FAA clears UPS delivery drones to fly beyond visual line of sight

cyu@sh.itjust.worksbanned from community to

Technology@lemmy.world – 194 points – 1 years ago

FAA clears UPS delivery drones for longer-range flights

theverge.com

Drones to fly without spotters on the ground monitoring route and skies for other aircraft

Four months later:

Theft of UPS delivery drones causes UPS to halt production and use.

How to hack UPS drone V1.23.8 and install Buzzard CFW!!

I can’t wait for the articles about homemade anti-drone net guns becoming the new porch pirate’s weapon of choice

Porch pirates and crotchety old people.

Porch pirates and crotchety old people and anyone who doesn't like to hear screaming propellers outside of their living room window.

There’s some new toroidal propeller designs which actually greatly reduce the loudness and the offensiveness of the noise.

Who knows if they’ll use them tho

I've seen them and they look awesome. I really hope they do use them, because drones are disgustingly noisy.

Soon the sky will be full of these fuckers. I like the idea of them (edit: as in the utility of them), but can you imagine? Hundreds of them just buzzing around, constantly.

Is it really that different to the vrooming of cars that we have grown accustomed to?

Right? Cars are orders of magnitude louder, right in our face and constantly pump out reeking fumes. If these things reduce the amount of trucks on the road it would be a big win.

to be fair, at the height these things will be flying, you won't hear them on most days.

My mini drone can be heard from 200 feet up easily if you are underneath it. If its 100 or lower everyone around can hear it. 400feet is the maximum allowed height.

Pretty sure these have the new propeller shape that cuts noise by like 80% or something. See Mark Rober's video if you are interested :https://youtu.be/DOWDNBu9DkU?t=831

you won't hear them at 100ft especially if there's any ambient noise around you at all.

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That must be one crazy loud drone.

All the ones I fly, including others are practically silent past 100ft...

What RPM/blade diameter is your mini-drone? the smaller ones are louder because of the higher RPM's

Mini 3 pro. Thats probably true about the rpm i have no idea tho

Have to remember too that carrying packages will require more thrust. Also, they would probably be large enough that big birds don't try or fail to take them down. I was flying a ~35g drone around my yard last year and a hawk of some kind snatched it right out of the air and tried to kill it on top of a tree. Thankfully got it back with some diplomacy (yelling at bird) and no one was hurt. Drone still flies to this day...

Got it on camera too, the claws look massive.

There's no way these things will last.
But it is kinda cool in a Jetsons type of way.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

UPS delivery drones are now allowed to fly longer distance flights beyond the sight of ground operators, the Federal Aviation Administration revealed in a press release on Wednesday.

This is the kind of move that opens the door for drone delivery companies like Wing, FedEx, and Zip to deliver packages across a wider area and service more customers.

UPS Flight Forward, a UPS subsidiary focused on drone delivery, can now deliver small packages beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) without spotters on the ground monitoring the route and skies for other aircraft, using SwissDrones SVO 50 V2 drones.

That includes uAvionix Corp. and, last week, infrastructure inspection company Phoenix Air Unmanned.

The news comes just a few days after Walmart announced it’s partnering with Wing to make deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

It’s not clear what the number is now, but that’s well behind Amazon’s previous projection that it’d complete 10,000 deliveries to customers via drone by the end of 2023.

The original article contains 286 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 44%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Nothing spurs innovation like workers getting a contract that allows them to not starve.

I didn't see mention of what allowable ceiling of flight this is for, still below 400 feet? I would expect there will be regular flight paths established to specific urgent delivery customers (like hospitals) rather than just any package.

I would imagine it's still below 400ft to minimize the chance of interfering with manned aircraft. I read through a handful of articles though and none mentioned it.

A lot of people posting that the threat of theft or interference will put a halt to drone delivery, but I wonder if that will really be a problem when looking at the the return on investment. A lot of people have said similar things about self service checkouts but industry keeps pushing on.

The cost of drone delivery will shrink dramatically over time (labour and energy being the two big ones) especially if you compare it to equivalent service levels (e.g. same day delivery) so much so that companies would likely easily absorb the costs - if it all works of course.