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Amazon Prime Air

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Re: Amazon Prime Air

#161

Post by scotth »

javert wrote: post #149
scoot wrote: post #124

http://www.amazon.com/primeair When will I be able to choose Prime Air as a delivery option? A: We hope the FAA's rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time. Sorry, but not a chance. I'm intimately familiar with the flight controller, motor and batter technology behind multi-rotors, and I can state unequivocally that this is just not ready for 'prime'-time (so-to-speak :) There…

Well, you know, Bezos is a pretty smart guy. So maybe he knows something about this technology that the rest of us don't. Maybe he has an upper hand over the current state-of-the-art.

Yeah, right. The privileged information available only to the mega-rich...pfft.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#163

Post by sbierwagen »

scoot wrote: post #124

http://www.amazon.com/primeair When will I be able to choose Prime Air as a delivery option? A: We hope the FAA's rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time. Sorry, but not a chance. I'm intimately familiar with the flight controller, motor and batter technology behind multi-rotors, and I can state unequivocally that this is just not ready for 'prime'-time (so-to-speak :) There…

  Battery recharge time - out for 15 mins flight? Recharge for 2 hours.
Short trips to/from a fixed distribution point is the canonical use case for battery swapping in electric vehicles.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#164

Post by crusso »

carbocation wrote: post #157
crusso wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've flown gas and electric helicopters and airplanes as a hobby over the years. These small aircraft are very susceptible to bad weather. They're already going to be carrying a significant load with an attached package. They won't be able to handle a great deal of weather adversity.

> They won't be able to handle a great deal of weather adversity. I have less experience than you in the field, but I suspect that Amazon would not be promulgating such a service if it had such obvious fatal flaws.

Apple was talking about its "Knowledge Navigator" back in the 80s -- not because it had the technology. It still doesn't have that level of technology 25 years later.

They did it to generate some buzz and to foster the notion that they were a technological leader.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#165

Post by jerryhuang100 »

Next on eBay: PrimeAir the Ripper, automatically targeting, scanning, RF jamming, hijacking PrimeAir delivery drone for your next Macbook.

I mean, even Iranians or someone in the mid-east could hijack US drone(s), how difficult would it be for a 15 yo in the US to figure out how to crack a Prime Air in his/her backyard?

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#167

Post by raghus »

scoot wrote: post #124

http://www.amazon.com/primeair When will I be able to choose Prime Air as a delivery option? A: We hope the FAA's rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time. Sorry, but not a chance. I'm intimately familiar with the flight controller, motor and batter technology behind multi-rotors, and I can state unequivocally that this is just not ready for 'prime'-time (so-to-speak :) There…

Amazon's page reads like a Google April 1st post.

Or maybe someday we'll look back at these comments like we do at http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#168

Post by Element_ »

trekky1700 wrote: post #95

I wonder how they'll stop this from being abused. From shooting them down with pellet guns to capturing them as they land.

To prevent capturing them you could charge a deposit equal to the cost of the drone, when the drone returns safely you get your deposit back.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#169

Post by sbierwagen »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #71
snogglethorpe wrote: post #60

It doesn't seem like the battery density exists for anything except fairly short distances with very small packages. For the vast majority of deliveries, this could only be a "last mile" mechanism, with the bulk of each delivery happening via more traditional transport. 30-minute delivery from the warehouse? Not going to be possible for 99% of purchases, even those that are under the weight limits. Moreover, you can'…

> battery density Why wouldn't these drones be gasoline powered?

A quadrotor (or 8-rotor here) drone depends on rapidly throttling the propeller speed on each arm up and down, something that you can't do with a mechanical transmission without adding a lot of weight. You can do a gas/electric hybrid, but again, weight.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#170

Post by evo_9 »

Isn't it more likely they'll use these drones inside their warehouses to fill orders? Longterm maybe home delivery but they/Bezos have to be planning on using this to process orders inside their warehouses.

so is this all misdirection, or really their longterm plan?

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