291–300 of 604 posts
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Cars aren't that noisy, and drones are going to be high up in any case.
Cars don't have eight rotor blades slapping the air, and we've gotten pretty good at enclosing all the loud bits (on expensive cars). Noise would certainly be a problem for gas-powered drones.
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…
I'm also "intimately familiar" with multi rotors, and I don't think any of these issues you've identified are valid, with the exception of regulations (which Amazon admits won't happen). > Battery recharge time - out for 15 mins flight? Recharge for 2 hours. So? Swap out batteries. The whole drone doesn't have to be grounded for 2 hours. > Flight time / payload - pick one. (20 mins with no payload is a stretch. Add b…
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And social. I'm curious what sort of utility such a service could yield, but I'm not interested in filling our airspace with service drones. The low-elevation sky is relatively uncluttered by our works.
I think it can work with minor interruption to everyday life if the drone are confined to the paths of major highways. It will reduce their noise pollution (and be marginally safer in a crash). The bigger impact would be on smaller retailers, that don't have this service. This service is an absolute killer, making it faster to order a toothpaste from Amazon compared to picking it up at a shop outside your house.
This would be an incredible benefit to human economy. Imagine the millions of retail jobs completely obsoleted by drones. Consider the price difference between wholesale and the corner retail shop -- a cost this could largely eliminate. Consider all the hours wasted in retail-facing interactions.
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Agreed. So far, I've seen nothing but specious fear-mongering and nonsensical "what-if" arguments against this thing. I can understand why people doubt the feasibility of drone delivery, especially given the legal impediments to adoption. Frankly, I doubt that this type of service will be practical within four years. What I can't understand is why people openly reject the idea of drones. I don't see how Prime Air is…
Law students (most) take a class called Criminal Procedure that heavily covers 4th, 5th, and (to a smaller extent) 6th amendment jurisprudence. I took it in 2011 when drones were really heavy in the news cycle. Our final exam was solely on drones and how their adoption would effect/be effected by 4th amendment considerations. So with all that said, I really really hate the idea of drones. They get places humans canno…
That's actually a minor quibble with your argument, though. My real problem is this: you're skeptical that they won't be regulated enough, so you want them regulated out of existence? Your solution is a bit like saying, "well, the NSA will be able to spy on our network connections, so let's just not have an internet." If you want good tech policy, you need to support good tech policy, not just throw your hands up and say, "there could be adverse consequences, so no new technology!" Otherwise we'll never get anywhere.
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This is not a good idea. http://nypost.com/2013/09/05/man-decapitated-by-remote-contr...
Is the current model better? http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/1-killed-after-bus-deli... That's just a story I found after 10 seconds of Googling. The broader point is that having your packages delivered fast-moving multiton machines controlled by fallible people and sharing space with pedestrians and other people-controlled machines is a very dangerous state of affairs. That there are risks in alternative means…
Until someone does some real quantitative risk studies; the risk is uncertain in comparison. It will only take one child seriously injured from one of these copters though for Amazon to be slapped with a major lawsuit; worse than the lawsuit though will be the public backlash from angry and indignant customers should something like this happen.
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And social. I'm curious what sort of utility such a service could yield, but I'm not interested in filling our airspace with service drones. The low-elevation sky is relatively uncluttered by our works.
I think it can work with minor interruption to everyday life if the drone are confined to the paths of major highways. It will reduce their noise pollution (and be marginally safer in a crash). The bigger impact would be on smaller retailers, that don't have this service. This service is an absolute killer, making it faster to order a toothpaste from Amazon compared to picking it up at a shop outside your house.
If my local mom-n-pop store has an app and a drone, I would shop there.
Cool tech, but I question the practicality of it. This seems fraught with problems that a human on a bike wouldn't have. They're also entirely unsuitable for urban areas.
The problem is, that human would insist on being paid for their labor.
This concept and forward thinking is of the type I make a conscious effort to protect from skepticism and naysayers. Aside from any obvious or glaring safety issues, ideas like this one, that teeter on the reality-joke line, are the exact ones that bring about true disruption. And that's why I encourage everyone around me to keep an open and forgiving mind, like you would with a child. Will Amazon Prime Air work? I d…
Agreed. So far, I've seen nothing but specious fear-mongering and nonsensical "what-if" arguments against this thing. I can understand why people doubt the feasibility of drone delivery, especially given the legal impediments to adoption. Frankly, I doubt that this type of service will be practical within four years. What I can't understand is why people openly reject the idea of drones. I don't see how Prime Air is…
Here's the difference: there's a person directly controlling that five-ton metal box.
Even if you assume that a) the person behind the wheel of a delivery truck is arguably more fallible than a drone following a flight plan and b) a company operating a drone will have the same potential legal liabilities if the drone causes harm to property or an individual, you should not underestimate or ignore the comfort that being able to "blame" or hold a human being accountable provides.
> The response to Prime Air goes far beyond skepticism. It's incoherent, fanatical pessimism, and it's really dissapointing.
There are many commercial applications for drones that I don't see a whole lot of opposition to. These include agriculture, construction, mining and oil. Many if not most of these involve the use of drones in areas that are sparsely populated or where access is limited to authorized personnel.
The only thing that's incoherent and disappointing here is pretending that there's no difference between these "industrial" applications and applications that would inject drones into highly-populated areas, particularly those that are residential.