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Terrifying. Imagine being a roofer or other worker when a delivery drone knocks your ass off the n-th floor surface that you're working on. It wouldn't take much to get somebody killed in such a precarious situation.
With the information we have about the actual incident, it seems you'd only be at risk of that happening if you were as thin as a cable.
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Why is 4 hours a limit?
It's not a limit, just from my personal exposure in the overall drone delivery, 3-4hrs would provide enough time with margin for any safe delivery, beyond that is definitely better but probably is too hard to achieve. Keep in mind the actual flight time will be less than that, accounting for payload weight and environment like wind and temperature. In cold weather like Canada, the batteries will consume some of their…
Edit: The Internet tells me that delivery drones fly at 40-60mp/h which is much faster than I assumed and makes the 3-4 hour window even more surprising to me.
To be clear, they crashed into the vertical cable hanging down from the end of the crane. Not into the structure of the crane itself. So it's not as bad as "they don't see cranes". But it absolutely raises the question of whether they can see cables , whether hanging from cranes or spanning telephone poles. And honestly, cables are really hard to see in the air. That's literally why high-voltage power lines hang thos…
That doesn’t make it better. The cable hangs down from the crane and thus the rest of the structure is still nearby. The drone should be well clear of any obstructions precisely to avoid this sort of thing from happening with hard-to-see ancillary obstructions. Something went really wrong here with the tech.
For the sake of clarity: I am not arguing against your point, nor am I defending Amazon or the tech in any way shape or form.
Little after 10am, pure speculation but wonder if the angle of the sun overwhelmed the dynamic range of the image sensor over a particularly inopportune area of the frame. Guessing no LiDAR on drones like this.
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There's roof safety anchor systems which are designed for residential roofs. Look for something like the Ridgepro anchor: https://www.theridgepro.com/ It does seem best when using lag bolts to secure such an anchor to the roof but even when not screwed to the roof should provide some level of fall safety.
Are these used in practice? In what regions? In Seattle suburbs, I've never seen a crew wearing any kind of attached harness.
Terrifying. Imagine being a roofer or other worker when a delivery drone knocks your ass off the n-th floor surface that you're working on. It wouldn't take much to get somebody killed in such a precarious situation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That doesn’t make it better. The cable hangs down from the crane and thus the rest of the structure is still nearby. The drone should be well clear of any obstructions precisely to avoid this sort of thing from happening with hard-to-see ancillary obstructions. Something went really wrong here with the tech.
I'm genuinely curious what you'd define "nearby" and "well clear" as in concrete numbers. For the sake of clarity: I am not arguing against your point, nor am I defending Amazon or the tech in any way shape or form.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any modern roofer or other worker that could fall far is wearing a safety harness (with some exceptions for flat roofs that have railing set up).
I am going to wager that 90% of resi roofers are not using harnesses unless the pitch of the roof is extreme. It’s all about the couch cushion.
Certainly harnesses and other safety gear are much more common in many situations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, but it's the launch/landing site that is in question. It's not just a helipad set up. It's very sci-fi looking and looks very complicated. I'm wondering if the drone itself lands at the top and then lowers the pod for loading to keep them out of reach of the employees. Probably even touted as a safety feature. I just haven't seen the system in operation, and their website just ignores this part as it's not some…
There is a bunch of videos on Youtube on Zipline, some of them from the company itself (this one showing specifically the "platform": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=airEzThGlx8 ), and some from various tech people looking into the whole thing (like Markus Brownlee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88yQTzlmsiA ). Probably a better overall source of into than their website.