![]() ![]() Dropping items off in the middle of the street is asking for trouble. It’s likely that any drone delivery service will require a safe and secure landing zone. The stability of drones capable of switching from fixed-wing flight to a helicopter-like hovering state have yet to be proven, but could be more efficient over longer distances. Quad or octocopters, with four or eight propellers, are relatively stable and able to compensate for gusts of wind – up to a point. Landing in people’s gardens, at least in Britain, would be more difficult, and both methods will be strongly affected by the weather. Most drones guided by GPS are capable of flying and hovering over an exact spot to an accuracy of about one metre, so hovering and lowering packages to the ground is possible. There is no reason that a drone couldn’t spot a parked car, tree or person walking and avoid them. But like self-driving cars, autonomous drones are increasingly using sensors to automatically detect objects and avoid them. Remote pilots rely on cameras and other sensors to spot objects and avoid them. There are two types of drones: those flown remotely by human pilots and autonomous drones that fly themselves. But restrictions around airports and other hazardous zones will be needed to stop drones coming into proximity with landing or ascending aircraft. How do they avoid crashing into planes, trains and automobiles?ĭrones are not a problem for most other aircraft because they do not fly above 400ft and aren’t sharing the same airspace as passenger jets, for instance. Some companies already operate a similar system for their one-hour delivery services, whereby items are held at local staging areas and delivered by couriers. To get a package your door it will have to be shipped to a nearby delivery centre. If drone delivery ever takes off it will only be for what’s referred to as the “last-mile handover”. Good enough for onions and a pint of milk – but forget getting your next washer-drier flown into your back yard. Most can already ferry a small box of items weighing a couple of kilograms, but Amazon and others are looking to build drones capable of carrying up to 25kg for around 10 miles, likely meaning packages weighing under 3kg each. But it’s a bit more complicated than that: drones as we know them today are either giant, expensive killing machines or small, hovering things that can carry little more than a camera. Drones have the potential to carry small items quickly from one place to another without having to worry about traffic, personnel costs or labour strikes.
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