Amazon’s Prime Air delivery drones can fly even farther after FAA approval
Amazon’s Prime Air delivery drones can fly even farther after FAA approval
The FAA has allowed Amazon to fly drones out of sight of a ground spotter, enabling it to fly farther distances.
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The noise complaints and landing safety issues are definitely a problem, but the cost savings potential and sustainability/safety effects of taking delivery trucks (or your car to the mall) off the road is a huge win.
I can see how noise and landing safety issues delivering to your property can really stall this. However, landing to an approved and managed community mailbox (or rooftop delivery zone in dense areas) might avoid some of those issues.
There's still the issue of birds, which do not like these things in their airspace and, depending on the size, will absolutely either attack drones or be maimed by them. Also, helicopters and small planes often fly quite low. We haven't had a great record with autonomous cars, but sure, let's try autonomous flying drones. What could go wrong?
The big issue with autonomous cars are the other cars that are driven by humans. As well as pedestrians and general rules of the road that need to be applied.
In theory drones have problems that are much easier to solve, because there's just less obstacles to deal with.
The big issues will likely be birds, wind, and rain.