Amazon Prime Air • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#511

Post by mattmanser » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 12:59 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #80

pdknsk wrote: post #51

I have two remarks or questions. The person who receives the package doesn't have to (or cannot) sign for it apparently. How difficult is it to shoot down such a drone to get the loot, if you will. Might become a sport for some folks.

Considering how signatures are mostly a farce (I routinely sign for my wife or my neighbours, who do the same for me), that's not a big deal: you'll just choose "classic" delivery via courier if you're really worried about that. Interception is a real problem though, especially in high-crime areas. You could reduce it with some sort of hardened container which can be opened only with a certain code.

I think you've misunderstood the point of the signature.

If they drop it next door, they note which house they dropped it at and also have a signature to show someone actually took it.

The point is not to show that a particular person received the package, but that someone received the package. 99.9% of the time that's enough. If it wasn't and was impacting their bottom line, they'd have started taking photos of recipients by now.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#512

Post by mertd » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 1:00 PM UTC

shimfish wrote: post #423

throwaway092834 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human-driven delivery trucks hit and kill dogs, cats, men, women and children every day. On average, 16 people will die in any given day in a truck related crash. One in eight traffic fatalities involves a large cargo truck. Driving vehicles on roads is incredibly dangerous. I don't think it's possible for drones to do a worse job.

The problem is that at some point society became insanely risk-averse, especially for new things. Cars are OK despite being the most insanely dangerous things on the planet because we grew up with them. American Football is OK despite the ludicrous amount of fatalities and injuries. Hell, if one of these drones just damages a house plant I'm sure the lawyers will be climbing over each other to take the case.

I doubt there will be enough plant carnage to warrant a class action case and a single plant is barely small claims court material.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#513

Post by init0 » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 1:14 PM UTC

If this comes true, I shall order a book and get a bot for free [If you know what I'm saying :D]

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#514

Post by kmfrk » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 1:36 PM UTC

wiremine wrote: post #32

Just watched the 60 minutes segment: Bezos say they won't be ready until 2015 at the earliest, likely 2016. (Edit: as the commenter below pointed out, I misheard the timeframe: is is 4-5 years out) He said the range is 10 miles, which is good enough for most residential areas. They are aiming for delivery in 30 minutes. The drones are autonomous: you plug in the GPS coordinates and away they go. The biggest challenge…

It also gives them control of the conversation of drones, which, let's just say, hasn't exactly been in your favour, if you're a drone.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#515

Post by trothoun » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 1:43 PM UTC

mpclark wrote: post #477

qwertz123 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dog would definitely try to take it out but it's the same as with cats: I would be more worried about the old guy losing an eye than hurting the cat. Those rotor blades look pretty dangerous to me.

The rotors can be made safe enough. It is more a question of the damage it can do by falling out of the air or causing some other accident.

Maybe they could do something like the Spirit and Opportunity rover's balloon mechanism to make it safer in case of accident. It would still be heavy, but it wouldn't be hard and it would have much greater air resistance so it would fall slower. Or maybe they could have helium canisters that inflate a balloon big enough to offset a portion of their weight. It'll probably be difficult but it seems like there are a lot of possibilities to explore.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#516

Post by nemof » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 1:45 PM UTC

esusatyo wrote: post #233

jmduke wrote: post #176

(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not for anything related to this. This is the first time I'm learning of Prime Air.) I'm somewhat disheartened by the skepticism of a lot of comments from HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Not stuff like "I wonder how they'll handle adverse weather" (which I think is intellectually interesting) but stuff like "As soon as one of these kills a dog it's done for". What merit is there in rootin…

Hacker News on Dropbox: Why would anyone want this? I can do this already with my home PC, all I need to do is install package xyz and let it run in the background. How does this handle duplicates, this is doomed to fail.

I really feel like amazon's service should be called dropbox too.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#517

Post by codex » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 2:15 PM UTC

Loud jumbo mosquitoes constantly buzzing around my neighborhood, ruining my view and endangering my kids? I want 30 minute delivery, but not that badly. I can plan ahead and exercise patience, or use a bike messenger.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#518

Post by spydum » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 2:21 PM UTC

corobo wrote: post #491

storborg wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm the complete opposite - I've never even seen a drone-like machine. Could you squeeze in any more minutes with solar panelling? I mean if they have to fly in decent weather anyway they may as well try to get a bit more charge in them while flying

I am certain any panel you could possibly add would cost more energy to lift than it might collect.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#519

Post by ChikkaChiChi » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 2:25 PM UTC

As much as I love UAV technology, we live in a nanny state where even the slightest risk of injury is outlawed to prevent citizen stupidity.

The second someone gets within three feet of a UAV rotor as it tries to land, this gets banned.

Re: Amazon Prime Air

#520

Post by briandear » Mon, Dec 02, 2013, 2:29 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #315

throwaway092834 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human-driven delivery trucks hit and kill dogs, cats, men, women and children every day. On average, 16 people will die in any given day in a truck related crash. One in eight traffic fatalities involves a large cargo truck. Driving vehicles on roads is incredibly dangerous. I don't think it's possible for drones to do a worse job.

Human-driven delivery trucks hit and kill dogs, cats, men, women and children every day And gasoline-powered vehicles of all sorts catch on fire all the time in collisions, yet one or two of Tesla's catch on fire and all hell breaks loose. Our mass media has an extremely regressive, anti-intellectual, pro- status quo bent.

You don't think that the media has covered (and exaggerated) other kinds of vehicle failures from non-electric vehicles before? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9311_Toyota_vehicle_...

It would seem like many on HN has a very extremely regressive, anti-intellectual, pro-status quo bent as well. See old threads about Dropbox and the comments on this story about Prime Air. It seems like a large number of commentaries here are just looking for every excuse to complain or find fault, yet those same folks would think Bitcoin was the cat's meow, despite a myriad of potential issues with that.