
Product That Will Eventually Be Made: Getaway Drones - patmcguire
http://patrickjamesmcguire.com/2015/06/20/product-that-will-eventually-be-made-getaway-drones/
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ggreer
There are many practical uses for drones, but this is not one of them.

First, the drone must be outside to be able to escape quickly. That's a
problem, as consumer drones aren't designed to spend weeks sitting outdoors.
Even if a drone was weatherproof, it would need its batteries topped-up from
time to time.

Second, you will not have access to your phone or other signaling devices if
you are getting busted. It would be very hard to trigger the drone
surreptitiously.

Last, police are going to notice a drone flying away during a bust. And they
won't be happy about it. For all they know, the drone could be carrying a
bomb. This escalates the situation and makes a bad outcome much more likely.

If you want a better use of drones, here's one: First response. Place drone
"nests" every 500 meters in urban areas. Cell towers might be convenient
locations. When ShotSpotter[1] detects gunfire, dispatch the closest drone to
the scene. It can arrive within 20 seconds, record footage, and relay it to
police. Currently, police and medics wait for backup before going to the scene
of a shooting. But with drones to send the all-clear, they could treat victims
sooner, saving lives.

Future upgrades could even allow tracking of suspects. This would make it much
harder to get away with firing a gun in a city.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator)

~~~
bilbo0s
"...Place drone "nests" every 500 meters in urban areas. Cell towers might be
convenient locations. When ShotSpotter[1] detects gunfire, dispatch the
closest drone to the scene. It can arrive within 20 seconds, record footage,
and relay it to police..."

Is there some reason you wouldn't use stationary cameras to do this ??? I
mean... it seems like a lot of extra expense and technical hurdles for not
much more payoff. Actually... I'm pretty sure there isn't ANY payoff as far as
benefits beyond those conferred by the use of stationary cameras goes.

And the technical hurdles are pretty large. You're in an urban area... so how
do you get good lines of sight ??? You have to fly around quite a bit... and
you'd almost certainly need human controllers, increasing the expense. Drones
could crash during incident response, and in an urban area, ie-densely
populated, that definitely would entail some collateral damage. Potentially
even severe human casualties. Hackers can potentially boost your drones and
then they "own" them. I mean... the list goes on and on.

I think that the "better" use you gave is actually one of the WORST ideas you
could have for drone use. I mean... we have cameras right now ??? Why would we
not just set up a monitoring system... if we wanted a monitoring system ???

~~~
mschuster91
> You have to fly around quite a bit... and you'd almost certainly need human
> controllers, increasing the expense.

So where's the problem? Have two officers on duty, you don't have gunshots
that often to justify one officer per drone 24/7.

> I mean... we have cameras right now ??? Why would we not just set up a
> monitoring system... if we wanted a monitoring system ???

You could do this in the UK, but not anywhere else. NCIS LA ain't real.

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cstross
The whole "drones will be used to deliver everything" shtick that's coming out
of the USA really does _not_ resonate in the UK or Europe, where most folks
live in extremely dense (by American standards) cities -- US suburbia is
equivalent in density to open countryside, and many if not most people live in
apartments or houses that lack any kind of garden (yard) or garage. (And
typically have convenience stores within a hundred metres' walk of the front
door, more to the point -- which can already be used for deliveries.)

I'm basically calling bullshit on the extreme formulation of drone delivery.
There will be some niches that they colonize, and a few that they monopolize
(they're going to be a boon for postal/small package deliveries to
farms/exurban housing -- Post Office self-driving van goes past without
stopping while drone shuttles packages to doorsteps a quarter of a kilometer
away) but plenty of areas where they're going to be forbidden due to the
unacceptable risk of them falling on someone's head.

Here's maybe a better use:

Put weatherproofed power sockets with fiber connections on rooftops every 50
meters in urban areas. Then hang your 5G picocells from drones, and
dynamically re-structure your mesh of cellphone bases as demand shifts through
the day (by physically lifting and transferring the base station to a new
fiber/power feed as necessary). Goal being to feed a maximum number of radio
channels where demand is high, while avoiding black spots.

~~~
golergka
> unacceptable risk of them falling on someone's head

Same could be said about airplanes 100 years ago, but now I have planes flying
over my head about 20 times a day. Even in the post-9/11 world.

The safety of drones will only increase, and with such a great financial
incentive as the whole delivery industry, it will do so rapidly.

~~~
falcolas
> The safety of drones will only increase

I hate to be a negative Nancy about this, but [citation needed]. I fly a
multi-rotor coptor now, and when the battery hits a certain point it just
drops out of the sky, wherever it might happen to be. This is just a toy
model, so it doesn't have some of the fancier electronics a delivery drone
might - but there's nothing inherently stable about a multirotor like there is
with a plane.

Even the best motor failure "recovery" I've seen so far is still a multirotor
going into a barely-controlled death spiral - something which would still
cause a lot of damage to whatever it hit. Imagine it for a moment: a 20-30
pound object falling in an unpredictable (to humans) spiral at speeds faster
than you can run, with between three and seven 10 inch props moving at near
supersonic speeds at their tips.

I love 'em, but they're dangerous machines with lots of fast-moving parts, and
need to be treated as such.

~~~
icebraining
While not exactly inherent, there's plenty that can be done to further secure
their falls. Firstly, is to have automatic auto-landing when the battery is
getting low (with a good safety margin, of course).

The other is what DJI is already exploring with their "DropSafe", ie.,
parachute. A simple software tweak (when accelerometer detects falling, shut
down motors and deploy parachute) could make most falls reasonably safe (and
less costly to the owner).

With cameras, they could also try to avoid flying over humans.

Finally, in cities, they could fly most of their way over the roofs of
building, rendering a fall unlikely to hit anyone.

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jeffreyrogers
I'm skeptical of the idea that drones will deliver everything. That's like
saying planes will deliver everything because they're faster than ships. Yet
last I checked, most goods are transported on container ships. The thing
everyone talking about drones fails to take into account is cost. Drones are
very flexible because of their size and the fact that they fly, but as a
result they don't scale well. A UPS truck on the other hand can't drive
straight line distances between destinations, but it can hold a ton of
packages at once without needing to return to some sort of distribution
center.

~~~
jessriedel
Huh? No one reasonable claims that drones will deliver everything. The
applications are for short/medium-distance delivery that can't be scheduled in
advance, and possibly for last-ten-mile scheduled delivery in places that
aren't dense enough. (The later will probably be taken over by autonomous
cars, whichever comes first.) That's still a massive market, and will make
them ubiquitous.

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gbin
This is basically the overengineered iteration of the current v1: "put the
thing in the toilet and flush it"

~~~
anotheryou
toilet is not portable and can't be set of remotely.

still over-engineered. look how it's done:
[https://youtu.be/Wp2CEJb4oyY?t=71](https://youtu.be/Wp2CEJb4oyY?t=71)

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bayesianhorse
I think the main obstacle for drone delivery is that even failure rates as low
as 1 per a thousand hours would result in lots of injuries and damaged
property.

Helicopters and planes are maintained to a ridiculous degree. Without getting
that kind of safety into drones, they will fall down on people's heads left
and right. Especially once the drone traffic gets dense enough that they can
run into each other.

"Drones" may be used for drug smuggling, though.

~~~
rwallace
Well, as far as safety goes, consider the following possible delivery vehicles
for small packages:

1\. A couple of kilograms of drone, that typically won't kill you if it runs
into you.

2\. A couple of thousand kilograms of vehicle, heavy enough and moving fast
enough to kill or cause horrific injuries in even a glancing collision, moving
around not up in the air where there is open space but at street level where
people are trying to walk around, the vehicle itself being completely
brainless and relying entirely at every moment on the control of a fallible,
easily distracted human operator, and to cap it all, most likely running on
burning fossil fuel.

I put it to you that the first option has far better safety properties than
the second. If you're going to propose they both be banned, okay, at least
that's logically consistent. The one thing you can't do with any sort of
consistency or moral authority is criticize the first option while giving the
second a free pass.

~~~
fredkbloggs
Hyperbole much?

There is a very obvious difference between trucks and aircraft: the third
dimension. Trucks operate on streets and roads, which are clearly identified
and known to pedestrians as a hazardous location where extra attention to the
rules and conditions is required. While streets and roads could be made safer
for pedestrians (and, often, should!), there are literally billions of
pedestrian-vehicle interactions every day that are perfectly safe. This is
possible because a street is largely a 2- or even 1-dimensional environment
with clear, well-known rules for sharing safely and (generally) good
visibility so that every participant can get a full mental picture of that
environment.

Aircraft operate everywhere, and at an altitude well above where most people
would think to look. The danger from aircraft is not that a 10kg craft rams
you horizontally at 5 m/s while it flies 1 meter above the same sidewalk
you're using (though even that would probably cause significant injuries).
It's that a 10kg aircraft you never saw, thought to avoid, or even had an
opportunity to avoid falls 100 meters onto your head. That, by the way, is
going to "kill or cause horrific injuries" every single time.

It's fine to hate automobiles. They're not perfect. They do have collisions,
and sometimes those collisions kill humans. That's unfortunate, and worth
improving. Most of them also burn fossil fuels, which needs to stop (in most
of the world, drones will either burn fossil fuels or have batteries charged
by electricity generated by a coal-fired power plant, so they're not better).
But your "consistent solution" is absurd: a near-total elimination of economic
activity in exchange for a very modest reduction in the human death rate.
Which reduction would be immediately reversed and then some by the inability
of hospitals to procure medical supplies, among many, many other problems.

You should probably think about learning to accept a need for nuance. It
really helps in thinking about solving problems, which is what engineering is
all about. Insisting that everyone must either agree to ban all automobiles or
accept the uncontrollable and unavoidable risk of having others' property fall
on their head anywhere at any time is not a constructive position and will not
help you solve problems.

A more useful approach might be to ask yourself what would be required to make
UAV flights safer. Are there environments or applications for which these
problems could be minimized? What regulations or restrictions would help? Or
maybe you'd like to tackle pedestrian safety in urban areas, a much better-
studied set of problems. Or maybe you'd like to do some research, gathering
some data on UAV failure rates and modes so that you could inform regulators
as to which risks matter most.

That is, if you want to do something useful. That wasn't clear from your post.

~~~
rwallace
Well yes, that's my point. I was responding to a post that was basically
suggesting 'drones could in some circumstances be dangerous' implies 'we
shouldn't use drones at all' and objecting to the double standard - we don't
make that sort of argument for automobiles, and we shouldn't for drones
either.

'Drones could in some circumstances be dangerous' implying 'we should look at
how to make them safer' \- yes, I'm all in favour of that.

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erikb
If you can have getaway drones why not have the drones do the delivery in the
first place?

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M8
Based on title I assumed it's about vacations: put on an VR helmet - fly a
drone in Patagonia/Fuji/Arctic.

~~~
benplumley
I was picturing bank robbers climbing into the 'getaway drone' and making a
swift exit.

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jessaustin
If we're just spitballing some outlandish crime scenarios.... If it's not
dangerous to transport the contraband to some unrecoverable location, why not
just destroy it? I'd imagine some thermate or similar reliable rapid
incendiary technique would be quicker and less obviously drug-related. If
eventual recovery is a priority, a weather balloon with a gps tracker might be
a better option than a drone? A drone is going to run out of power within an
hour, while a balloon might stay aloft for weeks, so partners in crime can be
in position for recovery.

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moron4hire
I don't want easier FAA licensing of drone pilots, I just want Uber-style
flying car pickup. Maybe even have the pilot working remotely to keep the
weight down on the aircraft and make it more efficient! I don't need to fly
the thing myself, I just don't want to be stuck in the same traffic as
everyone else, and the addition of a 3rd dimension greatly increases the
available traffic space.

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rogerdickey
Balloons are cheaper

~~~
snarfy
Reminds me of this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp2CEJb4oyY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp2CEJb4oyY)

~~~
vonklaus
That video is fake. I think it is a funny illustration, and could possibly
work, however it is not real.

Many police forces use Glock 17 pistols, which have a standard capacity of 17
bullets[0]. Ignoring how fake the muzzle blast looks, the "officer" empties
his 20 round clip into the air. I can't find a citation, but I believe police
are not meant to fire unless they are in danger. While an officer could
certainly ignore this, one would know that they could have disciplinary action
take for emptying an entire clip haphazardly into the air in a busy location.

[0][https://us.glock.com/products/model/g17](https://us.glock.com/products/model/g17)

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bhouston
Then there will be police drones that chase other drones or track their
location very precisely. Just because cars were invented didn't mean that
police continued to use their horses to chase down cars, they also got cars.

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drcross
The scope for accidents it too high. Get a strong gust of wind where you
groundplant and you've given your drone away which is covered in you
fingerprints.

~~~
fredkbloggs
Well, yes, practically speaking this is a silly idea, like almost everything
written about UAVs these days. But the notion that the UAV necessarily has my
fingerprints on it is also flawed. It's no more necessary (or wise) to leave
my fingerprints on the UAV than it is to leave my fingerprints on a murder
weapon or the door of a bank vault. The only catch is that someone clever
enough to remember to wear gloves or clean up is also going to have a much
more effective way of ensuring their illegal goods are not tied to them.

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anotheryou
balloons do the trick (and have long range).
[https://youtu.be/Wp2CEJb4oyY?t=71](https://youtu.be/Wp2CEJb4oyY?t=71)

maybe multiple balloons will even level out, so they don't all burst in thin
air but stay somewhat low?

