
Amazon Can Now Test Its Delivery Drones in the U.S - VeXocide
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/amazon-drone-faa-green-light/
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startupfounder
I have mixed feelings about the rapid pace that technology is replacing human
jobs.

As a consumer I couldn't be happier about getting things delivered faster and
higher quality experiences with sub 1 hour delivery. Across the board
technology companies are replacing humans and consolidating services.

My concern comes when I think about the accelerating rate that technology is
replacing human jobs faster than humans can re-educate themselves to get new
jobs. Education here is the missing link and if you look at our public
education system it sucks, is leaving many poor and underserved people behind
and creating a two class system.

I look forward to reading the pros and cons of technology replacing jobs with
the understanding that HN is a pro technology community.

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serge2k
We shouldn't be impeding progress to save jobs.

I believe an ultimate goal should be to reach the point where people don't
need jobs.

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cmurf
OK. But what's your proposal for how they get food, clothing, living space?
The labor portion of food, clothing, shelter being automated only eliminated a
part of their cost. They still have a cost, so if people don't have jobs, how
do they continue to acquire the things they need to live?

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jsprogrammer
I've been thinking about this for awhile. I believe that the dependency graphs
need to be made explicit and open. Everyone should be able to see what
resources there are, which are being used for what, the entire supply chain,
and projections.

We'll likely need new distributed protocols to be able to make group decisions
about things, but I think we'll be able to get a long way just by making key
information widely available.

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digisth
If delivery-by-automated-drone ever actually becomes a serious service, might
it be a good idea to start considering "building/structure electronic
tagging"? That way, drones don't have to rely solely on GPS, or (I'm guessing)
OCR of addresses and such. Obviously, with "guided" delivery, which is what
we're going to have for now, this is less of a problem, but the ideal would be
to have them be fully automated end-to-end (pickup, fly, dropoff, return with
no human intervention.) With a beacon, we could give rough coordinates, then
have the drones hone in on the beacon signal with the proper address.

I'm not sure what would make a good "beacon with address metadata" technology,
but it seems worth thinking about.

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amelius
I guess that's exactly what Google is using wifi data for.

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trose
Hopefully Amazon develops some stealthier drones for this program. One
commercial drone can sound like an angry swarm of bees on its own. Being
anywhere near a distribution center could because maddening if they have
hundreds of drones coming and going.

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uberdog
I'm interested in this as well and did some research on it and apparently most
of the noise is generated by the ESCs (the components that control the speed
of the rotors) and not the rotor blades themselves.

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ereckers
Does anyone know of a good video or presentation that both describes and
visually shows us how this will work in practice?

I've seen the earlier news clips showing the drone delivering a package to the
back porch of a house, which got a simple shrug out of me, but how's this
envisioned at scale?

Do I look out my second story window and see a drone pass by every 10 minutes?
Or is there initial use cases outside of residential that will be the first to
adopt the technology?

I just want to see it with my own eyes, before actually seeing it with my own
eyes.

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cmurf
Amazon's been ripping on the FAA since the beginning, about how the FAA needs
to do XYZ+5001 things. And yet Amazon has hardly come up with a plan of its
own to answer some basic questions such as yours.

FAR 91.119 in part says: "no person may operate an aircraft below...an
altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue
hazard to persons or property on the surface."

There are numerous regulations that should apply to drones, just as there are
ones that shouldn't, and ones yet to be written unique to drones. But has
Amazon provided any input on the existing regulatory paradigm? I haven't heard
anything but whining.

I don't see how, or why, an autonomous aircraft should be exempt from the
regulation cited above. It's the same thing we expect of other aircraft. We're
talking about ~50lb (plus or minus, what, 40lb?), at up to 400' above the
ground, at up to 100mph. As a pilot of both single and multi-engine airplanes,
I'm very appropriately expected to be at an altitude and location that in the
event of a power plant failure I can prevent on-ground injuries. We can't just
let companies throw up their hands and say "yeah, it's a problem we're working
on, but we must not have deliveries impeded in the meantime!"

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cmurf
The Drone Wars [http://rapere.io/](http://rapere.io/)

I can see neighborhoods having these things, to attack overflying drones that
have no purpose being near the neighborhood. Parks departments taking out
drones from "no drones" parks. With all this type of automation, compliance
will also have to be automated. It's impractical to call the cops and say
"I've got a drone buzzing around the neighborhood".

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chrismcb
Please don't let amazon or any other corporation fill our skies with drones. I
don't mind one here or there for photography purposes, but to have drones
buzzing about delivering packages is just wrong. Keep our skies clear

