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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

#251

Post by Atheros »

djtriptych wrote: post #237
Atheros wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a drone crashes, obviously no other drones should fly there until a human determines what went wrong and presses the 'resume' button. The fact that that system did not exist is a systemic problem.

That sounds like an engineer-week of work not really a ground-up systemic problem. But fair criticism.

The systemic problem is that they didn't spend the engineer-week on it. It's only an engineer week. That pays for itself after avoiding a single drone crash to say nothing of avoiding a second lawsuit.

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

#252

Post by nhma »

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…

MmWave radar is commonly used for this purpose on both commercial and research UAVs, see e.g.: https://youtu.be/MORFX3CFygk

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

#253

Post by acka »

anigbrowl wrote: post #88
slashdave wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about "there are no reports of injuries"?

And if injuries are later reported people will sneer that 'media always gets it wrong/lies'. If they use plain language and say 'we don't know if anyone was injured yet' then people will sneer that 'I could have wirtten that, they're trying to sensationalize a nothingburger.'

How about: "As of the time of writing, we don't know of any reports of injuries"?

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

#254

Post by cpgxiii »

I think this is frankly the obvious consequence of the FAA inventing authority to allow commercial drone operations at low altitude (by "invented" I mean completely ignoring the precedent of United States v. Causby which establishes ownership of some airspace above one's property). Commercial drones are flying around at low altitude not because they should, but because they cannot safely share the airspace with other existing airspace users.

The solution here is not more NOTAMs or specific hazard detection; the solution is having commercial drones get the hell out of other people's property (i.e. very low altitudes) and safely share the rest of the airspace with existing users.

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

#255

Post by acka »

bravetraveler wrote: post #116
jollyllama wrote: post #32

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.

Shotguns are now standard issue, Foreman finally gets to work

Exemplary of the new norm of engineering practice in the US: "if all you have is a shotgun, everything looks like a target." In this context, casualties at ground level be damned.

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

#256

Post by gessha »

mr_toad wrote: post #169
sva_ wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Neural nets in drones are only used for object recognition. Beyond that, drones (and other autonomous vehicles) aren’t doing any sort of reasoning or decision making, they follow rules, they’re just robots. Although I hear that Tesla is thinking about using AI for decision making as well, which I find quite scary. Frankly I think it’s safer if vehicles don’t have concepts and intelligence, and just follow the rules.

Whenever I see someone say AI without specifying what branch of AI it is(CV, NLP, etc), I can’t take anything they say seriously.

Also, It’s sad to see GOFAI being called “rules” :)

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

#257

Post by cmurf »

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.…

As far as I'm aware 14 CFR 107 lacks anything like what applies to aircraft in case of power plant failure.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-91#p-91.119(a)

The catch all under both regulations is anything that's "careless and wreckless"

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-107#p-107.23

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/section-91.13

Was this particular operation careless and wreckless? Could be.

Someone else in the thread said the weather conditions included mist. I'm skeptical misty conditions also permits a minimum 3 miles of visibility, but what do I know I'm just a pilot.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-107#p-107.51(c)

But also, it's possible the waiver I assume Amazon is operating under could include visibility. I assume this because Part 107 requires visual line of sight operation, but Amazon's operation sounds like beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). I don't know anything about that. I'd like to think the waiver and the operating requirements are public information, but I don't know that either.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/section-107.31

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-107#p-107.205(c)

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

#258

Post by bravetraveler »

acka wrote: post #255
bravetraveler wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shotguns are now standard issue, Foreman finally gets to work

Exemplary of the new norm of engineering practice in the US: "if all you have is a shotgun, everything looks like a target." In this context, casualties at ground level be damned.

New? For a country this infantile? Our utterly questionable engineering is the closest thing we have to history.

With the appropriate amount of sarcasm: the Mayflower included several variations of "stock" and countless untold mistakes in the wake! We surely beat those Soviets and Socialism, gosh darn it. Just don't pay attention to the social fabric or what the CIA has done. Nevermind the particularly Aryan scientists, where we found them, or what might happen when they get fat/bored/lazy and procreate. We need The Bomb.

Long way to say the absurdity is the joke/point.

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

#259

Post by ajcp »

neom wrote: post #177
ajcp wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course!

btw, the animation on your website is absolutely beautiful. It's both haunting and pretty at the same time, really cool.

man, I can't tell you how much that means to hear! Glad you liked it. Check out the console for more :)

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

#260

Post by krferriter »

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?

At the same time? If there's a crash there should be an automatic system which geofences off that area making it impossible for other drones to go near there, while the situation is assessed.
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