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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

#141

Post by CamperBob2 »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #128
jahsome wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#142

Post by andrewl-hn »

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…

You may have a tall mas or an antenna and massive cables stretching at angles around it for support. The distance between the base of the mast and the base of supporting cables can be quite large, so even a simple logic like "stay 100m away from tall structures" can be insufficient.

It would be interesting to see what comes out of this investigation. Hopefully the injured person will be alright.

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

#143

Post by cherioo »

johntb86 wrote: post #65

https://www.theverge.com/news/790636/amazon-prime-mk30-drone... gives more information, including that * No one was injured directly, but someone was treated for smoke inhalation * The drones "were flying back to back" * They hit the cable of a crane (including a link to a video showing the crane). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ZpY6qHcTk

The video also includes a video clip of package delivery, where drone would drop package to the ground, which worked. But then propeller blew the package right into the bush was lmao.

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

#144

Post by JCM9 »

djtriptych wrote: post #127
JCM9 wrote: post #34

Flying in uncontrolled airspace in VMC is a “see and avoid” environment, meaning this looks like a pretty bad screw up by Amazon. The fact that two different drones crashed into the same object raises even more serious questions on the quality of Amazon’s tech and their ability to safely monitor it.

Two drones doesn't really mean anything if they were following a similar flight plan to make a delivery at the same location right?

It means Amazon’s approach to its “see and avoid” responsibility is fundamentally flawed in some way vs this being a one-off fluke with a broken sensor or other anomaly.

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

#145

Post by andrewl-hn »

blaufuchs wrote: post #129
slashdave wrote: post #59

Amazon engineer this morning to colleague: "Hey! Maybe we should include some cranes in our training data."

As someone who has worked in AV perception this is unfortunately way too accurate lol, so much training set whack-a-mole

Like, they may have trained on power lines, catenaries above rail tracks, network cables, etc. but all of them are horizontal. And the software couldn't recognize vertical cables or cables at an angle.

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

#146

Post by sva_ »

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…

I suppose recognizing that there is a cable even when we don't clearly see it, but we know it is there because we know the concept of a crane, is exactly the amodal completion of our brain's top-down perceptual inference that CNNs and whatever else those drones use are currently still lacking?

It shouldn't be necessary to hardcore such things if the goal is to build something resembling intelligence.

Of course for a drone it might be more feasible to do so though.

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

#147

Post by oofbey »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #137
djtriptych wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two drones doesn't really mean anything if they were following a similar flight plan to make a delivery at the same location right?

It means it wasn't a fluke or a bug specific to one drone, but something wrong in the overall software approach.

The repetition strongly indicates it’s a bug. No reason to think it points to a fundamental flaw in the approach.

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

#148

Post by snickerbockers »

andrewl-hn wrote: post #142
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…

You may have a tall mas or an antenna and massive cables stretching at angles around it for support. The distance between the base of the mast and the base of supporting cables can be quite large, so even a simple logic like "stay 100m away from tall structures" can be insufficient. It would be interesting to see what comes out of this investigation. Hopefully the injured person will be alright.

>so even a simple logic like "stay 100m away from tall structures" can be insufficient.

Wasn't this problem solved thousands of years ago by euclid?

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

#149

Post by perihelions »

andrewl-hn wrote: post #142
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…

You may have a tall mas or an antenna and massive cables stretching at angles around it for support. The distance between the base of the mast and the base of supporting cables can be quite large, so even a simple logic like "stay 100m away from tall structures" can be insufficient. It would be interesting to see what comes out of this investigation. Hopefully the injured person will be alright.

> "stay 100m away from tall structures"

But then how do you deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings? That must be half the near-term market for these kinds of drones: people in dense, urban areas well-served by local droneports, who are looking for convenience above all else.

If you can't safely manage urban canyons—you can't manage. It'd be like selling self-driving cars that are only approved for private racetracks.

Here's a curious article I read the other day, that underscores the market factor:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45445406 ("What It Takes to Get Lunch Delivered to the 70th Floor in a Shenzhen Skyscraper (nytimes.com)" / "An informal network of last-mile runners close the gap between harried delivery drivers and hungry office workers in a Shenzhen skyscraper")

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

#150

Post by rascul »

trollbridge wrote: post #77
potato3732842 wrote: post #41

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).

You don’t wear a harness when framing and roofing 1 and 2 storey buildings. What would you even attach yourself to? “I will not be hit by an 80 pound flying missile” is a reasonable expectation for construction workers

The framers have nothing to attach to until there's structure, and they don't really need to get up there much until they do the decking. They can attach lines to the ridge then. So can the roofers when it's their turn.

When I was a roofer, I think we might have used safety lines and harnesses twice, when the pitch was too steep.

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