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jlbnjmn

UAVs are a trend that I believe will be far bigger than most people are expecting.

Autonomous cars are a difficult problem, autonomous drones are much simpler.

Package delivery, food delivery, air taxis, and a lot of previously cost prohibitive applications as well.

The cost and complexity of a drone is low, and an airbag should mitigate much of the risk.

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What/who does an airbag in a drone protect?

People the drone might fall on.

And...the drone.

Are the drone's airbags deployed on impact like a car's? If that's the case, it's not protecting people it could hit because it's already hit them at that point.

Is the idea that it has some kind of collision detection system and deploys them in advance of the collision?

Edit: Did a quick search, I see now that one of the ideas is that it auto-deploys in case of malfunction that is likely to lead to a crash.

They deploy based on anomalies. Unexpected loss of altitude or attitude, primarily. Or an obstacle rapidly approaching.

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