grabbed.

    • Why would the FAA rules regulate whether or not the packages are left in snow? I think you're mixing up who is responsible for what. FAA is responsible to managing air travel and its safety. It is not the FAA job to make sure your package doesn't get wet once in your porch (though they might care if the package is wet in the air and makes for a hazard because it falls apart while in flight or makes the drone too heavy to safety fly).

    • Will the rules cover issues such as noise, either making the drones fly high enough or have some type of noise muffler? Will there be restrictions on camera images to address privacy concerns?

      I'm not sure where either of those fall under FAA authorization. Those both sound like local issues.

      ow will the delivery companies figure out where to land and drop off the packages? ... Boxes can't be left in those damaging conditions (maybe the boxes have to be weatherproofed?).

      I'm sure that's not the FAA problem.

      S

  • will safety rules stop amazon from useing local 1099'er to run the drones so they can't get off and let the damaged party be left to only collect from an low paid amazon 1099 local driver.

  • I don't want a Walmart Drone to run into an Amazon one and come crashing down on my car.

  • Nice headline - you missed a critical comma (Score:5, Informative)

    by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Monday December 28, 2020 @03:04PM (#60873298) Journal

    Will drones be allows to fly over people during the day as well?

  • In contrast to truck deliveries, drone deliveries will likely be single boxes to single destinations. That means that there are no traveling salesman type of optimizations for planning routes. If that's the case, then would recipients be able to schedule deliveries? Air transit also means no waiting for traffic or traffic signals, so the estimated time of delivery should be quite precise. This might cut down on thefts if the recipient can stand outside and wait for a delivery. In fact, this could also

  • Like, a cone starting at my roof and going upwards at a 45 degree angle, with only 1000ft reach.

    Alternatively, don't mind me, I'mma just gonna build this really high antenna and electric fly catcher right here above my house. ;)

    It's, you know... for 'security reasons'. From terrorist Russian Chinese. Think of the children! ... Yeaah, it protects children from $foreignersDuJour. And you don't hate America, do you, son? *evil grin*

  • Well f*ck, can't play with the toy in the backyard (Score:5, Interesting)

    by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Monday December 28, 2020 @03:47PM (#60873416) Journal

    The FAA decided NOT to exempt the little plastic toys that people like to fly around the yard, so those will all be illegal now. That rather annoys me that they don't distinguish between plastic toys and actual aircraft.

    The smallest of the indoor toys that take off from the palm of your hand will still be legal, it appears.

    For anything over 250 grams, you'll now need two GPS units and two linked ID transmitters. You must continuously broadcast the following, according to the Rule:
      (1) a unique identifier to establish the identity of the unmanned
    aircraft;
    (2) an indication of the unmanned aircraft latitude, longitude, geometric altitude, and
    velocity;
    (3) an indication of the control station latitude, longitude, and geometric altitude;
    (4) a time mark; and
    (5) an emergency status indication.

    It's pretty darn stupid, IMHO; like making kids get license and registration for Matchbox cars. One draft actually made paper airplanes illegal, but I believe that fixed.

    • In the UK/EU from 2021, I believe you've got to register your drone (or at least register as a drone operator) even if flying only sub-250g drones (if they have a camera)... That includes ~30g 'Tiny Whoop' style drones. The fear/paranoia over small unarmed drones is ridiculous. If you fear flying cameras, you should be much more worried about the hundreds of cameras recording you whenever you're out in public, not to mention the amount of systems tracking you online...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Yeah it's pretty sad:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      But it's a boon to the chinese companies who will produce the gear to fulfill these requirements!

      Good news is there are some amazing sub-250g toys you can still have a lot of fun with. The rest of the hobby, though, is pretty much dead under these new regs. By design.

      If the FAA would spend as much time doing its job regulating full scale aircraft and governing the airspace above 500' as it has on flying toys, maybe we wouldn't have had scandals like the

    • So what are we broadcasting these data over? We're not supposed to use ADS-B, because stations allegedly can't handle the traffic.

      Adding another GPS receiver is no big deal on a good-sized quad, so I'm not worried about that. But what is the standard we're supposed to use for ID broadcasts?

      • The rule says you have to use an FCC-approved protocol.
        As far as I'm aware, there are no protocols approved by the FCC under this rule just yet. Obviously the major manufacturers have something going.

        The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an open organization that develops protocols such as HTTP and SMTP. There is an IETF effort to establish Drone Remote Id Protocol (DRIP).
        https://datatracker.ietf.org/w... [ietf.org]

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      That is exactly the argument Marx made. "Capital" today typically means "money" but in Marx's day it really meant "machinery." When production depends on machines (rather than labour) what motivation is there for the owners of the machines to share their wealth?

      It turns out that when you've got machines the more stuff you make, the cheaper each unit tends to be. So it's worth your while to make stuff for yourself, and also stuff for everyone else. Add in a bit of socialist stuff where it's needed (labour un

  • No, no, no. It already sounds too loud. Doesn't anyone value peace and quiet anymore? Aren't they disturbing my codified "peace"? Is corporate profit above the health [nih.gov] of the population? (Don't answer that.)

    • Pretty much this. Yet another extremely valid reason to live out in the boonies. Having god damn drones buzzing overhead non-stop day and night just so someone's pointless consumerism can be sated by amazon drone delivery sounds positively delightful.

  • So the FAA looked at drones and said "maybe they're not so bad after all". Sweet.

    Contrast this with the drone hysteria of a few years ago.

    I live in Seattle. A couple of years ago, I asked the city for a crosswalk. The neighborhood kids had to use a bus stop on the other side of a busy street (Pike Street), and cross where there was no marked crosswalk.

    The city told me, and I'm paraphrasing here, to feel free to tongue my own asshole, because they don't care if the kids get run over, they aren't putting in

  • Step 1: Determine most common flight path near distribution center. Step 2: Turn on jammer. Step 3: Load all packages (broken and intact) onto truck. Step 4: Profit.

  • Heavy duty "butterfly" nets.

  • Can we at least all start using the proper terminology?

    https://pilotinstitute.com/dro... [pilotinstitute.com]

    What is a drone?
    “Drone” is the most commonly used term to refer to any unmanned aerial vehicle, mostly because it’s a term that the media knows will catch the attention of casual viewers. From a technical standpoint, a drone can refer to any vehicle – even those that travel in water or land – that can travel autonomously.

    In modern times, the definition of drone has expanded to include vehicl

  • and widespread surveillance.

  • The noise (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 )

    The noise is going to suck. I mean, really suck. Never mind the privacy invasion or the high probability of collisions.

  • I'd just like to point to White Fox Defense's website: https://www.whitefoxdefense.co... [whitefoxdefense.com]

    Disclaimer I've met these guys (but don't know them well). Basically most drones use pretty simple software, so what WFD does is they have a device that creates a 1km or bigger 5 km zone of control. You can identify certain drones as friendly with an IFF, and ones that enter the zone with no IFF get hacked and are forced to land.

    Quite honestly, giving people the ability to control what comes into their lives (

    • And that's pretty illegal for non-governmental agencies. And the reason is simple - there's no reason for you to get a 1km bubble around your house. It interferes with my drone.

  • seriously? Fly over people at night? I was thinking that's oddly specific... you can fly over people but at night? That seems more dangerous if anything. It's Fly over people AND fly at night.

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