Amazon drones are coming to town. Some locals want to shoot them
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Bill O’Reilly of Fox News among other prominent Christian conservatives repeatedly talked about the “War on Christmas”, which Donald Trump more recently claimed he won.
You are suggesting the Buzzfeed story was fabricated without providing any evidence.
But it doesn't matter how many of them there are - they could be able to fly at an altitude where they don't cause meaningful noise pollution.
For context, the global average cost for electricity is about $0.13 USD per kWH. From wikipedia, "Over an 8-hour work shift, an average, healthy, well-fed and motivated manual laborer may sustain an output of around 75 watts of power." [0] So, from a purely mechanical perspective, a human can only output about 0.6 kWH of work per day, which is only worth about $0.08 of electricity per day. And yet, in states like California, where this test is being done, human labor costs a minimum of $15/hour, or $120/day.
Energy is not the limiting factor. We could use drastically more energy and still save gobs of money if we can cut the cost of employing a human out of the loop.
Say someone drives a 200 horsepower car. That's roughly 1200 kWh/day of available mechanical power.
Depends on altitude before delivery?
I’m willing to let this play out.
The reverse beep sound is comparably annoying but not so common in a quiet neighbor.
At 100m high, noise varies between 50dB to 55dB, depending on drone size. That's for current drones. That is below daytime noise levels in many places.
That's not even accounting for specific measures to decrease their sound levels. Those are going to be delivery drones, after all, not racers. They can use larger, slower and specifically designed propellers.
I can not understand why Amazon vans make that horrible sound when reversing. Surely the croaking hurts them more than saving a few accidents helps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-up_beeper
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3018517/ "Still another alternative is the broadband beeper, a device that has the same cadence as the conventional beeper but broadcasts a “white-noise, whooshing sound,” says Thalheimer, who has no financial interest in or affiliation with Brigade Electronics, the manufacturer. He explains the sound is still readily audible behind the vehicle and is more easily localizable than a single-tone beeper, but the white noise is masked by community noise, so it is much less annoying to the public."
https://www.forconstructionpros.com/construction-technology/... https://brigade-electronics.com/en-us/products/backup-and-wa...
Noise is the only concern I'm aware of.
This is always what happens. Combine it with a new thing no one really seems to want and a dead kid? What do you think would happen?
If it survives long enough, accidents from drone deliveries will become normalized too. But they have a long way to go before the public gives them that benefit of the doubt.
The opposite should occur: traffic accident fatalities should become denormalized. Every time a pedestrian dies on the roads it should be front page news and have people demanding that politicians should do something. Seems unattainable, but I believe that they are close to this reality in Sweden.
At the altitude these will be flying at it shouldn’t be an issue.
[1] https://patents.google.com/?q=drone+landing&oq=drone+landing
In particular:
> [An Amazon spokesperson said] The company’s drone “does not capture imagery from underneath when it is flying to its delivery destination and back” and doesn’t use that data for any other purpose.
I have low confidence that the spirit of that statement is true today, given all the places in that sentence that leave room for interpretation, and I have every confidence that they would gladly use a fleet of drones to capture valuable image data once it's in place and people are used to it.
Nothing new under the sun.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/amazon-tests-delivery-drones...
Electronic interference runs the risk of FCC attention.
But passive barriers (nets that are invisible to the drones' sensors) - now that doesn't have an obvious risk. They don't even have to destroy the drone: "Here, Amazon, this one seems to have something wrong with it!"
Amazon is Weyland-Yutani. It is Tyrell Corporation. It is IOI. It's a Snow Crash FOQNE.
Wanting to rebel against "The Corporation" is a pretty common reaction when you see a megacorp consuming the world.
You pre-program a flight with GPS coordinates, and then just send the drone on its way.
Check out https://flylitchi.com and the "mission hub" ... that's what I use for DJI drones.
https://ctstechnologys.com/gps-spoofing-technologyOf course, a robotic sextant is not going to be as accurate as GPS, but I bet you could get within 100-200m of your destination.
FTFY
I’m not particularly inclined to let them, but I don’t have the money to pay off politicians, which is how I’m assuming this is coming to pass.
I guess that means I side with the locals. Lets capture these things and return them as piles of parts to Amazon.
Heck, in many parts of California, you won't be sent to prison for robbery...
Going on the legal offensive and putting them in the position to prove they're doing no harm (including a discovery process to confirm their telemetry isn't gamed or flawed) is a much better tactic. Still a legal uphill battle, but one you're signing yourself up for anyway if you take a gun to an Amazon drone. At least this way it's on your terms, not theirs.
I mean they're not "just" trying to deliver a package. They're doing it close enough to my land where I could land a shot.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not going to do it. I don't have a gun, a bow, or more than a tiny sliver of a yard.
But still, I kind of hope someone does it just so I can follow the case.
If I'm defending my family or property, I won't be firing wildly into the air. It'll be precise and I'll be aware of my target, what's behind it, and what's beside it (one of the 4 universal laws of firearm safety).
My only concern for my neighbors will be if they get their shot off on the drone before I get mine. <grin>
"drone endangers my family or property"
I'm not firing at any harmless drones or vans or anything that's not a threat.
You must really love your drones and fear for their safety.
I'd say best of luck in such a case, because it'll be Amazon's telemetry on whether the drone was an actual threat over testimony that their lawyers will do their damnedest to prove unreliable (or at least less reliable than the avionics).