Amazon Prime Air prepares for drone deliveries | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Prime Air prepares for drone deliveries

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22 pointsWaitWaitWha15 comments

"We are working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and local officials in Lockeford to obtain permission to conduct these deliveries and will continue with that collaboration into the future."

I am curious if the conversations between Amazon and the FAA are open to public scrutiny. The rules around unmanned aerial systems still require an operator be visually observing the a drone at all times and in real-time contact with the drone operator (if the drone leaves the operator's line of sight). I suspect that for the initial trial there will be operators who have their hands "over" the flight controls and visual spotters but at some point these flights have to be fully automated for this to be viable to Amazon... and fully autonomous drones are prohibited in the US (unless you're a government agency).

This would involve a waiver to one or more rules under FAR Part 107. The FAA publishes all of the waivers here:

https://www.faa.gov/uas/commercial_operators/part_107_waiver...

At the moment, the only waivers on file for Amazon are for 107.51(c)/(d), concerning reduced flight visibility and cloud clearance requirements. However, there are certainly other operators who have gotten waivers to the visual line-of-sight, visual operator, and one-aircraft-per-operator rules - albeit with additional safety restrictions added on.

Good thread to pull.

Amazon automates as much as possible. How much automation is acceptable before it crosses to unacceptable by FAA?

Can one pilot manage 12 drones?

Can the drones decide their own altitude, path, speed?

Can a ML software layered over the drone controls, and video/telemetry and them trigger alarm/interaction with pilot on discrepancies/emergencies?

you can get around those regulations pretty easily. Hire a security person to watch 50 drone camears

that is not Amazonian. ;-)

Craft a piece of code (ML, AI, whatever) that monitors 10.000 drones, and triggers alerts on deviation. Another piece of code reviews the alerts and taking various other factors into consideration filters alerts down; to which the human drone monitor responds. Now that is Amazonian.

This is going to be awesome given 10 years of refining or so.

It only needs to be safer than what we have now, an overworked gig worker rushing through traffic to drop off packages.

Is noise pollution a possibility with this?

wealthy people and local government do not care about your preferences

Are there any foreseeable tactics to prevent drone hijacking?

The US military has 2 decades of experience with this. It would be interesting to see if some of that expertise could be commercialized for things like domestic drone delivery. Encryption and wireless communication are already prime targets for this.

I can't wait. Just like skeet shooting but with prizes.

I'd say it's closer to sporting clays.

Also, did you know you can go into stores, and usually nobody will stop you from walking out with unpaid merchandise? Total 1337 lifehack!

this is a good legal question.

If I understand it correctly, in the USA, property owners own the airspace above their land, but there are 'easements' for aeroplanes.

How does this work for drones? Do they get the easement through FAA?

From what I've read, the FAA controls the airspace, and drones must fly below 400 feet. Any regulations about private property are local or state-by-state basis, according to this site https://www.alldroneschool.com/is-it-legal-to-fly-a-drone-ov...

Summaries of laws by state (2020 & earlier) : https://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/current-unmanne...

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_unmanned_aerial_...

Will the drones be recording?

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