Engineering a Hook That Could Make Drone Deliveries Real

I’m friends with André! We work in the same building. He’s been working on that damn hook for some time now. My desk is near a multi story atrium in the building and sometimes he tests the spooling system near me. I can’t recall when he started this part of it but for at least a year now I’ve been hearing of the ups and downs. They have so many little issues to work out and they always want to keep weight down. It’s too bad the article didn’t have any pictures of the prototypes he has, but I guess they’re not ready to reveal that.

André is also responsible for building a pretty awesome jet turbine powered chainsaw. :-D

https://youtu.be/cr02tS39op8

So a whole article on the perfect hook, with nice photos, but they didn’t include one of he perfect hook they designed? Anybody found one?

All's cool, I already see the air full of drones (if I can't have my flying cars in 2020, drones would suffice), I'm truly worried about the noise though.

While hoping that electric cars will make cities less noisy (I can feel it in Berlin with more and more electric cars and scooters), the buzzing sounds of drones is already too loud for me - and I've seen only several so far.

That's going to be terrible, having dozens of them buzzing around, like your typical high-pitched scooter, but next to your 3rd floor window.

Any quiet drones in development? ;)

I recommend looking at the prototypes throughout the years from them [1]. It's pretty cool to see what they changed. I am super curious about some of their decisions. I am sure there are good reasons but I am not too clear why (like having smaller props. Did the wake of the large props decreased the efficiency for gliding more than using smaller props for hovering?!)

[1] https://x.company/projects/wing/ (scroll about half way down and there should be a slideshow you can click into)

Meanwhile in rural China:

> Just a few feet above the ground, the drone drops the box then zips back up into the sky and disappears. The spectacle is over in 20 seconds.

https://www.economist.com/business/2018/06/09/how-e-commerce...

Drone deliveries are real. They are happening in China right now.

https://www.economist.com/business/2018/06/09/how-e-commerce...

Rwanda too, with Zipline.

Arcade claw machines already feature battle-tested mechanics for raising and lowering something on a string.

They do not simply deploy a wound bobbin, but instead have the bobbin after 2 idler wheels. One wheel is housed on a lever - The weight of the claw (or in this case package) keeps the idler on a lever pushed down during most of the operation - when it contacts a prize (or in this case the floor) the idler receives less load and thus the lever moves up ensuring it does not jam or unwind further.

Its a pretty ingenious design from an age where load sensing would be very expensive - and achieves robust bi-directional winding with end detection with just 1 microswitch.

This zero-moving parts hook sounds great, but I don't see how much different it can be from a gravity hook, or a ships buoy-hook; unless it simply captures the package interface in a specific orientation (anyone who has ever played "fishing" with 2L pop bottles and a curtain ring knows the satisfaction of such mechanisms) - my guess would be that the attachment point is a specific shape rather than a circle; to promote the tension-less force to movement up and off.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_hook from the 19th century.

This does not seem to be sound engineering to me.

Just the sole fact that they have no payload faring tells me that they don't have a single man with aeronautic engineering background.