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Google's Wing Drones Approved To Make Public Deliveries In Australia (theverge.com)
Alphabet's Wing drone delivery company is launching its first public drone delivery service in Canberra, Australia, after the country's aviation authority granted it regulatory approval. "Around 100 homes in the suburbs of Crace, Palmerston, and Franklin will initially have access to the service, but in the coming months the company plans to expand it to homes in Harrison and Gungahlin," reports The Verge. From the report: The service works by partnering with local businesses including coffee shops and pharmacies to deliver their products "in minutes." Wing's regulatory approval comes with restrictions. Drones will not be allowed to fly over main roads, they will only be allowed to fly between 7am and 8pm on Monday to Friday (or between 8am and 8pm on Sundays), and they will be restricted from flying too close to people. Customers in eligible homes will also be given a safety briefing about interacting with the drones. Wing predicts that drone deliveries could be worth as much as AU$30 to AU$40 million to businesses in the area, and says drones could deliver as many as one in four takeaway orders by 2030.
What are the odds that these drones have software that's written to airworthiness standards. At best, there are still Max 8 style escapes. If the core isn't written to DO-178C and the other software on the redundant nav/guidance computers to DO-178B, then there's not a prayer of being as good as the Max 8.
You know the answer. It's lowest bid software that's barely made it through poorly analyzed flight test.
Google, the R+D arm of the NSA (datacentres using Google hardware and software designs store all the total surveillance data gathered by the 'five eyes' project and other West power spy ops), is involved in a trillion dollar project designing the computerised murder machines to be used by the US armed services in the near future.
Google was a project exploring the idea that computer systems built and perfected in the civilian sector would prove far more productive for gov and military use than had previous disasterous projects that had been exclsuively for intelligence and military. Having conquered data aquisition, storage and mining, Google was moved on to the task of military robots/drones.
Google's ownership of every major military robot company is hardly secret, tho the dribblers who think Slashdot a "good" site won't know this.
Delivery drones, self-driving cars, perfect mapping of urban centres, etc are all meant for perfecting the tech needed for flying and driving military murder machines. The civilian word is a vast experimental playground where tech can be safely rolled out, explored and perfected. A useful side effect is that Google gets to GROOM the public to accept ideas that will be resisted less when they become apparent in military uses.
The same filth who called everyone "tin foil hat wearing loonies" for stating that total surveillance existed BEFORE Snowden gave chapter and verse will hope you are too thick to know the origins and agenda of Google. Indeed, Google fronts the weaponsised SJW crap as a literal front to deflect from what the company really is.
Google is the very definition of pure satanic evil. By the time Google's drone tanks are rolling into a nation like Iran, it will be too late for Humanity.
It should be illegal to name products by stealing from common language.
"Wing" is stupid name, and nobody likes getting ads for some garbage product when they are looking for information about the original thing, because the original had its name stolen by some douche in the marketing department.
Google will be as successful with all these projects as they were with previous projects, which is to say, not successful at all. Subpar in many ways. See for yourself, just look at their press releases in any way back machine. All style and no substance.
Shush Ivan ... or are you really stupid enough to believe that it's a good idea to shoot ourselves in the nuts by not developing any military technology while totalitarian regimes are pushing full throttle on them?
Conspiring with the government against the people is a requirement for success. Like Elon, it really doesn't matter how badly they do their jobs. Just keep launching those satellites we never hear about on fake TV news and the bankster money will keep rolling in. They'll print more if you run out.
The famous private drone delivery video that went viral:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
How to get more Australian that that? A pie delivered by trained cockatoo?
Australia went from having some of the best (fairest) drone regulations in the world to what will become some of the worst.
Obviously "money talks" because Google is able to fly its big, heavy delivery drones around Canbera, over people's houses, heads and roads -- but as of November of this year, nobody under the age of 16 will be allowed to fly even a 101 gram toy plane in their own back yard without being "supervised" by another person who is 18 years or older and has passed a drone competency exam.
Seriously?
Talk about a great way to kill the hobby that has, for a century or more, gotten kids excited about aviation to the extent that they go on to become pilots, engineers and designers of full-sized aircraft.
I'd love to know what "inducements" Google rolled out to those granting the permissions for its drone tests because it seems they even got an exemption from the requirement to meet minimum noise standards -- otherwise their tests would still be illegal.
It's not what you know that counts -- eh?
This story made me think of Flight of the Phoenix, a 1965 film starring Jimmy Stewart (there is also a bad remake from 2004). A cargo plane is lost in the Sahara after being downed by a sandstorm. The story is all about how the crew and passengers find a way out. Key to this is that the plane, a Fairchild C-82, has enough undamaged parts that, with the tools they have, they can build a new aircraft sufficient to fly them out. It's a fun movie. The brains behind the rebuild is Dorfmann (played by Hardy Krüger) who works as an aeronautical designer and engineer. Only near the end of the film is it learned that he works for a toy company building motorized flying models rather than big commercial aircraft. Needless to say, that despite the confrontational moments that that reveal brings, the new plane flies, and all are saved, and Dorfmann is a redeemed hero.
For most of motorized aviation history, the distinction between toys and "real planes" was obvious, and it is easy to understand how Dorfmann's ideas would have been derided. But today, the line seems very blurry. In this article, toy airplanes are serving legitimate commercial roles as a means of post and delivery. Larger scale versions of such drone-derived aircraft are starting to show up as personal flying cars, flying boats, military vehicles, law enforcement purposes, research and science, and media and the arts.
The distinction is gone. It used to be that a top of the line IBM 360 took up a giant room with massive electrical and cooling overhead to deliver far less than a smart phone in your pocket can do these days. Back when planes were "big iron", tiny radio controlled models were just toys. Now, they might just revolutionize the whole commercial and military airspace.
Three cheers to Dorfmann.
Just a bit of background. There was a trial by project Wing last year (mentioned in TFA). That trial copped enormous backlash from local residents, mostly around the noise.
Despite the public outcry, they are proceeding with the next step towards commercialisation.
How did they manage this? And why Canberra?
Canberra (Australia's capital city) sits in a Territory (ACT), not a State. The jurisdiction distinction between Federal laws and Territory laws are less clear compared to between Federal laws and State laws. For example, the ACT has in the past has legalised marijuana, euthanasia, and pill testing, and each one has been struck down by Federal government. This would not have happened if the ACT was a state.
Project Wing have wedged themselves into this gray area. With the Territory government and the federal Aviation Authority (CASA) each pointing the finger at each other, arguing about who's jurisdiction it falls into. The local government doesn't really want it to proceed, but doesn't feel like it has the power to stop it.
Is drone delivery preferable by some rando mail Amazon private (male) driver showing up at my rural house when my wife is home alone? Yep.
Is a drone flying to my rural home to drop off wings somehow worrying? When you consider it's Google, and that drone has vid cameras and presumably microphones, and can be warranted by the government, you bet it's worrying. I can't quite figure out why tho.
This is Google. I already foresee the next /. headline "Google Disbands Drone Delivery"
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.