Hacker News Reader

Comment by yalogin | Hacker News Reader

Every drone is going to record everything using multiple cameras and send them to their backend. That is quiet disconcerting. There are no legally set paths for the drones so they are free to go everywhere and see everything. Amazon and Google are probably salivating more at the prospects of getting these videos than the actual delivery itself. I am concerned about startups in the bay and even more so about companies from China and elsewhere that create these drones. At least with Google and Amazon we can cry foul and pressure them into not doing somethings. With the rest of the ecosystem its a free for all.

View on HN

Although every new technology comes with negative and unforeseen consequences, history tells us that on the whole, new technology is desirable.

Even though the photograph changed the intimacy and privacy of face to face interaction, and the electric streetlight made public spaces artificial and impersonal, these new technologies certainly did more good than harm.

We should embrace the good that will come from new technologies. I for one and looking forward to a future where my packages are delivered quickly and securely, and I'm willing to accept that as a side effect Google will have slightly better ads.

The consequences of this technology are quite obvious. Noise pollution. Flying camera systems pollution. Drone pollution.

There are also obvious privacy issues - if such drones will ever allowed to become commonplace, some percentage of drones will probably look like Fedex, but would be operated by other actors.

I think, proper application of such drones could be emergency services. Perform emergency delivery, use drones to establish a temporary passage for an emergency vehicle, ...

I’m a researcher in this field. First, do you have any evidence that routes are unrestricted? I’m not involved in this particular test, but my guess is that there are extremely specific restrictions. In the more general case, the US government (primarily NASA and the FAA) are actively working on coming up with the regulations that will cover this on a permanent basis, and they will absolutely consider privacy among literally hundreds of other factors.

The core premise of the technology is delivery to every home. To deliver to every home, you need to have a camera pointed to every home, and their neighbors, and the people / cars on the street. Not sure what your point is, are you proposing drones are going to fly blind due to some regulation? Can _you_ provide evidence of such regulation?

Are you asking us to trust megacorps to not make maximum use of their surveillance data? When they've been caught time and again with the hand in the privacy cookie jar? When they turned the Internet into a 24/7 panopticon, with every web page carrying tens of surveillance beacons connected to the motherhive?

Restricting routes to following existing streets would limit the privacy issues considerably. A drone following the street should not need to look at much other than the what is on or next to the street.

Compare to no route restrictions, where you would probably have the drones flying over people's back yards, which would be a considerable reduction in privacy.

if drones are just following existing streets, there's nothing innovative with drone delivery... it will just be ridiculously more inefficient than todays modes of delivery.

No sane vendor will agree to these sort of terms and these companies do not care about privacy, they are all in the data mining and advertising business.

Besides the points already mentioned by shadowgovt, another big advantage of drones over existing modes of delivery even if drones have to follow existing streets is that they can be self-flying fairly easily.

Unlike self-driving cars, self-flying drones do not have to worry about people running into their path, cars parked in the parking lane adjacent to their line suddenly opening a door into their line, or sharing the road with unpredictable human driven vehicles.

The drone route regulations will be starting with routes that have no other traffic except birds and insects. The routes can be designed so that there are different levels for north, south, east, and west travel, so except at the endpoints a drone never has to worry about encountering another drone moving in a different direction. It only has to deal with drones coming up from behind or coming up on drones ahead of it.

Airborne vehicles can fly faster than ground speed and aren't constrained by rush-hour traffic.

Are you suggesting that these drones will follow streets for the entirety of their routes? Doesn't that nearly defeat the purpose of flying? Can you imagine if airplanes had to follow interstates for their entire flights?

These particular air craft do not use cameras for navigation.

Why do you have such a basic question if you are a researcher in this field?

The basic question being whether the vehicles are flying restricted routes? Because those sorts of details are very much determined for an individual test and as I said I’m not involved with this one.

Because he is not a researcher? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20326703

Fair point, but it’s a very fuzzy line. In some contexts I don’t call myself a researcher because I’m not a PhD and O don’t publish much. In this context, I think I bring exactly the same context as any other researcher on my team.

You are aware aerial photography is legal and common?

Right but what happens when you have coverage that is refreshed every hour or even less? You then have another surveillance network, one which is very hard to opt out of

That's not what these particular aircraft are capable of.

I think we're way past that point already. Everyone with a phone already has their location tracked at least by their phone company. You might've even given it away to other companies willingly: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline.

I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech. We got better traffic jam maps. And maybe a handful of criminals who forgot to leave their phone at home got caught.

I think this is one of those things that people growing up with the tech won't think anything of it (mom wants to always know your location) but old geezers will reminisce of a time where we still had to call a landline and talk a friend's parents first to see if they are home.

> I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech.

Honestly the last time I saw a drone, the most annoying thing about it was its noise. I can't imagine them buzzing around all the time simply because of that.

This was one of the leading complaints in the testing of Wing in Australia IIUC.

Delivery worked, but neighbors complained that the drones sounded like they were powered by the chained souls of the thousand hungry damned. They've apparently worked hard to get the sound down to a mere hundred hungry damned. ;)

They should work on getting some vibrato in there so they sound like angels instead. ;)

Agree, when developing technology,they need to think more about the impact on others.

They are. Frangibility was a huge part of the resulting design.

You might say _impact on others_ was one of the most important things they had to address with the FAA.

You get at least as much noise from living in a city.

Have you heard a drone? even tiny ones are loud as shit. some guy in my neighborhood flies his drone occasionally and it's super annoying. I can't imagine how annoying these giant drones delivering packages will be.

Yes, I fly them professionally. The sound is related to the size, pitch, and profile of the propellers as well as the speed they are spinning.

The reason the guy down the street is probably loud is he is flying a race drone and hitting very high RPMs with it.

It seems that due to frangibility concerns, Project Wing uses much smaller motors and props now which requires a higher RPM to beat the air into submission.

Have you heard a siren? They're intended to be loud.

> Have you heard a siren? They're intended to be loud.

They're also intended to do things like saving people's lives, not delivering their Amazon orders.

Ambulance and fire engine sirens; police not so much. But that really has no bearing on how loud they are.

The type of noise is completely different from a drone.

Yes, in some parts of cities, and not everyone lives or wants to live in a city.

The amount of public photography doubling over and over in an exponential increase of surveillance is a serious problem that cannot be dismissed with a simple "the act is legal and always has been".

In a legal studies class I took we compared two cases taking about (IRRC) unreasonable searches. In one, a police officer walking a beat saw some drugs/guns/etc. through a window and promptly got a warrant for a search. In another, the police "happened to be doing some aerial photography" over a weed farm and thence got a warrant etc. IIRC, the former was fine, the latter wasn't, basically because of the definitions of "ordinary" or something like that.

Obviously IAMNL, YMMV, etc., but the legal system does care about degree of normalcy.

Ps: if someone can better fill in the details I'm sure these are commonly studied cases and that I've butchered the facts. Please correct me!

Aerial imagery over a farm might be unusual, but it's common in urban environments.

https://www.appgeo.com/maps-pointers/google-now-selling-aeri...

Since around 2011 Google has been flying its own missions to collect 6 inch (15 cm) pixel imagery across the entire United States... goal is to have nationwide imagery that is no older than three years old everywhere, and to have imagery that is no older than one year in the largest metropolitan regions in the USA

Eagleview and Nearmap are other companies doing the same thing.

you sound like the NSA

Presumably the videos will mainly be overhead views - what kind of nefarious uses do you fear they could put such images to? (genuinely curious; I had the same thought, but I'm not sure why)

There was the application of tracking vehicles for fighting crime that has been proposed. With enough data, you can "rewind" and "fast forward" time to see where criminals came from, who they coordinated with, etc.

All well and good as long as they're criminals... But there's nothing to ensure it's used for that. Imagine Uber God mode for all vehicles.

Where's the commercial imperative in that, though? The challenge isn't to work out disturbing applications for this kind of aerial surveillance - that's easy - it's to work out profitable applications that would cause a business to want to invest in it.

You'll understand when you're older.

Why do drones need visual aids when flying to the destination? I can imagine an autonomous car needing to "look" at things because humans and human-defined conventions are involved. Can the drone simply not position itself using GPS, mobile networks, wifi access points etc? The camera might be required only when it is time to slow down and drop the parcel.

Aircraft need to be able to see other aircraft so as not to collide with them. Especially so if you foresee a future where delivery drones are as common as cars.

They also need to avoid obstacles that aren't on their digital maps, like newly erected cranes, and moving things like birds, parachutists and gliders.

Of course, you could argue they don't need to store the videos they take, or transfer them off the drone, other than a last-60-seconds-flight-recorder for crash investigation.

>Aircraft need to be able to see other aircraft so as not to collide with them. Especially so if you foresee a future where delivery drones are as common as cars.

Cameras are not being used for this job.

>They also need to avoid obstacles that aren't on their digital maps, like newly erected cranes, and moving things like birds, parachutists and gliders.

Cameras can be used for these, however it's better to use other sensors as the primary means of detection.

I'm guessing the camera isn't used for aircraft separation since nearly everything has ADS/B now.

ADS-B out is only required for manned aircraft flying in and out of controlled airspace.

There are some other exceptions as well IIRC for gliders, ultra lights and some others.

You are correct, these particular aircraft do not rely on cameras for navigation.

>Every drone is going to record everything using multiple cameras and send them to their backend.

Certainly not in the near future, and probably not ever for delivery drones. Such systems would require unreasonable additional payload.

Everything a drone can see is in public, same as any other camera man, airplane, helicopter, or satellite.

Our drone with deep learning noticed your front door has an old style doorbell with no camera. Would you like us to notify Amazon to ship you a Ring doorbell?

I'm not sure if you're joking, but I know people who are working on a startup to do basically this.

Could be a great source for fresh high-resolution Maps data.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com