To be clear, they crashed into the vertical cable hanging down from the end of the crane. Not into the structure of the crane itself.
So it's not as bad as "they don't see cranes". But it absolutely raises the question of whether they can see cables, whether hanging from cranes or spanning telephone poles.
And honestly, cables are really hard to see in the air. That's literally why high-voltage power lines hang those big red-orange marker balls on them for pilots to see.
Genuinely curious what the solution here is. Hard-code some logic to identify cranes and always assume there's a cable dangling from the end? Never fly underneath anything? Implement some kind of specialized detection for thin cables if that's possible?
At the risk of stating the obvious, the drone shouldn't be flying anywhere near the crane. It's an active construction zone with a structure that moves and swings about in unpredictable ways with people and equipment moving about below. It shouldn't be delivering to the construction zone, and if it can't figure out how to stay out of the area, it doesn't belong in the sky.
There are some FAA requirements about cranes/temporary structures that would give pilots an appropriate NOTAM, but I don't know if all cranes require this. That said, I'd argue that if it isn't tall enough to require notifying the FAA, the drone is flying too low.
Flying machines are never to be flown near cables. It's not like human pilots on a helicopter can detect and avoid the cables in the first place.
Long-distance transmission wires are sometimes inspected with helicopters, so I guess there are exceptions and protocols, but outside those, flying machines just aren't supposed to fly near cables except for explicit intent to catch them. Especially across or under. You may only approach in slow parallel motions and/or back off.
Here's an excellent video from Juan Browne around the challenges that wires present to aircraft operations [1]. Some of these are human factors for manned aircraft, like seeing a wire but then forgetting it's there, but one of his points is that it's simply safest to avoid flying below 1000ft AGL. That's not an option for drones today, and they presumably don't (yet) have the ability of humans to make inferences about the likelihood of cables near cranes and transmission line towers, making them particularly vulnerable.
Yeah. Friend of mine was a news helicopter pilot and he had one of these systems that will cut a cable if you hit one by accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6CsNqhAeeQ . Better than getting tangled, I guess.
It does protect, and is already certified and installed on many copters. Still, it's an emergency device, last resort, like parachutes on some small airplanes.
This honestly seems like the obvious approach. Even if we suppose you have perfect sensors flying underneath something still means something might be dropped on you... why risk it when you can just fly above it?
You may have a tall mas or an antenna and massive cables stretching at angles around it for support. The distance between the base of the mast and the base of supporting cables can be quite large, so even a simple logic like "stay 100m away from tall structures" can be insufficient.
It would be interesting to see what comes out of this investigation. Hopefully the injured person will be alright.
But then how do you deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings? That must be half the near-term market for these kinds of drones: people in dense, urban areas well-served by local droneports, who are looking for convenience above all else.
If you can't safely manage urban canyons—you can't manage. It'd be like selling self-driving cars that are only approved for private racetracks.
Here's a curious article I read the other day, that underscores the market factor:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45445406 ("What It Takes to Get Lunch Delivered to the 70th Floor in a Shenzhen Skyscraper (nytimes.com)" / "An informal network of last-mile runners close the gap between harried delivery drivers and hungry office workers in a Shenzhen skyscraper")
> But then how do you deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings?
Maybe asking the obvious, do you need to? Why not drop the package downstairs, people can use the elevator like normal people? Assuming there is some sort of hand-off with identification.
Many parts of Europe solved it in a more low-tech way: street-side parcel lockers unlocked with your phone. Massively reduces delivery cost (i.e., one driver can deliver far more packages per hour), is pretty convenient and safe (no packages left unattended), and best of all, doesn't require a fleet of UAVs.
You can pretty naturally extend this once you have self-driving vans.
I think Amazon has a proprietary version of this in some parts of the US, but at least where I live, the lockers are a car drive away, which defeats the purpose.
The last tower I worked in wasn't some really big tower (only about 16 stories) but in the lobby near the security booth there was a set of shelves operated by a food delivery company. Every day there would be a few restaurants listed, you'd place your order, and they'd deliver everyone's food around noon to the shelves. You'd just go down and grab your meal.
Seemed to work well enough for the times I used it. Honestly though I really valued the time to take a break and go for a walk and have lunch away from sitting at my desk.
The chinese too, afaik, in shanghai drones deliver parcels in specific parcel stations. Flying drones delivering stuff (through the windows?) to upper floors of buildings sounds like sth between scifi and madness right now. Having specific pickup locations solves a lot of problems like the ones here, as drones can just have to follow specific, predetermined routes that can be more easily monitored, instead of having to go to some random, different address.
Have you ever been inside a tall building? How are you thinking a drone would deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings? The windows don’t open. There are occasional balconies or terraces, but these are more the exception than the rule, especially for “hungry office workers in a Shenzhen skyscraper.”
I had a look at the video... if that's the crane that was in the incident then the drone was simply way too low for cruising. This isn't a tower crane with a flight restriction. They were moving equipment on the roof of a single story building.
The company that I work for builds power line detectors for helicopters. They sense the electromagnetic fields generated by the lines and alert the pilot when the field strength exceeds a threshold. I would imagine this tech could be easily adapted for a drone.
Obviously that wouldn't work for a crane though...
That doesn’t make it better. The cable hangs down from the crane and thus the rest of the structure is still nearby. The drone should be well clear of any obstructions precisely to avoid this sort of thing from happening with hard-to-see ancillary obstructions. Something went really wrong here with the tech.
For manned flight instrument approaches the FAA has very nuanced math that defines this which typically comes down to a few hundred feet. That translates pretty well here too. Amazon will need to explain to the FAA why they were flying anywhere near this crane let alone that close and below the hight of its support structure. There’s no real defense for doing something that stupid.
A human operator would see a moving crane and say "that's a construction site, I'm going to go around". They would not fly directly under a crane even if it visually looked clear. In this case the crane was actively lowering something, so the drone not only missed the cable but it flew directly in between the crane and a visible object hanging in the air below the crane.
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.
In non-drone aviation, we require vehicles to be separated from each other by 5 nautical miles horizontally and 2,000 feet vertically. Additionally every area of the planet they fly over has an MSA figure - Minimum Safe Altitude - which is supposed to guarantee 1000 feet clearance over any obstacles or terrain.
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.
Why do people always get a hard on for bizarre drone rules? Some amateur pilot goes up in a fireball every other week, I think we put up their safety record to that of drones and there are going to be some hard choices to make - I think it's over for our amateur pilots out there.
At least in the US, minimum separation is for when you're talking to air traffic control, and MSA is for flying on instruments. Minimum separation when you can see outside and aren't talking to ATC is "don't hit other planes." Minimum altitude is 500ft, or 1000ft over "congested areas," plus 500ft distance from any obstacle. Unless you're flying a helicopter (or powered parachute or hang glider) in which case the only requirement is "the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface."
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.
Fair enough, I am not a pilot, just a nerd so I wasn’t aware of this!
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?
"Without hazard" is pretty subjective, but I agree that it probably shouldn't include casually flying around cranes.
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.
At a mere (say) 240mph, 5 miles is 75 seconds. Talk to an experienced pilot about how short a time that is, when a bottom-10% pilot is trying to figure out some problem with his instrumentation, or has set his radio to the wrong frequency, or whatever.
5 miles at 50mph would give only Amazon 360 seconds to fix the bug that caused the first drone to crash. Or figure things out enough to get the second drone into manual override mode.
Thanks for the context! Makes sense for traditional aircraft to be super conservative like this, especially given they tend to travel very long routes and sometimes have nothing more than a pair of human eyes paying attention to obstacles.
Do you know what are the rules for helicopters in a city? That seems like a closer analogue.
I suppose recognizing that there is a cable even when we don't clearly see it, but we know it is there because we know the concept of a crane, is exactly the amodal completion of our brain's top-down perceptual inference that CNNs and whatever else those drones use are currently still lacking?
It shouldn't be necessary to hardcore such things if the goal is to build something resembling intelligence.
Of course for a drone it might be more feasible to do so though.
The easy answer is to follow the same rule that you have for every other certificated aircraft and operator: Never fly under a structure. When humans do stupid shit like this, we take away their license.
I don't think they will take away their license, but AMZN should have to explain exactly how their drones managed to crash by flying themselves under an obstruction twice in a row.
Neural nets in drones are only used for object recognition. Beyond that, drones (and other autonomous vehicles) aren’t doing any sort of reasoning or decision making, they follow rules, they’re just robots.
Although I hear that Tesla is thinking about using AI for decision making as well, which I find quite scary. Frankly I think it’s safer if vehicles don’t have concepts and intelligence, and just follow the rules.
Aerial Lidar is pretty good at detecting power line cables. Power line mapping is a major use case for it. However, that's in large part because at the scan distance, the beam already has quite a big diameter that is likely to hit the cable. Maybe a higher beam radius scanner could work out for close-distance cable detection
For commercial deliveries I would expect them to designate a landing zone guaranteed to be free of obstacles vertically. I'm guessing that installing radar detailed enough to see swinging cables is nearly impossible.
Correct, never fly underneath anything. Telephone poles? Trees? Assume there is a solid wall between the highest point on any two objects except within a few yards of the delivery spot.
The fact that these things are flying without rock solid “avoid this giant fucking thing” logic is asinine. The solution is don’t fly like a child playing a flight sim for the first time. Don’t zip around anything let alone construction cranes. Use common sense flight paths, decks and ceilings like everything else in the air.
The police is not qualified to investigate this. The only people that should be investigating is people who understand the code that the drones run.
Accidents will happen as long as we, as a society, agree and desire to have new tech. The investigations and bug fixes should be left to people who understand the tech.
The Feds will quickly arrive and take over. Aviation issues are
Federal matters. The only role of local law enforcement and emergency response is to provide any first aid and then secure the scene for the Feds. Unless lives are at risk local police shouldn’t even touch anything. They put up yellow tape around the scene and keep it secure until the FAA and/or NTSB arrive.
I'm not sure why this is getting down voted. Indeed, the FAA is the correct investigating body here as the local police department has no jurisdiction over aviation accidents. They should have immediately called in the FAA to investigate.
"The NTSB will retain far more employees than during prior shutdowns when it had to furlough 90% or more of its workers. In 2019, the agency did not send investigators to 22 accidents because of the funding lapse. But it made the case to White House budget officials that it needed more personnel for critical functions."
They should call in a bunch of robotics and PyTorch experts to investigate the code, actually, and preferably also submit a pull request to Amazon. Amazon should be required to pay this "squat team".
The FAA does not have the expertise to diagnose this.
Not at a distance. They're basically transparent even to our naked eyes at aircraft speed and distance scales. Let alone to digital cameras on flying robots. They'll probably have to either use really good active sensors(ITAR), or infer possible areas of danger from visually cable-end-like features.
Flying in uncontrolled airspace in VMC is a “see and avoid” environment, meaning this looks like a pretty bad screw up by Amazon.
The fact that two different drones crashed into the same object raises even more serious questions on the quality of Amazon’s tech and their ability to safely monitor it.
It means Amazon’s approach to its “see and avoid” responsibility is fundamentally flawed in some way vs this being a one-off fluke with a broken sensor or other anomaly.
> Our approval includes the ability to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight, using our sophisticated on-board detect and avoid system. This is an historic, first-of-its-kind approval for a new drone system and a new operating location following a rigorous FAA evaluation of the safety of our systems and processes.
It's true the FAA would have had to have signed off on these so that will be interesting.
Move fast and break things doesn't work when safety is involved. Did a properly trained and licensed Professional Engineer review the design of Amazon's drones, their safety features and protocols before they got approval to fly outside of private testing facilities? If not, who would insure that hot mess?
The video also includes a video clip of package delivery, where drone would drop package to the ground, which worked. But then propeller blew the package right into the bush was lmao.
Like, they may have trained on power lines, catenaries above rail tracks, network cables, etc. but all of them are horizontal. And the software couldn't recognize vertical cables or cables at an angle.
nice pictures. that fire proofing around all of the wires is neat, as is that bldc design with the integrated heat-sinks and the huge compute unit with the copper piping to external heat-sinks.
very nice equipment before it was smashed to smithereens.
it's rare to get a glimpse into this stuff internally. Similarly I wish Doordash would show what the Dot looks like under the bonnet so I don't need to wait for the inevitable collision pictures.
The technical side of this emerging consumer-facing robotics thing just fascinates the hell out of me.
China is way ahead here. There's now a Ministry of the Low Altitude Economy.[1]
There's a Low Altitude Flight Service System, which is air traffic control for drones and flying cars. There are licenses for drone operators, categories of license, (advanced licenses require a flight exam), etc.
China hasn't had much general aviation. There are very few private aircraft. So there was nothing like the US's FAA Flight Service Stations. Plans to change that started in 2018, as a new design, mostly automated. That system also handles drones above 120 meters, or is supposed to.
Delivery is to a box like an Amazon delivery box. Here's the current list of delivery locations and how to use the app to order.[3] Weight limit 2.3kg. Delivery time 15 minutes.
It's still rather limited. You can't have a delivery platform on your balcony yet. Mostly they deliver to parks and big open plazas.
The Shenzhen city administration seems to be very drone-friendly. There are delivery drones.
Advertising drones. Light show drones. Police drones.
I can't seem to locate any NOTAMs indicating the presence of the crane. There are NOTAMs for a crane to the NNW of KGRY (Phoenix Goodyear Airport) but Tolleson is to the east of that airport.
Is there a hole in how we're doing NOTAMs if we're expecting to have UAS operating at low altitude away from airports?
Also, what other obstacle data is available? I know the US Gov't aviation maps depict significant man made structures that stick up like towers, windmills, and larger buildings. However, when you look at the NY Heli map, it's clear that not every building in Manhattan is depicted. These are generally low enough that a helo would be operating in see-and-avoid (VFR).
Perhaps there is a new market available for this navigation data...
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.
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'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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Terrifying. Imagine being a roofer or other worker when a delivery drone knocks your ass off the n-th floor surface that you're working on. It wouldn't take much to get somebody killed in such a precarious situation.
Impact aside, really, any contact to a soft meat bag by an 80lb machine surrounded by whirling propellers at high rpm will result in an unpleasant outcome.
An 80lb mass moving at any appreciable speed hitting you is going to suck regardless of what it is.
At a leisurely 3 mi/h, wolfram alpha gives this amusing comparison: about 0.36 times the momentum of an American football player moving at a speed of 1 m/s.
The framers have nothing to attach to until there's structure, and they don't really need to get up there much until they do the decking. They can attach lines to the ridge then. So can the roofers when it's their turn.
When I was a roofer, I think we might have used safety lines and harnesses twice, when the pitch was too steep.
>You don’t wear a harness when framing and roofing 1 and 2 storey buildings. What would you even attach yourself to?
You also don't have the sort of "n-th floor" fall that provides good fodder for a good drive by appeal to emotion internet comment from a 2-story building hence the relaxed requirements.
Anyway, punch in "roof anchor" on Amazon (kinda funny how we've almost come full circle to AOL keywords isn't it). There's a whole ecosystem of products for attaching to residential roofs.
>“I will not be hit by an 80 pound flying missile” is a reasonable expectation for construction workers
Seems like a pretty reasonable expectation for them to have today considering the number of things that have been hit by drones so far. N=1 isn't a trend. Acting every one off event is something needs to be done to mitigate (that the responsible parties have plenty of incentive to solve) is beyond counterproductive on a societal level. The people who peddle that may as well be peddling the geocentric solar system model.
Edit: On second thought peddling the geocentric model is probably a better use for those people since at least that way they'll be laughed at rather than have their ideas seriously considered.
I've never seen residential house roofers wearing a safety harness, even on 2-story jobs. There's generally nowhere to clip the harness to on such buildings, so it wouldn't help anyway.
There's roof safety anchor systems which are designed for residential roofs. Look for something like the Ridgepro anchor: https://www.theridgepro.com/
It does seem best when using lag bolts to secure such an anchor to the roof but even when not screwed to the roof should provide some level of fall safety.
They should be, but I also rarely see roofers in harnesses around here on the other side of the country. It's one thing when it's a roofer himself making the (stupid) decision, but a lot of the guys I see actually on the roofs are non-English-speaking laborers basically told to get the job done and not ask questions.
Generally speaking you start doing that stuff once you get to 3 or more storeys, which is why residential mass builds are typically 2 or less. Workers’ compensation will specifically have job categories for work done on buildings 2 storeys or less, and it goes way up once you get to 3 (and even more for 4+).
Even with all the gear, an unpredictable 80 lb object hurtling towards you is a major problem. Not to mention becoming a problem for any standing below.
I had a chimney inspection and cap on my pretty steep pitched residential roof last year in MA on 2 story house. No harnesses that I saw. Wouldn’t be for me.
Certainly harnesses and other safety gear are much more common in many situations.
A coworker (also works from home) had some commotion across the street, when one of the roofers on his neighbour's place went off the second-story roof. All these guys were wearing harnesses, but not clipped in. The one who fell was luck in that he hit a garden shed roof rather than another 8' to the concrete, but was definitely hurt. Fire department came, yelled at these guys for being idiots. Roofers said they'd comply, and once the FD left, went back to what they were doing. This is right after losing a guy to a fall.
Was working for a construction guy I overall respected, and he had us going up on a 3-story barn roof without any kind of roped-in protection. Although I was a fairly experienced rock climber (or perhaps because of it), I quit at lunch.
I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to have the backup finances to be able to afford to quit.
Years ago I heard a comment from someone in the trades that (in his opinion) harnesses are a net negative on typical single-family-houses - the presence of the rigging (particularly when there are multiple workers on the roof) creates trip hazards that make falls and injuries more likely.
Whether or not it's true, if significant numbers of crews believe this they won't be wearing harnesses on low roofs.
Literally everything around us has the same dangers. Like getting into a car and doing 70mph in the opposite direction of some stranger doing the same speed possibly drunk or high.
This tech will be completely standard and everywhere eventually and no one will pay attention to it. Benefits will outweigh any risks and just like cars people won’t be going around fearing them.
The local Walmart nearest me has also started using drone delivery using Zipline drones. It's not a store I frequent, but recently drove past and the landing/launching site has a very unique look to it. At first thought, I thought it was a small carnival type of set up, but realized the rides looked really weird. There's large towers that remind me of the sculptures in Singapore near the ship on stilts building. I just perused Zipline's website hoping to find some imagery, but the site is clearly focused on promotional aspects with happy people receiving packages. zzzzzz.
Zipline drones fly quite high, and instead of descending and landing to deliver their payload, they hover at altitude and lower a "delivery pod" down on a wire. The pod also has maneuvering capabilities, but all of its thrusters are fully enclosed, and it's designed to not cause any damage even it if collides with something during descent or ascent. Overall, a very clever design that should be safer, create no noise on ground level, and be able to deliver into much smaller and more confined landing zones.
Sure, but it's the launch/landing site that is in question. It's not just a helipad set up. It's very sci-fi looking and looks very complicated. I'm wondering if the drone itself lands at the top and then lowers the pod for loading to keep them out of reach of the employees. Probably even touted as a safety feature. I just haven't seen the system in operation, and their website just ignores this part as it's not something necessary for marketing.
There is a bunch of videos on Youtube on Zipline, some of them from the company itself (this one showing specifically the "platform": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=airEzThGlx8), and some from various tech people looking into the whole thing (like Markus Brownlee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88yQTzlmsiA). Probably a better overall source of into than their website.
If an amazon delivery drone uses the same route as a truck, what's the point of the drone? As a crow flies would be the point to be as direct as possible.
Edit: Nevermind. I'm not awake yet. this logic does not compute. please ignore
Nah - at 0:35 into the video on the news page, you can see the crane they actually crashed into. There are boom lifts around, but they hit a proper crane. Pulled this link from the video but no clue how direct linking works with some of these weird sites;
Boom lifts, available in various models such as mini scissor lifts for sale, spider lifts, and tracked scissor lifts, offer excellent mobility, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness for many tasks. Cranes, on the other hand, are essential for heavy lifting and large-scale projects.
I also learned that "spider lifts" look like something a bad guy drives in a sci-fi movie.
Household ownership of cars hit 50% by 1930 but there was no federal seatbelt mandate unitl 1968 or regulation of intoxicated driving until the 1980s.
Don't hold your breath waiting on the US government to give a shit about death and destruction of its people. Let the industry discover the tech and capitalist forces dictate safety, around 2060 we can start having serious conversations about drone safety.
To any of the aspiring Ralph Nader's of the drone industry out there, thank you for your service in advance.
The facts don’t line up with your concerns. Amazon announced prime air in what 2013 IIRC. Now 12 years later they have FAA approval for a small number of test flights. Exactly so they can slowly discover problems like this and fix them. Every safety critical system in the world is iteratively refined based on real world learnings about mistakes - mistakes made after careful design to avoid them. It’s just really really hard.
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> It's unclear if anyone was injured during the incident.
'It's unclear if' is a phrase that paints a brilliant picture of an organ's journalistic standing.
It means there's no information either way, what follows is pure speculation, probably false, but the author can put whatever idea they want in our heads, since they've prefaced that it 'may or may not be the case'.
It's unclear if the drones had malicious intent. It's unclear if the author was sober while writing and free of criminal record.
That could be misread too though depending on when you're reading it and when you think the article was written in relation to the events. If it's a quick article right after it reads like the original verbiage but if you think it happened a while before the article was written it sounds more authoritative that there were no injuries. The "it is unclear" phrasing makes the ambiguity clear that the author doesn't know if there were any at the time of writing.
And if injuries are later reported people will sneer that 'media always gets it wrong/lies'. If they use plain language and say 'we don't know if anyone was injured yet' then people will sneer that 'I could have wirtten that, they're trying to sensationalize a nothingburger.'
Oh come on. This is just a stub article, saying two drones had crashed and police are investigating. It's clearly going to be a story of strong local and general interest, and they have limited information and a couple of photographs so the story is only a few sentences long for now.
Ranting about deeper meaning of the words in such a minimal bulletin is nonsensical.
It's unclear if this commenter has read more than just the headlines. Maybe they try to argue for the sake of controversy and outrage culture. Maybe they just don't have a brain.
But seriously, the article text doesn't follow up with any speculation and highlights it is a developing story. According to the latest news on TV, someone actually was insured and is now at the hospital. The details are still unclear however. This is very based reporting for the world we currently live in and I would like to see more news stations follow this style instead of jumping to conclusions.
There were plenty of proposals back in 2021 about having highways in the sky for drone delivery operations, at least in Canada, so such incidents are avoided, as relying on technology alone isn't enough and the risk plans are only to mitigate rather than eliminate the risks.
That being said, drone delivery will not really become a thing unless the endurance issue is resolved, like a new breakthrough battery technology that gives you at least 4 hours flight time (hybrid drones are noisy), as for any drone to have a proper impact, it should have three items checked: endurance, payload, and range. The last two are pretty much resolved by having modular payloads and flying over the internet, the first one is still pending.
I'm not sure they need endurance, if they're cheap enough companies can just buy a fleet n times larger than the number they need in the air at any given moment and have the others charging at base. Or more likely buy some extra batteries and have someone employed to swap them out when they're getting low.
It is for both, manned and unmanned, providing also a map of the network coverage in these “highways” and other active drones as well. I remember seeing a proof of concept platform that provided such functionality in Singapore, I am not sure if it became a reality later though.
It's not a limit, just from my personal exposure in the overall drone delivery, 3-4hrs would provide enough time with margin for any safe delivery, beyond that is definitely better but probably is too hard to achieve. Keep in mind the actual flight time will be less than that, accounting for payload weight and environment like wind and temperature. In cold weather like Canada, the batteries will consume some of their energy to heat themselves before taking off.
What's the math that gets to 3-4 hours? Do the drones usually multiple deliveries in a flight? In my metro I would have assumes that any place is less than 30 minutes flight time from a Whole Foods or Walmart for example. How long does the actual safe delivery take? I assume it just lowers the goods and doesn't wait for the customer, right?
Edit: The Internet tells me that delivery drones fly at 40-60mp/h which is much faster than I assumed and makes the 3-4 hour window even more surprising to me.
Why do you think there is any problem with battery endurance? I’m quite sure Amazon has run the numbers on battery life for individual flights and for the lifetime of battery packs many many times. It’s just economics. And has basically nothing to do with safety. Unless a battery fails suddenly and spectacularly, which is rare and probably isn’t what caused it to crash into a crane.
By the way, I see very little discussion on the drones used in the UA-RU war, which should be quite interesting from a hacker's perspective. Technology is going very fast there.
Probably because this thread is only remotely related to that? There's been countless discussions on the topic, doesn't mean every thread has to be about that.
I am personally working on intellectual property related to that. IMO this topic is impossible to discuss online, it’s a magnet for bots and troll farms.
I don't really see what you mean, if you use the HN search Algolia provides, you can see people talking about it from different angles pretty much every day.
Strange, because I never see it on the front page.
Perhaps I should change the way I read HN.
PS: I just searched, and indeed there is a lot of talk about incidents around drones. But what I mean is talk about the technology used in these drones. For example, how do you send a video feed through a kilometers long fiber optic cable that is cheap to produce and lightweight? These are the kind of questions I'm interested in.
To be clear, they crashed into the vertical cable hanging down from the end of the crane. Not into the structure of the crane itself.
So it's not as bad as "they don't see cranes". But it absolutely raises the question of whether they can see cables, whether hanging from cranes or spanning telephone poles.
And honestly, cables are really hard to see in the air. That's literally why high-voltage power lines hang those big red-orange marker balls on them for pilots to see.
Genuinely curious what the solution here is. Hard-code some logic to identify cranes and always assume there's a cable dangling from the end? Never fly underneath anything? Implement some kind of specialized detection for thin cables if that's possible?
> Genuinely curious what the solution here is.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the drone shouldn't be flying anywhere near the crane. It's an active construction zone with a structure that moves and swings about in unpredictable ways with people and equipment moving about below. It shouldn't be delivering to the construction zone, and if it can't figure out how to stay out of the area, it doesn't belong in the sky.
There are some FAA requirements about cranes/temporary structures that would give pilots an appropriate NOTAM, but I don't know if all cranes require this. That said, I'd argue that if it isn't tall enough to require notifying the FAA, the drone is flying too low.
A human is smart enough to know how cranes work and not to fly into/under them.
Maybe the solution is not to cheap out by trying to squeeze every possible cent out of package delivery and pay to keep humans in the loop.
Flying machines are never to be flown near cables. It's not like human pilots on a helicopter can detect and avoid the cables in the first place.
Long-distance transmission wires are sometimes inspected with helicopters, so I guess there are exceptions and protocols, but outside those, flying machines just aren't supposed to fly near cables except for explicit intent to catch them. Especially across or under. You may only approach in slow parallel motions and/or back off.
Here's an excellent video from Juan Browne around the challenges that wires present to aircraft operations [1]. Some of these are human factors for manned aircraft, like seeing a wire but then forgetting it's there, but one of his points is that it's simply safest to avoid flying below 1000ft AGL. That's not an option for drones today, and they presumably don't (yet) have the ability of humans to make inferences about the likelihood of cables near cranes and transmission line towers, making them particularly vulnerable.
[1] https://youtu.be/jjV_k4-DstQ
Yeah. Friend of mine was a news helicopter pilot and he had one of these systems that will cut a cable if you hit one by accident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6CsNqhAeeQ . Better than getting tangled, I guess.
On the other hand, sometimes cutting the cable is at least as dangerous as causing the aircraft to crash, for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Cavalese_cable_car_crash
The only safe system is for aircraft to avoid wires.
What they show on video does not protect props. Dumbest invention ever. Never mind that the idea of cutting cable is even worse.
The guy who invented it tested it at various speeds and angles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_strike_protection_system. There are also numerous documented cases of these working as intended in the NTSB database. The FAA did a study and found that wire strike cutters significantly reduced fatalities https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/3288.pdf
So no, not a dumb idea according to the FAA's data backed study, the US military, and the people that operate helicopters.
It does protect, and is already certified and installed on many copters. Still, it's an emergency device, last resort, like parachutes on some small airplanes.
Multiple cable cutters are installed on every military helicopter
Interesting. Did not think of military, those might have "special needs"
> ”Long-distance transmission wires are sometimes inspected with helicopters”
In recent years they’ve been moving to drones for this job. Besides improving safety, drones allow increased inspection frequency and reduce costs.
Some crop dusters fly under telephone wires. Not that its a good idea, but some do.
> Never fly underneath anything?
This honestly seems like the obvious approach. Even if we suppose you have perfect sensors flying underneath something still means something might be dropped on you... why risk it when you can just fly above it?
guy wires
You may have a tall mas or an antenna and massive cables stretching at angles around it for support. The distance between the base of the mast and the base of supporting cables can be quite large, so even a simple logic like "stay 100m away from tall structures" can be insufficient.
It would be interesting to see what comes out of this investigation. Hopefully the injured person will be alright.
> "stay 100m away from tall structures"
But then how do you deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings? That must be half the near-term market for these kinds of drones: people in dense, urban areas well-served by local droneports, who are looking for convenience above all else.
If you can't safely manage urban canyons—you can't manage. It'd be like selling self-driving cars that are only approved for private racetracks.
Here's a curious article I read the other day, that underscores the market factor:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45445406 ("What It Takes to Get Lunch Delivered to the 70th Floor in a Shenzhen Skyscraper (nytimes.com)" / "An informal network of last-mile runners close the gap between harried delivery drivers and hungry office workers in a Shenzhen skyscraper")
> But then how do you deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings?
Maybe asking the obvious, do you need to? Why not drop the package downstairs, people can use the elevator like normal people? Assuming there is some sort of hand-off with identification.
Many parts of Europe solved it in a more low-tech way: street-side parcel lockers unlocked with your phone. Massively reduces delivery cost (i.e., one driver can deliver far more packages per hour), is pretty convenient and safe (no packages left unattended), and best of all, doesn't require a fleet of UAVs.
You can pretty naturally extend this once you have self-driving vans.
I think Amazon has a proprietary version of this in some parts of the US, but at least where I live, the lockers are a car drive away, which defeats the purpose.
The last tower I worked in wasn't some really big tower (only about 16 stories) but in the lobby near the security booth there was a set of shelves operated by a food delivery company. Every day there would be a few restaurants listed, you'd place your order, and they'd deliver everyone's food around noon to the shelves. You'd just go down and grab your meal.
Seemed to work well enough for the times I used it. Honestly though I really valued the time to take a break and go for a walk and have lunch away from sitting at my desk.
The chinese too, afaik, in shanghai drones deliver parcels in specific parcel stations. Flying drones delivering stuff (through the windows?) to upper floors of buildings sounds like sth between scifi and madness right now. Having specific pickup locations solves a lot of problems like the ones here, as drones can just have to follow specific, predetermined routes that can be more easily monitored, instead of having to go to some random, different address.
Have you ever been inside a tall building? How are you thinking a drone would deliver to the upper floors of vertical buildings? The windows don’t open. There are occasional balconies or terraces, but these are more the exception than the rule, especially for “hungry office workers in a Shenzhen skyscraper.”
>so even a simple logic like "stay 100m away from tall structures" can be insufficient.
Wasn't this problem solved thousands of years ago by euclid?
Yes, but this was thousands of years ago. /s
I had a look at the video... if that's the crane that was in the incident then the drone was simply way too low for cruising. This isn't a tower crane with a flight restriction. They were moving equipment on the roof of a single story building.
The company that I work for builds power line detectors for helicopters. They sense the electromagnetic fields generated by the lines and alert the pilot when the field strength exceeds a threshold. I would imagine this tech could be easily adapted for a drone.
Obviously that wouldn't work for a crane though...
That doesn’t make it better. The cable hangs down from the crane and thus the rest of the structure is still nearby. The drone should be well clear of any obstructions precisely to avoid this sort of thing from happening with hard-to-see ancillary obstructions. Something went really wrong here with the tech.
For manned flight instrument approaches the FAA has very nuanced math that defines this which typically comes down to a few hundred feet. That translates pretty well here too. Amazon will need to explain to the FAA why they were flying anywhere near this crane let alone that close and below the hight of its support structure. There’s no real defense for doing something that stupid.
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.
A human operator would see a moving crane and say "that's a construction site, I'm going to go around". They would not fly directly under a crane even if it visually looked clear. In this case the crane was actively lowering something, so the drone not only missed the cable but it flew directly in between the crane and a visible object hanging in the air below the crane.
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.
In non-drone aviation, we require vehicles to be separated from each other by 5 nautical miles horizontally and 2,000 feet vertically. Additionally every area of the planet they fly over has an MSA figure - Minimum Safe Altitude - which is supposed to guarantee 1000 feet clearance over any obstacles or terrain.
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.
Why do people always get a hard on for bizarre drone rules? Some amateur pilot goes up in a fireball every other week, I think we put up their safety record to that of drones and there are going to be some hard choices to make - I think it's over for our amateur pilots out there.
At least in the US, minimum separation is for when you're talking to air traffic control, and MSA is for flying on instruments. Minimum separation when you can see outside and aren't talking to ATC is "don't hit other planes." Minimum altitude is 500ft, or 1000ft over "congested areas," plus 500ft distance from any obstacle. Unless you're flying a helicopter (or powered parachute or hang glider) in which case the only requirement is "the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface."
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.
Fair enough, I am not a pilot, just a nerd so I wasn’t aware of this!
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?
"Without hazard" is pretty subjective, but I agree that it probably shouldn't include casually flying around cranes.
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.
5 miles sounds pretty ridiculous, TBH. These things aren't moving at Mach 3.
At a mere (say) 240mph, 5 miles is 75 seconds. Talk to an experienced pilot about how short a time that is, when a bottom-10% pilot is trying to figure out some problem with his instrumentation, or has set his radio to the wrong frequency, or whatever.
> At a mere (say) 240mph, 5 miles is 75 seconds.
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.
5 miles at 50mph would give only Amazon 360 seconds to fix the bug that caused the first drone to crash. Or figure things out enough to get the second drone into manual override mode.
Just what I was looking for. Thanks for the context!
Thanks for the context! Makes sense for traditional aircraft to be super conservative like this, especially given they tend to travel very long routes and sometimes have nothing more than a pair of human eyes paying attention to obstacles.
Do you know what are the rules for helicopters in a city? That seems like a closer analogue.
not under it at a minimum lol
I suppose recognizing that there is a cable even when we don't clearly see it, but we know it is there because we know the concept of a crane, is exactly the amodal completion of our brain's top-down perceptual inference that CNNs and whatever else those drones use are currently still lacking?
It shouldn't be necessary to hardcore such things if the goal is to build something resembling intelligence.
Of course for a drone it might be more feasible to do so though.
The easy answer is to follow the same rule that you have for every other certificated aircraft and operator: Never fly under a structure. When humans do stupid shit like this, we take away their license.
I don't think they will take away their license, but AMZN should have to explain exactly how their drones managed to crash by flying themselves under an obstruction twice in a row.
Neural nets in drones are only used for object recognition. Beyond that, drones (and other autonomous vehicles) aren’t doing any sort of reasoning or decision making, they follow rules, they’re just robots.
Although I hear that Tesla is thinking about using AI for decision making as well, which I find quite scary. Frankly I think it’s safer if vehicles don’t have concepts and intelligence, and just follow the rules.
>Hard-code some logic to identify cranes and always assume there's a cable dangling from the end.
Probably this one. Even if the drone sees the crane, there's no guarantee the cable won't move faster than the drone can react.
Why is "don't use autonomous drones for such things" not in that list?
>Genuinely curious what the solution here is.
no fly zones around construction sites?
Aerial Lidar is pretty good at detecting power line cables. Power line mapping is a major use case for it. However, that's in large part because at the scan distance, the beam already has quite a big diameter that is likely to hit the cable. Maybe a higher beam radius scanner could work out for close-distance cable detection
Drones that can dodge thin wires already exist, seems more like their perception algorithms/onboard vision hardware just arent up to the task
For commercial deliveries I would expect them to designate a landing zone guaranteed to be free of obstacles vertically. I'm guessing that installing radar detailed enough to see swinging cables is nearly impossible.
mmWave radar is commonly used for detecting (horizontal) cables of similar thickness in a very common use of enterprise drones: power line inspection.
just... don't fly near active construction sites?
Correct, never fly underneath anything. Telephone poles? Trees? Assume there is a solid wall between the highest point on any two objects except within a few yards of the delivery spot.
The solution is don't use delivery drones.
Or cranes, right?
Amazon uses its lobbying powers to make it illegal to operate a crane without submitting an approval request to Amazon and paying a fee.
The fact that these things are flying without rock solid “avoid this giant fucking thing” logic is asinine. The solution is don’t fly like a child playing a flight sim for the first time. Don’t zip around anything let alone construction cranes. Use common sense flight paths, decks and ceilings like everything else in the air.
"The Tolleson Police Department is investigating"
The police is not qualified to investigate this. The only people that should be investigating is people who understand the code that the drones run.
Accidents will happen as long as we, as a society, agree and desire to have new tech. The investigations and bug fixes should be left to people who understand the tech.
The Feds will quickly arrive and take over. Aviation issues are Federal matters. The only role of local law enforcement and emergency response is to provide any first aid and then secure the scene for the Feds. Unless lives are at risk local police shouldn’t even touch anything. They put up yellow tape around the scene and keep it secure until the FAA and/or NTSB arrive.
I'm not sure why this is getting down voted. Indeed, the FAA is the correct investigating body here as the local police department has no jurisdiction over aviation accidents. They should have immediately called in the FAA to investigate.
Maybe, maybe not:
"The NTSB will retain far more employees than during prior shutdowns when it had to furlough 90% or more of its workers. In 2019, the agency did not send investigators to 22 accidents because of the funding lapse. But it made the case to White House budget officials that it needed more personnel for critical functions."
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/faa-would-fur...
They should call in a bunch of robotics and PyTorch experts to investigate the code, actually, and preferably also submit a pull request to Amazon. Amazon should be required to pay this "squat team".
The FAA does not have the expertise to diagnose this.
Cables are not hard to see with eyes.
If this were true, aviation cable markers would not be a thing. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Cavalese_cable_car_crash
Not at a distance. They're basically transparent even to our naked eyes at aircraft speed and distance scales. Let alone to digital cameras on flying robots. They'll probably have to either use really good active sensors(ITAR), or infer possible areas of danger from visually cable-end-like features.
Flying in uncontrolled airspace in VMC is a “see and avoid” environment, meaning this looks like a pretty bad screw up by Amazon.
The fact that two different drones crashed into the same object raises even more serious questions on the quality of Amazon’s tech and their ability to safely monitor it.
Two drones doesn't really mean anything if they were following a similar flight plan to make a delivery at the same location right?
It means it wasn't a fluke or a bug specific to one drone, but something wrong in the overall software approach.
The repetition strongly indicates it’s a bug. No reason to think it points to a fundamental flaw in the approach.
It means Amazon’s approach to its “see and avoid” responsibility is fundamentally flawed in some way vs this being a one-off fluke with a broken sensor or other anomaly.
well at least it's consistent
second time was because dev rejected bug report without QA replicating it
this is actually hilarious because now they can't call it a fluke or an act of god
Crashing it a second time is, in my books, an act of God. I guess God isn't really that fond of Amazon.
News Media: "Bezos has more money than God"
God: "Hold my staff"
From their brief on the drones themselves: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/amazon-drone...
> Our approval includes the ability to fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight, using our sophisticated on-board detect and avoid system. This is an historic, first-of-its-kind approval for a new drone system and a new operating location following a rigorous FAA evaluation of the safety of our systems and processes.
It's true the FAA would have had to have signed off on these so that will be interesting.
The NTSB should be investigating, then.
Maybe the FAA let Amazon self-approve them. Business as usual.
Move fast and break things doesn't work when safety is involved. Did a properly trained and licensed Professional Engineer review the design of Amazon's drones, their safety features and protocols before they got approval to fly outside of private testing facilities? If not, who would insure that hot mess?
https://www.theverge.com/news/790636/amazon-prime-mk30-drone... gives more information, including that
* No one was injured directly, but someone was treated for smoke inhalation
* The drones "were flying back to back"
* They hit the cable of a crane (including a link to a video showing the crane). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_ZpY6qHcTk
The video also includes a video clip of package delivery, where drone would drop package to the ground, which worked. But then propeller blew the package right into the bush was lmao.
Timestamp for the ADHD's,
https://youtu.be/E_ZpY6qHcTk?t=134
Drop and tumble helps reduce impact energy, might manage to keep the goods intact.
Amazon engineer this morning to colleague: "Hey! Maybe we should include some cranes in our training data."
As someone who has worked in AV perception this is unfortunately way too accurate lol, so much training set whack-a-mole
Like, they may have trained on power lines, catenaries above rail tracks, network cables, etc. but all of them are horizontal. And the software couldn't recognize vertical cables or cables at an angle.
cables at an angle.
With tens of thousands of guyed towers in the United States, that's a bad omission.
nice pictures. that fire proofing around all of the wires is neat, as is that bldc design with the integrated heat-sinks and the huge compute unit with the copper piping to external heat-sinks.
very nice equipment before it was smashed to smithereens.
it's rare to get a glimpse into this stuff internally. Similarly I wish Doordash would show what the Dot looks like under the bonnet so I don't need to wait for the inevitable collision pictures.
The technical side of this emerging consumer-facing robotics thing just fascinates the hell out of me.
China is way ahead here. There's now a Ministry of the Low Altitude Economy.[1] There's a Low Altitude Flight Service System, which is air traffic control for drones and flying cars. There are licenses for drone operators, categories of license, (advanced licenses require a flight exam), etc.
China hasn't had much general aviation. There are very few private aircraft. So there was nothing like the US's FAA Flight Service Stations. Plans to change that started in 2018, as a new design, mostly automated. That system also handles drones above 120 meters, or is supposed to.
[1] https://businessaviation.aero/evtol-news-and-electric-aircra...
China is way ahead on what exactly? Regulation?
Fast food delivery in Shenzhen:
Shipping end: [1]
Receiving end: [2]
Delivery is to a box like an Amazon delivery box. Here's the current list of delivery locations and how to use the app to order.[3] Weight limit 2.3kg. Delivery time 15 minutes.
It's still rather limited. You can't have a delivery platform on your balcony yet. Mostly they deliver to parks and big open plazas.
The Shenzhen city administration seems to be very drone-friendly. There are delivery drones. Advertising drones. Light show drones. Police drones.
[1] https://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/R...
[2] https://wp.technologyreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/m...
[3] https://shenzhentimes.com/how-to-order-takeout-by-drone-in-s...
An alternative way to look at this is they are (trying to) build the institutions that will pave the way for the success of the technology.
I spent some time searching the FAA NOTAM database... https://notams.aim.faa.gov/notamSearch/nsapp.html#/
I can't seem to locate any NOTAMs indicating the presence of the crane. There are NOTAMs for a crane to the NNW of KGRY (Phoenix Goodyear Airport) but Tolleson is to the east of that airport.
Is there a hole in how we're doing NOTAMs if we're expecting to have UAS operating at low altitude away from airports?
Also, what other obstacle data is available? I know the US Gov't aviation maps depict significant man made structures that stick up like towers, windmills, and larger buildings. However, when you look at the NY Heli map, it's clear that not every building in Manhattan is depicted. These are generally low enough that a helo would be operating in see-and-avoid (VFR).
Perhaps there is a new market available for this navigation data...
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
Terrifying. Imagine being a roofer or other worker when a delivery drone knocks your ass off the n-th floor surface that you're working on. It wouldn't take much to get somebody killed in such a precarious situation.
Impact aside, really, any contact to a soft meat bag by an 80lb machine surrounded by whirling propellers at high rpm will result in an unpleasant outcome.
An 80lb mass moving at any appreciable speed hitting you is going to suck regardless of what it is.
At a leisurely 3 mi/h, wolfram alpha gives this amusing comparison: about 0.36 times the momentum of an American football player moving at a speed of 1 m/s.
With the information we have about the actual incident, it seems you'd only be at risk of that happening if you were as thin as a cable.
If it runs into the cable and tumbles down on you, it's a very real risk.
Or if you're being suspended by the cable of a crane.
And the not much here is an 80 pounds drone (Mk30).
Thank you, I stand corrected!
Shotguns are now standard issue, Foreman finally gets to work
Any modern roofer or other worker that could fall far is wearing a safety harness (with some exceptions for flat roofs that have railing set up).
You don’t wear a harness when framing and roofing 1 and 2 storey buildings. What would you even attach yourself to?
“I will not be hit by an 80 pound flying missile” is a reasonable expectation for construction workers
The framers have nothing to attach to until there's structure, and they don't really need to get up there much until they do the decking. They can attach lines to the ridge then. So can the roofers when it's their turn.
When I was a roofer, I think we might have used safety lines and harnesses twice, when the pitch was too steep.
>You don’t wear a harness when framing and roofing 1 and 2 storey buildings. What would you even attach yourself to?
You also don't have the sort of "n-th floor" fall that provides good fodder for a good drive by appeal to emotion internet comment from a 2-story building hence the relaxed requirements.
Anyway, punch in "roof anchor" on Amazon (kinda funny how we've almost come full circle to AOL keywords isn't it). There's a whole ecosystem of products for attaching to residential roofs.
>“I will not be hit by an 80 pound flying missile” is a reasonable expectation for construction workers
Seems like a pretty reasonable expectation for them to have today considering the number of things that have been hit by drones so far. N=1 isn't a trend. Acting every one off event is something needs to be done to mitigate (that the responsible parties have plenty of incentive to solve) is beyond counterproductive on a societal level. The people who peddle that may as well be peddling the geocentric solar system model.
Edit: On second thought peddling the geocentric model is probably a better use for those people since at least that way they'll be laughed at rather than have their ideas seriously considered.
I've never seen residential house roofers wearing a safety harness, even on 2-story jobs. There's generally nowhere to clip the harness to on such buildings, so it wouldn't help anyway.
There's roof safety anchor systems which are designed for residential roofs. Look for something like the Ridgepro anchor: https://www.theridgepro.com/
It does seem best when using lag bolts to secure such an anchor to the roof but even when not screwed to the roof should provide some level of fall safety.
Are these used in practice? In what regions? In Seattle suburbs, I've never seen a crew wearing any kind of attached harness.
They should be, but I also rarely see roofers in harnesses around here on the other side of the country. It's one thing when it's a roofer himself making the (stupid) decision, but a lot of the guys I see actually on the roofs are non-English-speaking laborers basically told to get the job done and not ask questions.
I am going to wager that 90% of resi roofers are not using harnesses unless the pitch of the roof is extreme. It’s all about the couch cushion.
Generally speaking you start doing that stuff once you get to 3 or more storeys, which is why residential mass builds are typically 2 or less. Workers’ compensation will specifically have job categories for work done on buildings 2 storeys or less, and it goes way up once you get to 3 (and even more for 4+).
Even with all the gear, an unpredictable 80 lb object hurtling towards you is a major problem. Not to mention becoming a problem for any standing below.
I had a chimney inspection and cap on my pretty steep pitched residential roof last year in MA on 2 story house. No harnesses that I saw. Wouldn’t be for me.
Certainly harnesses and other safety gear are much more common in many situations.
A coworker (also works from home) had some commotion across the street, when one of the roofers on his neighbour's place went off the second-story roof. All these guys were wearing harnesses, but not clipped in. The one who fell was luck in that he hit a garden shed roof rather than another 8' to the concrete, but was definitely hurt. Fire department came, yelled at these guys for being idiots. Roofers said they'd comply, and once the FD left, went back to what they were doing. This is right after losing a guy to a fall.
YUP
Was working for a construction guy I overall respected, and he had us going up on a 3-story barn roof without any kind of roped-in protection. Although I was a fairly experienced rock climber (or perhaps because of it), I quit at lunch.
I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to have the backup finances to be able to afford to quit.
Years ago I heard a comment from someone in the trades that (in his opinion) harnesses are a net negative on typical single-family-houses - the presence of the rigging (particularly when there are multiple workers on the roof) creates trip hazards that make falls and injuries more likely.
Whether or not it's true, if significant numbers of crews believe this they won't be wearing harnesses on low roofs.
laughs in independent subcontractor
Literally everything around us has the same dangers. Like getting into a car and doing 70mph in the opposite direction of some stranger doing the same speed possibly drunk or high. This tech will be completely standard and everywhere eventually and no one will pay attention to it. Benefits will outweigh any risks and just like cars people won’t be going around fearing them.
Sir, a second drone has hit the crane on 96th Avenue.
Trying too hard to push a Jetson’s future on us that no one wants…
I feel like soon kids will order the cheapest thing on Amazon for the free drone it comes with.
Speak for yourself. I want drones to deliver stuff directly to me.
Would be nice to have a sort of assistant drone. Pop open the sunroof "check how far up the road the traffic jam lasts".
We could have universal health care, but I guess we're going to get delivery drones instead...
I didn't even know they were using delivery drones yet. Why did they both crash, were they working in tandem carrying one payload or something?
The local Walmart nearest me has also started using drone delivery using Zipline drones. It's not a store I frequent, but recently drove past and the landing/launching site has a very unique look to it. At first thought, I thought it was a small carnival type of set up, but realized the rides looked really weird. There's large towers that remind me of the sculptures in Singapore near the ship on stilts building. I just perused Zipline's website hoping to find some imagery, but the site is clearly focused on promotional aspects with happy people receiving packages. zzzzzz.
https://www.zipline.com/
Zipline drones fly quite high, and instead of descending and landing to deliver their payload, they hover at altitude and lower a "delivery pod" down on a wire. The pod also has maneuvering capabilities, but all of its thrusters are fully enclosed, and it's designed to not cause any damage even it if collides with something during descent or ascent. Overall, a very clever design that should be safer, create no noise on ground level, and be able to deliver into much smaller and more confined landing zones.
Sure, but it's the launch/landing site that is in question. It's not just a helipad set up. It's very sci-fi looking and looks very complicated. I'm wondering if the drone itself lands at the top and then lowers the pod for loading to keep them out of reach of the employees. Probably even touted as a safety feature. I just haven't seen the system in operation, and their website just ignores this part as it's not something necessary for marketing.
There is a bunch of videos on Youtube on Zipline, some of them from the company itself (this one showing specifically the "platform": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=airEzThGlx8), and some from various tech people looking into the whole thing (like Markus Brownlee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88yQTzlmsiA). Probably a better overall source of into than their website.
That is so cool :)
And it looks much safer than Amazon's approach of directly landing the heavy drone in your garden.
That first video you linked confirmed my suspicions. thanks
I was thinking maybe they used the same route planning system, so their routes were identical.
I'd laugh pretty hard if the second one was an automatic redelivery attempt.
"Something went wrong with the drone. Send another!"
If an amazon delivery drone uses the same route as a truck, what's the point of the drone? As a crow flies would be the point to be as direct as possible.
Edit: Nevermind. I'm not awake yet. this logic does not compute. please ignore
Without knowing anything about their routing, I think grandparent is saying they likely were on the same vector, perhaps same destination.
wow, your interpretation is much better than whatever went through my head. i'm going with too early in the morning. not enough coffee.
Been using them for years, I got a package by drone the other day.
Yeah but it’s in a pretty limited zone IIRC. Just some states and areas have it, and it’s definitely not yet a common practice.
The crash site is intriguing, want to see what tech they're using
Interesting to me that _two_ managed to hit a boom lift.
Begun, the drone wars have
"Crane" is a highly optimistic word for what looks like a telescoping boom lift.
Edit: per below was actually a crane
Nah - at 0:35 into the video on the news page, you can see the crane they actually crashed into. There are boom lifts around, but they hit a proper crane. Pulled this link from the video but no clue how direct linking works with some of these weird sites;
https://cf.cdn.uplynk.com/ause1/slices/14f/5c3d34b8b29a45469...
Thanks! I took a quick look at the image in the article, and wrongly assumed they pictured the thing that it hit.
Today I learned:
Boom lifts, available in various models such as mini scissor lifts for sale, spider lifts, and tracked scissor lifts, offer excellent mobility, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness for many tasks. Cranes, on the other hand, are essential for heavy lifting and large-scale projects.
I also learned that "spider lifts" look like something a bad guy drives in a sci-fi movie.
It's a local news station who's targeting the lowest common denominator, so it's an acceptable usage in this case.
EDIT: NM, it was a crane after all.
Gad. Zoox. I hope it's not the same team doing both.
Household ownership of cars hit 50% by 1930 but there was no federal seatbelt mandate unitl 1968 or regulation of intoxicated driving until the 1980s.
Don't hold your breath waiting on the US government to give a shit about death and destruction of its people. Let the industry discover the tech and capitalist forces dictate safety, around 2060 we can start having serious conversations about drone safety.
To any of the aspiring Ralph Nader's of the drone industry out there, thank you for your service in advance.
The facts don’t line up with your concerns. Amazon announced prime air in what 2013 IIRC. Now 12 years later they have FAA approval for a small number of test flights. Exactly so they can slowly discover problems like this and fix them. Every safety critical system in the world is iteratively refined based on real world learnings about mistakes - mistakes made after careful design to avoid them. It’s just really really hard.
Oh man that Amazon paycheck gonna be huge.
Well thanks to tort reform likely not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_(film)
If these things start hurting human workers I reserve the right to shoot them out of the sky.
Alternative working link: https://www.theverge.com/news/790636/amazon-prime-mk30-drone...
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Thanks, I've added that link to the toptext.
> It's unclear if anyone was injured during the incident.
'It's unclear if' is a phrase that paints a brilliant picture of an organ's journalistic standing.
It means there's no information either way, what follows is pure speculation, probably false, but the author can put whatever idea they want in our heads, since they've prefaced that it 'may or may not be the case'.
It's unclear if the drones had malicious intent. It's unclear if the author was sober while writing and free of criminal record.
I think they're just trying to get ahead of the question everyone wants answered, and they're saying they don't know yet.
How about "there are no reports of injuries"?
That could be misread too though depending on when you're reading it and when you think the article was written in relation to the events. If it's a quick article right after it reads like the original verbiage but if you think it happened a while before the article was written it sounds more authoritative that there were no injuries. The "it is unclear" phrasing makes the ambiguity clear that the author doesn't know if there were any at the time of writing.
And if injuries are later reported people will sneer that 'media always gets it wrong/lies'. If they use plain language and say 'we don't know if anyone was injured yet' then people will sneer that 'I could have wirtten that, they're trying to sensationalize a nothingburger.'
Per the video report, someone went to the hospital with difficulties breathing from fumes.
Virtually all journalism is this bad though.
Oh come on. This is just a stub article, saying two drones had crashed and police are investigating. It's clearly going to be a story of strong local and general interest, and they have limited information and a couple of photographs so the story is only a few sentences long for now.
Ranting about deeper meaning of the words in such a minimal bulletin is nonsensical.
It's unclear if this commenter has read more than just the headlines. Maybe they try to argue for the sake of controversy and outrage culture. Maybe they just don't have a brain.
But seriously, the article text doesn't follow up with any speculation and highlights it is a developing story. According to the latest news on TV, someone actually was insured and is now at the hospital. The details are still unclear however. This is very based reporting for the world we currently live in and I would like to see more news stations follow this style instead of jumping to conclusions.
The sentence I quoted is not in the headline.
It was added as a subheading.
It's actually the second to last paragraph of the "article" so proves that you made it at least most of the way through.
> Two Amazon delivery drones crash into crane in commercial area of Tolleson, AZ
What stupid crane flies into the path of delivery drones ? /s
Commercial cranes, no less. They think they can compete with storks? Come on.
There were plenty of proposals back in 2021 about having highways in the sky for drone delivery operations, at least in Canada, so such incidents are avoided, as relying on technology alone isn't enough and the risk plans are only to mitigate rather than eliminate the risks.
That being said, drone delivery will not really become a thing unless the endurance issue is resolved, like a new breakthrough battery technology that gives you at least 4 hours flight time (hybrid drones are noisy), as for any drone to have a proper impact, it should have three items checked: endurance, payload, and range. The last two are pretty much resolved by having modular payloads and flying over the internet, the first one is still pending.
I'm not sure they need endurance, if they're cheap enough companies can just buy a fleet n times larger than the number they need in the air at any given moment and have the others charging at base. Or more likely buy some extra batteries and have someone employed to swap them out when they're getting low.
I thought this is a thing for autonomous vehicles carrying people at least I remembering seeing something with Honda
It is for both, manned and unmanned, providing also a map of the network coverage in these “highways” and other active drones as well. I remember seeing a proof of concept platform that provided such functionality in Singapore, I am not sure if it became a reality later though.
Why is 4 hours a limit?
It's not a limit, just from my personal exposure in the overall drone delivery, 3-4hrs would provide enough time with margin for any safe delivery, beyond that is definitely better but probably is too hard to achieve. Keep in mind the actual flight time will be less than that, accounting for payload weight and environment like wind and temperature. In cold weather like Canada, the batteries will consume some of their energy to heat themselves before taking off.
What's the math that gets to 3-4 hours? Do the drones usually multiple deliveries in a flight? In my metro I would have assumes that any place is less than 30 minutes flight time from a Whole Foods or Walmart for example. How long does the actual safe delivery take? I assume it just lowers the goods and doesn't wait for the customer, right?
Edit: The Internet tells me that delivery drones fly at 40-60mp/h which is much faster than I assumed and makes the 3-4 hour window even more surprising to me.
Why do you think there is any problem with battery endurance? I’m quite sure Amazon has run the numbers on battery life for individual flights and for the lifetime of battery packs many many times. It’s just economics. And has basically nothing to do with safety. Unless a battery fails suddenly and spectacularly, which is rare and probably isn’t what caused it to crash into a crane.
By the way, I see very little discussion on the drones used in the UA-RU war, which should be quite interesting from a hacker's perspective. Technology is going very fast there.
Seriously, why is this downvoted?
Probably because this thread is only remotely related to that? There's been countless discussions on the topic, doesn't mean every thread has to be about that.
I mean on Hacker News in general.
I am personally working on intellectual property related to that. IMO this topic is impossible to discuss online, it’s a magnet for bots and troll farms.
I don't really see what you mean, if you use the HN search Algolia provides, you can see people talking about it from different angles pretty much every day.
Strange, because I never see it on the front page.
Perhaps I should change the way I read HN.
PS: I just searched, and indeed there is a lot of talk about incidents around drones. But what I mean is talk about the technology used in these drones. For example, how do you send a video feed through a kilometers long fiber optic cable that is cheap to produce and lightweight? These are the kind of questions I'm interested in.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.