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Comment by flyinglizard | Hacker News Reader

Not a problem. Multicopters ascend and descend entirely vertically, so programming them to climb straight up to around 500 meters, go to the designated drop point and descend straight down would eliminate all obstacle concerns. It's probably low enough for avoiding fixed wing air traffic too, unless you are around an airport.

Finding a clear drop point is easy (lawns, for example), and the drone can sound some alarm to let pedestrians know its landing.

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Well in that case, I am eagerly waiting for when this is generally available to deliver my order from the local Indian or Vietnamese restaurant. I will even build a landing platform for it and register its coordinates for efficient and fast delivery of my rogan josh or pork rice noodle soup.

The idea of registered landing platforms is actually pretty good. They don't even have to be on private property, but maybe a platform every ~100m or so would be enough. If you order something you get a code or maybe can use your phone to get the delivery from the drone.

That would make the "where to land" and "how to drop the payload" much easier.

I want my own. I wouldn't want the curry and the rice noodle soup to go cold, or worse, end up in someone else's belly.

The drone could deposit the load at the landing station where you can pick it up. And food won't be cold after a 100m walk.

until there are competing services and they crash into each other at 500m altitude. or municipality adds tax by selling height corridors to the highest bidder

There is way too much skepticism in this thread. The sky is huge. If you've ever flown an aircraft in VFR conditions, you've seen that there is plenty of space and you would not need a very complex system to ensure separation. Drone flights could be reserved to areas close to the ground (where manned flight is prohibited) and all drones could be equipped with dually-redundant parachutes to bring them down safely in the event of a failure. This is just a quick-and-dirty suggestion; put in some effort and you'll get even better results.

This is the future, the limiting factory is battery tech and aerodynamic drone design (which is a key problem with quadcopters - they are incredibly inefficient; you need wings during level flight for efficient operation).

> limiting factor is battery tech and aerodynamic drone design

... and regulation. :P

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