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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
100mph is probably around the top speed for home built FPV quadcopters with 5 inch propellers; that's neither uncommon or expensive. Amazon's drones are probably built for efficiency though so they will go slower than that.
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.
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.
TBH my concern is less for the fate of people who choose to fly planes or drones - they are the ones making the choice so if they hurt themselves that sucks, but none of my business. However I am concerned for the innocent bystanders who might be under them, who did not choose to risk death or injury by an aircraft, drone or otherwise.
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.
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.