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Comment by neom | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

They should learn to shield their sensors with their hand and squint. Humans perfected this millions of years ago :)

Given the severity of this it’s likely the NTSB will get involved, and Amazon’s ability to operate would likely be suspended pending a review of their operation.

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.

My theory could in theory hold if a specular highlight off the boom arm created some type of confusion I suppose, however, I posted it as just thinking aloud, I don't have much faith in my own theory at large.

(my degree is in digital imaging technology so, fun thinking problems for me :)

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.

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?

If that's the case my little theory makes no sense. Thanks!

Of course!

btw, the animation on your website is absolutely beautiful. It's both haunting and pretty at the same time, really cool.

man, I can't tell you how much that means to hear! Glad you liked it. Check out the console for more :)

Who could have predicted that drones flying outside during the day might have to deal with direct sunlight?

No one could have known. And in Phoenix, no less, where it's famously overcast most of the time? Next you're going to tell me that a component overheated or clocked down for thermal throttling - preposterous, Phoenix is great for passive cooling! /s

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.

Would that act like radar in mmWave? Send out pulses and see where they come back and time difference to estimate range?

Yep. See eg the TI AWR1843 and related AWR parts.

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