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Comment by tehlike | Hacker News Reader

unmanned choppers existed, iirc. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/30/black-hawk-d...

I think the answer is, lots of news coverage. Probably would have been the same amount if it were a manned one.

Except that's for military applications. If that thing crashes in a field in a war zone no one cares. If it crashes into a high rise and kills hundreds of office workers, then people will care.

Unmanned heavy flight in populated civilian areas isn't a solved problem and probably one that will never be solved. People won't want the risk. Saving $1 on shipping isn't worth it.

What about longer but still quicker routes than a typical delivery truck? Having a drone means it could do the same pre-programmed route every time. Instead of as-the-crow-flies, have it take a route that's mostly over unpopulated areas but ultimately saves time and money by avoiding traffic, intersections, bridges, etc.

Time is only one of the aspects. UAV can do the same task over and over, and wouldn't have the legislations that limit per-driver throughput (like continuous amount of driving one is allowed). So even if you take longer distances, there will be other benefits.

as a person who developed UAVs in a smaller scale, I agree with your sentiment on crashing.

But i guess this is similar to how crashes from traffic went down over time. We can take all the precautions, do hundreds of thousands of simulations, and it will get better over time.

Well, if your craft is unmanned then it can be very small, which makes the idea appealing for the last mile and less appealing as you start moving cargos the size of a human anyway.

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