One of my former colleagues won an Ignobel prize for showing star-wars to locusts. He was actually studying specialised neurones involved in collision detection. If tiny locusts can swarm without colliding, then drones should manage too.
Fuelwise – model helicopters can already fly several miles on battery power alone. The bigger petrol powered helicopters have endurances up to several hours and are reasonably energy efficient. I see no fundamental reason for fuel costs to be a significant factor. The reason small model aircraft drink so much fuel is that they use a lot of expensive nitromethane – almost akin to carrying your oxidiser like a rocket.
Not in IMC. And I don’t see Amazon deliveries being suspended in OVC002 conditions…
Also helis cannot carry much weight.
Maybe the cost model adds up, but it could just be that these firms are “floating a baloon”. It is very cheap R&D – a tiny tiny % of their resources. This probing of the state of the art / public acceptance of the “amazing” things they are playing with gets them constant free publicity (the media is constantly absolutely desperate for stories) and costs less than spending zillions with advertising agencies on the stupid banal idiotic “what kind of person is this advert supposed to appeal to” TV adverts which everybody else is doing. Same with Ryanair saying they will remove seats and have standing room only (it is theoretically certifiable, apparently).
Nothing beats road delivery for low cost (well, sea freight is even cheaper) so the costing must hang on the actual delivery overhead.
Might it be “end of farm road to farm” delivery from van that’s planned? I doubt the technology exists to produce an un-rob-able cargo drone for even small-town use.
The new US AOPA mag quotes Amazon as testing UAVs for up to 5lb payloads which Amazon says is 86% of its products.
I doubt the technology exists to produce an un-rob-able cargo drone for even small-town use
An excellent point 
Jam the GPS and it is sure to do “something” which IMHO will be to land ASAP.
An excellent point Jam the GPS and it is sure to do “something” which IMHO will be to land ASAP.
Well with the gun culture in the US, I can imagine people taking a more target practice approach to “scoring free stuff”!
An excellent point Jam the GPS and it is sure to do “something” which IMHO will be to land ASAP.
I am sure the drone itself would make a more interesting trophy than its cargo – in terms of both cost and leisure value. A bit like the anecdotal small shop that put up a security camera and soon thereafter had the highest-value item stolen – the security camera itself.
I wonder how they do that.
I wrote “would need,” not “has.” Humans have passive optical sensor in pilot circles called Mk.1 Eyeball. Theoretically you could have ground based primary radars and just send relevant data to the drone. But I don’t know much about performance of radars.
If you don’t believe me
I know that humans are not perfect and have limitations. I’m all for transponders because I consider the probability I’ll overlook something or see it too late as too high to be comfortable with it. But unless they allow head-down VFR, how can they accept drones that ignore anything without an active transponder?
I don’t see why.
See above. Not everything in the air has a transponder and there is always a chance that it will malfunction. And what will the drone do if it determines its receiver is malfunctioning? Self-destruct?
I forgot to add that according to the mag article the FAA have not yet allowed Amazon to test the drones in public airspace.
The FAA seems very hard to convince that drones used in this way will be safe. I have to say I am not surprised! Sure they can create a visual detection system which works much better than the human eye – nowadays that is “just a software exercise” and probably well within the state of the art. But it won’t work in IMC, and the only solution to that would be mandatory transponders for all GA flying in IMC, which would be an “interesting development” for some countries to swallow (like the UK, for example ).
But can parcel delivery be fuel efficient?
I don’t really pay attention to the topic of parcel delivery by drones. So I’m more curious how would that parcel land. How big parcels are we talking about. Will the drone wait for me to sign for the parcel. Hmm… maybe I should look something up about these delivery drones.
But it won’t work in IMC
IFR usually means VMC below min 200ft. These delivery drones are IMO intended for the “last mile”, so they’re unlikely going to cruise at FL200, but rather operate close to the surface. So I still see visual sense and avoid a possibility for drones in VMC.
The only issue really is that the big sky theory that allows uncontrolled IFR in the UK is no longer going to work if the density of aerial vehicles grows significantly. And yes, that’s in the long run going to mean that all vehicles operating in IMC will need to radiate some sort of ADS-B like signal, whether the UK likes it or not… But hey, the part 145 cartel^Windustry needs a new job after everyone’s got 8.33kHz radios
