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Amazon's Drone-Delivery Dreams Are No Joke (backchannel.com)
Backchannel's Steven Levy reports that Amazon "has a site at an undisclosed semi-rural location where it attempts to simulate the possible obstacles that drones will face in real-world deliveries." Amazon's drones reach speeds of 60 miles per hour, and can perform a 20-mile round trip, which makes Amazon believe they could especially useful deliveries to the suburbs, some rural areas. "The facility features a faux backyard and other simulated locations where drones might have to drop off their cargo." An anonymous reader quotes their report:
"For a while, we were missing clotheslines," says Paul Viola, an AI expert who is charge of Prime Air's autonomy efforts. Now, Amazon's vehicles have a "Don't Hit Clotheslines!" rule in their code. There's even a simulated dog (though not a robot) that Amazon uses to see how the vehicles will respond to canine threats... Amazon is also planning for urban deliveries, with the idea of landing drones on rooftops [and] eventually it might expand to multiple deliveries per expedition, or even take returns back to the warehouse...
All of this is done without human intervention. Drones know where to go and how to get there without a human sitting at a ground station actually flying the plane... [A]n Air Prime technician can order a drone to land, but ultimately the drones are autonomous. Amazon envisions that eventually it will have sort of an air traffic controller monitoring the flight patterns of multiple drones.
If something goes wrong, "the first rule of Amazon drones is to abort the flight, returning to base or even carefully finding a landing spot from which to send a rescue signal. 'If it doesn't seem safe, it will land as soon as safely possible,' says Gur Kimchi, who has headed the Prime Air team for four years. (He previously worked at Microsoft.)"
All of this is done without human intervention. Drones know where to go and how to get there without a human sitting at a ground station actually flying the plane... [A]n Air Prime technician can order a drone to land, but ultimately the drones are autonomous. Amazon envisions that eventually it will have sort of an air traffic controller monitoring the flight patterns of multiple drones.
If something goes wrong, "the first rule of Amazon drones is to abort the flight, returning to base or even carefully finding a landing spot from which to send a rescue signal. 'If it doesn't seem safe, it will land as soon as safely possible,' says Gur Kimchi, who has headed the Prime Air team for four years. (He previously worked at Microsoft.)"
Also other logistics companies are trying to utilize this new mode of transportation: https://www.post.ch/en/about-u....
...just like autonomous cars. They aren't a joke. They are really just around the corner. They are just working out some final technical details. Really. We promise.
Drones executing rural deliveries, launched from some sort of 'base truck' a human drives to a central location to launch and monitor multiple drones. That's pretty much the only use case for drone delivery.
Of course, a fully functional delivery system is symmetrical -- you can send stuff _back_ using the same channel. The base truck should also accept the farmer's *own* drone returning a non-functional item to Amazon.
Once ordering from Amazon via drone takes off, you could see even more humans who function like they don't really have anything to do with anybody.
Like the term/idea social media, I see advantages and disadvantages...
Like any business, Amazon's envisions becoming as profitable as possible which means they aim for 100% automation because automation doesn't need to be paid. Capitalism itself is really just an optimization problem where you extract as much money from people while giving the least amount of it back. However, like humanity working to exhaust a natural resource, businesses will too hit a point where they find themselves in trouble because of the lack of balance they have created in the economic ecosystem. Those with authority are either ignorant of this fact or simply don't care. Automation can either be our liberator or our destructor and it's up to us to decide that while we still can.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
These machines will get attacked by birds defending their territories. In response, unless blades, engines, and rotors are guarded, the drone's design will injure or kill the bird. Bird numbers are dropping very fasr already. The manufacturers and corporates trialing delivery by drone have provided no assurance whatsoever that they are taking reasonable steps to prevent harm to wildlife.
A big problem truck drivers face is highjacking for the cargo. Wouldn't a drone's package be subject to theft? Would it avoid tough neighborhoods? What about people that think a drone is spying on them or about to shoot them and shoot it out of the sky as it approaches for a landing? Would a cargo drone need a fighter escort?
Of course, I've had a $2 part delivered on a Sunday by the USPS, and then the same day a $70 part hand delivered - in my backyard! And a smoke detector and CO alarm delivered next day, at "no charge" (same box), instead of two shipments, one that day and the other the next.
It seems unlikely researchers will be able to anticipate every obstacle an unmanned delivery vehicle would encounter in a simulated model.
Ultimately, it will come down to an equation: additional loss of packages and UAVs + UAV cost and maintenance is less than or equal to conventional human delivery services.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
They just need one of these puppies and a faraday cage to put it in when it lands. No way for the drone to send back video or any information on the attacker and it can be transported to a radio secure location to open and disable it.
Based upon the condition of my deliveries, it's obvious that the shippers drop the package from 50ft, play soccer with it, use it for kickboxing exercises and then gently place it on my porch. Now, I guess they'll drop it from 500 ft.
What I'm worried about however is safety and security surrounding drone delivery. Buying a drone off the shelf still won't allow you to easily deliver parcels to a location outside your line of sight 5 miles away. But Amazon is solving that problem right now. Great huh?
Only ... I can't be the only one who's thought about the possibilities of hijacking or impersonating Amazon drones for delivery of two pounds of semtex plus plus detonator wired to a phone or a timer to homes of e.g. e.g. veterans or politicians. Or military bases. Or shopping malls. Or schools. Or congress.
Detonating a pound or two of semtex on a docked submarine (worth a cool billion) wouldn't be a bad payoff for your average terrorist either.
What (if anything) is being done to prevent e.g. Al Qaida or ISIS (or whatever you've got) from abusing this system? Has anyone thought about this at all? Is anyone going to do so before the system goes live?
In a pinch you might equip military bases with an anti-drone system. But people's homes? And schools, malls, cinema's ? Worth considering before it all goes live perhaps?
If something like a total power loss occurs, how dangerous it will be for the people close by?
I had that as an entree once, it was delicious.
Nobody addresses the fact that these things will make a lot of noise in settled areas. And as the drone traffic increases, so will the noise level, to the point that in some communities there may be incessant drone delivery noise.
E Proelio Veritas.
Humanity doesn't really have to support people who never contribute. (Most people will retire or whatever, and some will never be fit to work).
1) Shrink the work week. (I consider this nonviable because it is wasteful)
We can shrink the "work week" to almost nothing. Then everyone needs to "work" at those few jobs which are still essential. You just divide up the work smaller and smaller. I think this is a stupid idea, because the overhead on learning the skills tends to infinity.
2) Employ everyone in jobs that can't be automated. This means people working in arts, and maybe the sciences (if that remains unautomated), eradicating the last of the diseases that still afflict humanity, etc. This means that the people who control resources will have to demand *far far* more arts and science than they currently do. Yet in an abundance society, there will be effectively more resources to demand creative output from people than there are people. Seems like no problem, it just takes willingness to put resources to use this way. This way, we can keep "work or die", but there *has* to be a commitment from those who control resources to *accept* whatever creative work can be done by the people that are alive. This is by far my preferred vision of human future, thanks Marshall Brain for the inspiration. It preserves motivation to continue creative work instead of allowing humanity to descend to total meaningless existence.
3) Provide handouts with no expectation of work. This *may* work out well, I don't think it's a proven fact that people won't do creative things without threat of starvation. I think some will be driven to create despite having all necessities handed to them.
Good outcome or bad depends only and solely on the greed of those who control resources. If they want to hog all the resources to themselves, far beyond their needs, then yes, it'll be a mass slaughter. If they want to allow humanity as a whole to use the available resources is some more equitable way, then it could end up as a paradise.
--PeterM
Commies, socialists, progtards or antifa - if you see 'em, slap 'em! Let's set a new world record for leftist butt-hurt!
that would include:
1) 13yo with a slingshot
2) 16yo with a bb gun
3) 85yo with a shotgun
the rest won't care because they'll be at their second jobs while their kids are cramming to get a scholarship that (maybe) pays half the $500k college now costs.
Or, as that Dilbert guy said (ironically now that his politics have changed): You can get used to anything if somebody force you to.
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These guys at Zipline deliver emergency medical supplies to remote clinics in Rwanda. Not sunscreen to suburbanites. Anywhere within 120 kilometers of the base can receive a delivery of blood, vaccines, or other medical supplies within an hour of sending a text message, a trip that can take most of a day by road (if the road is even passable at that moment).
The trip is fully automated, just input the coordinates of the destination and the package is on its way at 100 kph. This is not a demonstration or beta project, they're currently in full operation in Rwanda and testing in other countries. The day they start to set up shop in Peru I'm retiring and going to work for them.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
#DeleteFacebook
Jeff Bezos is not as bad as Donald Trump, but Bezos says and does things that show he isn't thinking carefully.
Remote control over drones can ALWAYS be eliminated or hijacked by radio frequency interference.
Technology ALWAYS has failures, like those at Three Mile Island, Fukushima Daiichi, and Chernobyl.
Amazon drone delivery: nine ways it could go horribly wrong
I don't want drones near where I live. Will drones be allowed near where Jeff Bezos lives?
...and it'll result in downed drones and birds.
.....Amazon drone delivery means only one thing....
Free drones !@@@!
I'd love to see them try to bring these new-fangled automobiles to my neighborhood! A wooded area with no open spaces and a lot of birds. There's no open space where an automobile could drive. Many of the affluent neighborhoods in my area are using this model!
And Ford is going to get a hellava bill if one of their cars hits a tree and damages a house!
Unfortunately, you can't simulate an infinite number of variables. More Silicon Valley propaganda. Whatever. I see this as more of a desperation move, like Uber running away to Arizona, than anything else. These companies with their greed and overinflated egos are the real 'joke'. They are starting to resemble clowns. I wonder how many of them would fit in a Pinto?
I will be releasing the first drone takeover service.
"Amazon is also planning for urban deliveries, with the idea of landing drones on rooftops"
I'll just get out my 32 foot ladder to retrieve my Amazon delivery from the roof. Next idea on the drawing board: Amazon deliveries by trebuchet.
What happens if the "safe" location is on my property? Can I sure for trespassing?
Just look at Apple. They're the most profitable company on Earth and they did it with prices 2-3x market.
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Amazon isn't going to send a Prime Air drone to just anyplace; it will only send a drone to Amazon Prime customers. That said, Amazon needs to provide a landing beacon for the drone to use. I would envision the beacon as something about the size and shape of a bathroom scale. The beacon would be linked via some wireless method.
When the customer orders something with Prime Air delivery, the customer's PC would transmit an authentication code to the beacon, as received from Amazon when the order is placed. The owner would place the beacon in a safe location; on the driveway, in the back yard, wherever. Amazon would dispatch the drone to the owner's GPS coordinates, and then communicate with the beacon to find the final location. The beacon, about the size and shape of a bathroom scale, would BE a scale, and transmit an alert to the customer and to Amazon once the weight of the package is sensed on the beacon.
Seeing how they haven't solved front porch theft yet, what makes Amazon think that "Cletus" your next door neighbor in the flight path won't take his shotgun and drop the flying pinata for his own benefit? If your not around or Cletus lives 2 blocks away how will you know what happened to your delivery? It's manna from heaven right? Plus when the drone goes crazy on it's own will the customer be liable for property damage when it hits the neighbors new corvette? The drone has good uses but that normally fits into damage caused in a war zone.
Good point about the loss of communication. But there are MANY problems:
1) What if communication is hijacked?
2) There are many, many dogs that would jump on a drone trying to land a package.
3) There are children would try to capture a drone. Mom! I found a plane in our yard!
4) A drone would be REALLY, REALLY ANNOYING to a lot of people. Why? A drone would compromise their safety. A drone would emit scary noise. Many, many people in the U.S., a nation of gun owners, would shoot at a drone. Even children might use their BB guns to shoot at a drone.
5) Thieves might like to capture a drone.
6) Weather is often ENTIRELY UNPREDICTABLE. A big, unexpected gust of wind could smash a drone against a house. There are many places where 2 weather systems come together in which weather reports are only educated guesses.
7) Electronics sometimes fails. (Funny: I can imagine Slashdot readers saying, "What! I didn't know that!")
8) Mechanical devices sometimes fail.
9) There are often design errors that are only discovered after device failure.
These are problems of TRUMPIC proportions!
But yes, Jeff Bezos is still better than Donald Trump.
If you don't like noise now, just wait until the buzzing of drones overhead is 24/7. Then, it'll be a plus to live in the flight path of an airport, because no drones. Buy your airport house now, while it's still cheap.
It's very common in the U.S. culture that, rather than cooperate, someone looks for a way to disagree.
I'm sure everyone understands the issue. If there can be huge problems with extraordinarily expensive, intensely managed technology, it is even more likely that there will be problems with technology that is not getting a lot of oversight.
Drone technology is not getting much oversight. I haven't seen any stories discussing the 9 issues I mentioned.
Gone are the days of combing the neighborhoods aimlessly looking for a recently delivered package to lift. Just follow the little bird right to the pot of gold!
Yes, one could follow a truck. But you'd have to see it first. A drone zooting around with one or more packages dangling below will be much easier to spot. And while following one may not be plausible depending on its route, you really only need to be somewhat near its landing location. This becomes easier on non-level ground, where you could sit atop a hill and watch it descend, for example.
The first step would be to explain the possible solutions. Why? At present, negative attitudes are developing rapidly.
"Amazon has hired some of the best engineers and expert researchers in the world for this."
I feel doubtful about that. I see shortcomings on almost every Amazon web page. If managers at Amazon don't see or don't fix those, what chance is there they will solve far more difficult problems?
Drones will always fall from the sky injuring or killing. The design should be unable to exceed a safe predetermined free-fall velocity. Crumple zones should be built in to reduce the chance of injury. Fans should be ducted with forgiving grills preventing a finger from being severed. Safety should be the first concern of the FAA. It will use a bit more power but they will still have healthy savings.
What about the mental condition of the writers of the stories to which I linked?
Make all the buggy whip jokes you want. But sooner or later it should become time that we start protecting people instead of corporations.
Of course they are, after all this is one of the necessary steps to "freedom from people" also known as "useless eaters".
Can I keep the drone, too, along with my order?!
;-)
Can I shoot down a drone that is passing over my house (and keep the payload) as a toll for using my airspace?
Can I keep the pkg that was incorrectly delivered to my house?
(What also works is to replace the "Can I" above with "I will".)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.