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Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

abc15.com

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Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#201

Post by Seattle3503 »

rektomatic wrote: post #188
Animats wrote: post #186

China is way ahead here. There's now a Ministry of the Low Altitude Economy.[1] There's a Low Altitude Flight Service System, which is air traffic control for drones and flying cars. There are licenses for drone operators, categories of license, (advanced licenses require a flight exam), etc. China hasn't had much general aviation. There are very few private aircraft. So there was nothing like the US's FAA Flight Ser…

China is way ahead on what exactly? Regulation?

An alternative way to look at this is they are (trying to) build the institutions that will pave the way for the success of the technology.

Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#202

Post by orbisvicis »

atm3ga wrote: post #138
dheera wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Tolleson Police Department is investigating" The police is not qualified to investigate this. The only people that should be investigating is people who understand the code that the drones run. Accidents will happen as long as we, as a society, agree and desire to have new tech. The investigations and bug fixes should be left to people who understand the tech.

I'm not sure why this is getting down voted. Indeed, the FAA is the correct investigating body here as the local police department has no jurisdiction over aviation accidents. They should have immediately called in the FAA to investigate.

Maybe, maybe not:

"The NTSB will retain far more employees than during prior shutdowns when it had to furlough 90% or more of its workers. In 2019, the agency did not send investigators to 22 accidents because of the funding lapse. But it made the case to White House budget officials that it needed more personnel for critical functions."

https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/faa-would-fur...

Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#203

Post by appreciatorBus »

wat10000 wrote: post #193
appreciatorBus wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In non-drone aviation, we require vehicles to be separated from each other by 5 nautical miles horizontally and 2,000 feet vertically. Additionally every area of the planet they fly over has an MSA figure - Minimum Safe Altitude - which is supposed to guarantee 1000 feet clearance over any obstacles or terrain. Both of these allow healthy margins of error, whether that error is from a human pilot or ATC, or from comp…

At least in the US, minimum separation is for when you're talking to air traffic control, and MSA is for flying on instruments. Minimum separation when you can see outside and aren't talking to ATC is "don't hit other planes." Minimum altitude is 500ft, or 1000ft over "congested areas," plus 500ft distance from any obstacle. Unless you're flying a helicopter (or powered parachute or hang glider) in which case the onl…

Fair enough, I am not a pilot, just a nerd so I wasn’t aware of this!

I’d agree the helicopter rules seem most appropriate, though I guess I’d still feel like that would still rule out operating anywhere near a building under construction.

That said, a regular helicopter that suffers a loss of power or other fault, still has options like autorotation to at least attempt a landing without killing anyone on the ground. Do drones have any equivalent ? I.e. if battery is below x% it returns to safe landing spot?

Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#204

Post by [deleted] »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #141
appreciatorBus wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In non-drone aviation, we require vehicles to be separated from each other by 5 nautical miles horizontally and 2,000 feet vertically. Additionally every area of the planet they fly over has an MSA figure - Minimum Safe Altitude - which is supposed to guarantee 1000 feet clearance over any obstacles or terrain. Both of these allow healthy margins of error, whether that error is from a human pilot or ATC, or from comp…

5 miles sounds pretty ridiculous, TBH. These things aren't moving at Mach 3.

[deleted]

Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#205

Post by freehorse »

MountDoom wrote: post #191
diggan wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But then how do you deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings? Maybe asking the obvious, do you need to? Why not drop the package downstairs, people can use the elevator like normal people? Assuming there is some sort of hand-off with identification.

Many parts of Europe solved it in a more low-tech way: street-side parcel lockers unlocked with your phone. Massively reduces delivery cost (i.e., one driver can deliver far more packages per hour), is pretty convenient and safe (no packages left unattended), and best of all, doesn't require a fleet of UAVs. You can pretty naturally extend this once you have self-driving vans. I think Amazon has a proprietary version…

The chinese too, afaik, in shanghai drones deliver parcels in specific parcel stations. Flying drones delivering stuff (through the windows?) to upper floors of buildings sounds like sth between scifi and madness right now. Having specific pickup locations solves a lot of problems like the ones here, as drones can just have to follow specific, predetermined routes that can be more easily monitored, instead of having to go to some random, different address.

Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#206

Post by wat10000 »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #203
wat10000 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, minimum separation is for when you're talking to air traffic control, and MSA is for flying on instruments. Minimum separation when you can see outside and aren't talking to ATC is "don't hit other planes." Minimum altitude is 500ft, or 1000ft over "congested areas," plus 500ft distance from any obstacle. Unless you're flying a helicopter (or powered parachute or hang glider) in which case the onl…

Fair enough, I am not a pilot, just a nerd so I wasn’t aware of this! I’d agree the helicopter rules seem most appropriate, though I guess I’d still feel like that would still rule out operating anywhere near a building under construction. That said, a regular helicopter that suffers a loss of power or other fault, still has options like autorotation to at least attempt a landing without killing anyone on the ground.…

"Without hazard" is pretty subjective, but I agree that it probably shouldn't include casually flying around cranes.

I don't know how drones are programmed, but landing immediately if the battery gets low certainly sounds like a sensible precaution. Electric motors might be reliable enough that you don't have to worry about gracefully handling failure of those. I hope so, because I don't think a quadcopter has much hope if any motor fails.

Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#207

Post by dheera »

atm3ga wrote: post #138
dheera wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Tolleson Police Department is investigating" The police is not qualified to investigate this. The only people that should be investigating is people who understand the code that the drones run. Accidents will happen as long as we, as a society, agree and desire to have new tech. The investigations and bug fixes should be left to people who understand the tech.

I'm not sure why this is getting down voted. Indeed, the FAA is the correct investigating body here as the local police department has no jurisdiction over aviation accidents. They should have immediately called in the FAA to investigate.

They should call in a bunch of robotics and PyTorch experts to investigate the code, actually, and preferably also submit a pull request to Amazon. Amazon should be required to pay this "squat team".

The FAA does not have the expertise to diagnose this.

Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#208

Post by notatoad »

crazygringo wrote: post #102

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…

>Genuinely curious what the solution here is.

no fly zones around construction sites?

Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#209

Post by EA »

FpUser wrote: post #197
foobarbecue wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Friend of mine was a news helicopter pilot and he had one of these systems that will cut a cable if you hit one by accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6CsNqhAeeQ . Better than getting tangled, I guess.

What they show on video does not protect props. Dumbest invention ever. Never mind that the idea of cutting cable is even worse.

Multiple cable cutters are installed on every military helicopter

Re: Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ

#210

Post by bell-cot »

mr_toad wrote: post #173
bell-cot wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a mere (say) 240mph, 5 miles is 75 seconds. Talk to an experienced pilot about how short a time that is, when a bottom-10% pilot is trying to figure out some problem with his instrumentation, or has set his radio to the wrong frequency, or whatever.

> At a mere (say) 240mph, 5 miles is 75 seconds. The world record holder for a quadcopter drone is 224 mph. Not many drones can beat 100 mph. According to one article I found Amazons drones can manage 50mph.

5 miles at 50mph would give only Amazon 360 seconds to fix the bug that caused the first drone to crash. Or figure things out enough to get the second drone into manual override mode.
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