I'm genuinely curious what you'd define "nearby" and "well clear" as in concrete numbers.
For the sake of clarity: I am not arguing against your point, nor am I defending Amazon or the tech in any way shape or form.
For the sake of clarity: I am not arguing against your point, nor am I defending Amazon or the tech in any way shape or form.
For concrete numbers, I would say stay 50 yards away from construction equipment, and always laterally or above, not below. Honestly these drones are enormous so I think "don't go under" can just be a blanket rule. They can't be going under trees or bridges or overpasses either, they're too big.
Edit: Also, the drones themselves should be far enough apart that if one crashes the other has time to react and stop or change course. I don't have a concrete number there, it depends on their speed and acceleration, but they shouldn't be flying so close that if one crashes they all will.
Both of these allow healthy margins of error, whether that error is from a human pilot or ATC, or from computer systems - either in the vehicle or the ground.
I'd argue these would be a great place to start for drone aviation.
If such limits make drone burrito or toilet paper delivery expensive, that seems fine.
The world record holder for a quadcopter drone is 224 mph. Not many drones can beat 100 mph.
According to one article I found Amazons drones can manage 50mph.
Do you know what are the rules for helicopters in a city? That seems like a closer analogue.
It would make sense for a quadcopter to follow helicopter rules. Obviously it does not follow the "without hazard" requirement if you crash into cables, though.
I’d agree the helicopter rules seem most appropriate, though I guess I’d still feel like that would still rule out operating anywhere near a building under construction.
That said, a regular helicopter that suffers a loss of power or other fault, still has options like autorotation to at least attempt a landing without killing anyone on the ground. Do drones have any equivalent ? I.e. if battery is below x% it returns to safe landing spot?
I don't know how drones are programmed, but landing immediately if the battery gets low certainly sounds like a sensible precaution. Electric motors might be reliable enough that you don't have to worry about gracefully handling failure of those. I hope so, because I don't think a quadcopter has much hope if any motor fails.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-91#p-91.119(a)
The catch all under both regulations is anything that's "careless and wreckless"
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-107#p-107.23
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/section-91.13
Was this particular operation careless and wreckless? Could be.
Someone else in the thread said the weather conditions included mist. I'm skeptical misty conditions also permits a minimum 3 miles of visibility, but what do I know I'm just a pilot.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-107#p-107.51(c)
But also, it's possible the waiver I assume Amazon is operating under could include visibility. I assume this because Part 107 requires visual line of sight operation, but Amazon's operation sounds like beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). I don't know anything about that. I'd like to think the waiver and the operating requirements are public information, but I don't know that either.
For drones, there's a different set of FAA (and possibly state) rules.
The template for this ofc is how we handle (or don't handle) the danger posed by people inside cars, to people outside cars. In aviation we will do a lot to avoid even one death, in the air or on the ground. But in cars we mostly don't give a crap. It took decades for drunk driving to become unacceptable, but outside of that, we are still pretty ok with death by car. The only survivor of the collision just has to claim the person outside the vehicle "darted" and we all shrug and move on.
I would just love it if we could apply lessons of the past to new technology. Instead we just hand wave it all away. Then in a few decades, if enough people die and their surviving loved ones invest enough time & energy, maybe we'll make a few tweaks to the formula.
So no, we don't need 5nm separations for 20 lb drones. But we do need some sort of structure that recognizes the people under them didn't sign up to be part of the beta test. For bonus points it should also recognize that externalities exist and should be priced but I am not holding my breath.