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Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

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Re: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

#41

Post by fragmede »

hamdingers wrote: post #33
teachrdan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dream is that an increase in drones would lead to a decrease in vehicular deliveries, to the point that there would be a net decrease in noise. But in my heart of hearts I am certain the convenience of drone delivery -- and an absence of sufficient regulation -- would lead to a drastic net increase in noise instead.

This dream is naive. One truck rumbling (or humming, in the near future) through your neighborhood delivering packages to each of your neighbors over the course of 30 minutes will be replaced with one drone per neighbor. If they must exist, I hope they're priced/taxed such that they're used sparingly.

Bit of a travelling salesman problem, but I think a hybrid approach would be optimal. Have the delivery van drive to a neighborhood, then release drones from the van to deliver packages to individual houses.

Re: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

#42

Post by alistairSH »

asdff wrote: post #15
rogerrogerr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solid meh from me. Only thing I really don’t like about it is it’s likely to impact the personal rights to fly drones we enjoy today (which are already being chipped away). Otherwise, they’re probably not very loud or frequent, don’t really present much of a privacy issue vs. what street view already has, and they maybe make the roads a bit safer. Might take some jobs away from delivery van drivers. Nothing seems wor…

Probably half my immediate neighbors get an amazon delivery a day. The truck makes sometimes two or three stops throughout the day and is there for like 15-20 minutes running packages. The thought of that replaced with drone traffic is crazy. It would be like dozens of landings and overflights per hour. It is already bad enough when the realtors fly their drones overhead. I can't imagine the birds and bees aren't get…

Same. Even outside the holiday season, there are 5+ package truck deliveries/day on my little street (12 houses). That's UPS, FedEx, USPS, usually multiple Amazon (which always surprises me), plus a couple unmarked vans. Plus couriers in cars. Plus food delivery, at least 2 a night. Almost all the Amazon vans are now electric Rivians or GMCs.

That's a LOT of drone traffic, given there's near zero ability to double up on a single stop as there is today.

Re: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

#43

Post by vpShane »

riotnrrd wrote: post #38

I used to work in perception for autonomous aerial vehicles and horizontal wires were the hardest common object to avoid. Traditional stereo won't help you localize them -- wires are thin so even mere detection can be hard, and one portion of a wire looks much like another so feature matching fails resulting in bad or no depth estimates -- and LIDAR sacrifices resolution for weight and power consumption (which both h…

Ah yeah I came up with the solution to that one. It's 'don't fly drones over our heads' approach. Also the 'upgrade the fragile infrastructure so a light breeze doesn't take out millions of people's power.'

Re: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

#44

Post by venturecruelty »

vpShane wrote: post #43
riotnrrd wrote: post #38

I used to work in perception for autonomous aerial vehicles and horizontal wires were the hardest common object to avoid. Traditional stereo won't help you localize them -- wires are thin so even mere detection can be hard, and one portion of a wire looks much like another so feature matching fails resulting in bad or no depth estimates -- and LIDAR sacrifices resolution for weight and power consumption (which both h…

Ah yeah I came up with the solution to that one. It's 'don't fly drones over our heads' approach. Also the 'upgrade the fragile infrastructure so a light breeze doesn't take out millions of people's power.'

Sorry, not profitable enough, not a "team player". Please enjoy these weekly 1:1s with your manager and HR.

Re: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

#45

Post by LogicFailsMe »

I'm sure this will sound a bit whack to some of the sorts on here but honestly, who cares?

I was at the principal engineers offsite summit in scenic Cle Ellum when they supposedly announced prime Air.

I know, I know, what the f** ever, but there was something very ominous and significant at this unveiling. If this were my demo and my unveiling, I would have had a drone pick up a package at one side of the auditorium and drop it off at the other side of the auditorium.

What we got was a mock package and a mock drone and lots of talky talk from a guy who didn't last long at Amazon. This set the tone for everything going forward. And the engineers of tech, the real engineers of tech, not the toxic empathy talkers who can't do anything (tm), need to put these people in their place or the enshittification will continue unopposed.

I'm mostly out of f**s here having made what I needed to make but it's fun to post here in a position of not caring what people think of me anymore. Make of that what you will.

Edit: Come on PE snowflakes! You want to talk about that thread on the principal engineering list about how long it had been since any of you had actually written a line of code? I do. It explains a lot about you guys.

And don't get me started about that urgent missive about only hiring fungible people. Because fungible equals generalist and that's why both you and Google have the horrible retention rates you have. I can tell I'm not the only one that was in the room for that ridiculous presentation from the downvotes. Keep going and no worries, Amazon will have more than enough money to acquihire the people that actually solve these problems.

Re: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

#47

Post by AngryData »

hk1337 wrote: post #24

Why would Amazon be in trouble for not knowing the customer has an Ethernet cable stretched across their yard? Even AT&T (Southwestern Bell) buried drops from the pedestal to the house.

Would you say the same thing if a delivery driver drove through some other cables or objects on your property and broke them despite being in a clear and nominally safe area?

Re: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

#48

Post by appreciatorBus »

ggreer wrote: post #16
binarymax wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Consider that drones substitute for cars and trucks driving through neighborhoods. For the same payload delivered, ground vehicles cause significantly more property damage, environmental damage, and injuries/deaths.

It's almost as if .. if noise, property damage, enviro damage, injury and death.. are the problems, then we should regulate everything that do those things equally rather than trying to pick winners among various transport modes. But among other things, this would mean holding people responsible for the incredible damage anyone can do with a car and the people will not stand for being told they cannot go vroom vroom. Additionally since we refuse to regulate until there is a crisis, anything that is new automatically has an advantage over anything that is old, regardless of which causes fewer issues per unit of work (package delivery etc).

Re: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

#49

Post by bri3d »

riotnrrd wrote: post #38

I used to work in perception for autonomous aerial vehicles and horizontal wires were the hardest common object to avoid. Traditional stereo won't help you localize them -- wires are thin so even mere detection can be hard, and one portion of a wire looks much like another so feature matching fails resulting in bad or no depth estimates -- and LIDAR sacrifices resolution for weight and power consumption (which both h…

Definitely tough. mmWave radar is useful for this use case; I know Amazon were testing it on earlier drones but I'm not sure if they still use it.

Re: Amazon faces FAA probe after delivery drone snaps internet cable in Texas

#50

Post by londons_explore »

riotnrrd wrote: post #38

I used to work in perception for autonomous aerial vehicles and horizontal wires were the hardest common object to avoid. Traditional stereo won't help you localize them -- wires are thin so even mere detection can be hard, and one portion of a wire looks much like another so feature matching fails resulting in bad or no depth estimates -- and LIDAR sacrifices resolution for weight and power consumption (which both h…

Cables don't move often. Why not simply have a map of all of them?

Google sell maps of things like this from street view data.

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