Little after 10am, pure speculation but wonder if the angle of the sun overwhelmed the dynamic range of the image sensor over a particularly inopportune area of the frame. Guessing no LiDAR on drones like this.
Fine speculation. But they should be smart enough not to fly into their own blind spots e.g. the sun. They would tack back and forth I bet. They have a lot of tricks like this.
I bet it has to be a confluence of factors. I hope Amazon reports openly what went wrong. FAA should demand it. Will be a very interesting report if we ever get to read it.
I wonder if they do a routine map of the delivery area (with a Lidar plane) so they have a high-resolution scan of the city for better pathing. But they didn't expect something like a crane that could be assembled so high and fast to be in the way.
Based on the descriptions I've read so far, it sounds like the drones didn't give enough space around the crane boom, which it seems like they avoided. That's not to make an excuse. But it's a different defect than failing to detect the crane boom.
I'm currently in Phoenix and it's a little after 10am and the sun is almost directly overhead at this time of day. Would they need sensors pointing directly overhead in-flight?
mmWave is the usual solution for this; I know that Amazon were at least testing using mmWave but I'm not sure if it made it to their production drones.
The local Walmart nearest me has also started using drone delivery using Zipline drones. It's not a store I frequent, but recently drove past and the landing/launching site has a very unique look to it. At first thought, I thought it was a small carnival type of set up, but realized the rides looked really weird. There's large towers that remind me of the sculptures in Singapore near the ship on stilts building. I just perused Zipline's website hoping to find some imagery, but the site is clearly focused on promotional aspects with happy people receiving packages. zzzzzz.
There were plenty of proposals back in 2021 about having highways in the sky for drone delivery operations, at least in Canada, so such incidents are avoided, as relying on technology alone isn't enough and the risk plans are only to mitigate rather than eliminate the risks.
That being said, drone delivery will not really become a thing unless the endurance issue is resolved, like a new breakthrough battery technology that gives you at least 4 hours flight time (hybrid drones are noisy), as for any drone to have a proper impact, it should have three items checked: endurance, payload, and range. The last two are pretty much resolved by having modular payloads and flying over the internet, the first one is still pending.
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> Our approval includes the ability to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight, using our sophisticated on-board detect and avoid system. This is an historic, first-of-its-kind approval for a new drone system and a new operating location following a rigorous FAA evaluation of the safety of our systems and processes.
It's true the FAA would have had to have signed off on these so that will be interesting.
Terrifying. Imagine being a roofer or other worker when a delivery drone knocks your ass off the n-th floor surface that you're working on. It wouldn't take much to get somebody killed in such a precarious situation.
Flying in uncontrolled airspace in VMC is a “see and avoid” environment, meaning this looks like a pretty bad screw up by Amazon.
The fact that two different drones crashed into the same object raises even more serious questions on the quality of Amazon’s tech and their ability to safely monitor it.
> It's unclear if anyone was injured during the incident.
'It's unclear if' is a phrase that paints a brilliant picture of an organ's journalistic standing.
It means there's no information either way, what follows is pure speculation, probably false, but the author can put whatever idea they want in our heads, since they've prefaced that it 'may or may not be the case'.
It's unclear if the drones had malicious intent. It's unclear if the author was sober while writing and free of criminal record.
By the way, I see very little discussion on the drones used in the UA-RU war, which should be quite interesting from a hacker's perspective. Technology is going very fast there.
I'm mildly amused by this. It's an open air environment, did someone go stand over one of the crashed drones as it burst into flames and just, breathed deep? Glad they got treatment, plastic smoke is gross.
Also wow, the drones are massive, and apparently flying so low they will hit cranes putting things on single story buildings? That's so stupid.
Dear tech world: Please do not fly 80 pound projectiles just a few feet above my head at speed. Jeeze.
Household ownership of cars hit 50% by 1930 but there was no federal seatbelt mandate unitl 1968 or regulation of intoxicated driving until the 1980s.
Don't hold your breath waiting on the US government to give a shit about death and destruction of its people. Let the industry discover the tech and capitalist forces dictate safety, around 2060 we can start having serious conversations about drone safety.
To any of the aspiring Ralph Nader's of the drone industry out there, thank you for your service in advance.
To be clear, they crashed into the vertical cable hanging down from the end of the crane. Not into the structure of the crane itself.
So it's not as bad as "they don't see cranes". But it absolutely raises the question of whether they can see cables, whether hanging from cranes or spanning telephone poles.
And honestly, cables are really hard to see in the air. That's literally why high-voltage power lines hang those big red-orange marker balls on them for pilots to see.
Genuinely curious what the solution here is. Hard-code some logic to identify cranes and always assume there's a cable dangling from the end? Never fly underneath anything? Implement some kind of specialized detection for thin cables if that's possible?
49 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 72.8 ms ] threadI bet it has to be a confluence of factors. I hope Amazon reports openly what went wrong. FAA should demand it. Will be a very interesting report if we ever get to read it.
https://www.zipline.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_(film)
That being said, drone delivery will not really become a thing unless the endurance issue is resolved, like a new breakthrough battery technology that gives you at least 4 hours flight time (hybrid drones are noisy), as for any drone to have a proper impact, it should have three items checked: endurance, payload, and range. The last two are pretty much resolved by having modular payloads and flying over the internet, the first one is still pending.
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Edit: per below was actually a crane
> Our approval includes the ability to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight, using our sophisticated on-board detect and avoid system. This is an historic, first-of-its-kind approval for a new drone system and a new operating location following a rigorous FAA evaluation of the safety of our systems and processes.
It's true the FAA would have had to have signed off on these so that will be interesting.
The fact that two different drones crashed into the same object raises even more serious questions on the quality of Amazon’s tech and their ability to safely monitor it.
'It's unclear if' is a phrase that paints a brilliant picture of an organ's journalistic standing.
It means there's no information either way, what follows is pure speculation, probably false, but the author can put whatever idea they want in our heads, since they've prefaced that it 'may or may not be the case'.
It's unclear if the drones had malicious intent. It's unclear if the author was sober while writing and free of criminal record.
Seriously, why is this downvoted?
* No one was injured directly, but someone was treated for smoke inhalation
* The drones "were flying back to back"
* They hit the cable of a crane (including a link to a video showing the crane). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ZpY6qHcTk
I'm mildly amused by this. It's an open air environment, did someone go stand over one of the crashed drones as it burst into flames and just, breathed deep? Glad they got treatment, plastic smoke is gross.
Also wow, the drones are massive, and apparently flying so low they will hit cranes putting things on single story buildings? That's so stupid.
Dear tech world: Please do not fly 80 pound projectiles just a few feet above my head at speed. Jeeze.
Don't hold your breath waiting on the US government to give a shit about death and destruction of its people. Let the industry discover the tech and capitalist forces dictate safety, around 2060 we can start having serious conversations about drone safety.
To any of the aspiring Ralph Nader's of the drone industry out there, thank you for your service in advance.
So it's not as bad as "they don't see cranes". But it absolutely raises the question of whether they can see cables, whether hanging from cranes or spanning telephone poles.
And honestly, cables are really hard to see in the air. That's literally why high-voltage power lines hang those big red-orange marker balls on them for pilots to see.
Genuinely curious what the solution here is. Hard-code some logic to identify cranes and always assume there's a cable dangling from the end? Never fly underneath anything? Implement some kind of specialized detection for thin cables if that's possible?