Even though the photograph changed the intimacy and privacy of face to face interaction, and the electric streetlight made public spaces artificial and impersonal, these new technologies certainly did more good than harm.
We should embrace the good that will come from new technologies. I for one and looking forward to a future where my packages are delivered quickly and securely, and I'm willing to accept that as a side effect Google will have slightly better ads.
There are also obvious privacy issues - if such drones will ever allowed to become commonplace, some percentage of drones will probably look like Fedex, but would be operated by other actors.
I think, proper application of such drones could be emergency services. Perform emergency delivery, use drones to establish a temporary passage for an emergency vehicle, ...
I often have packages stolen or undelivered, so Ads and advertising companies are like #9999 on my list of things that I'm worried about when I think about deliveries.
Are you asking us to trust megacorps to not make maximum use of their surveillance data? When they've been caught time and again with the hand in the privacy cookie jar? When they turned the Internet into a 24/7 panopticon, with every web page carrying tens of surveillance beacons connected to the motherhive?
Compare to no route restrictions, where you would probably have the drones flying over people's back yards, which would be a considerable reduction in privacy.
No sane vendor will agree to these sort of terms and these companies do not care about privacy, they are all in the data mining and advertising business.
Unlike self-driving cars, self-flying drones do not have to worry about people running into their path, cars parked in the parking lane adjacent to their line suddenly opening a door into their line, or sharing the road with unpredictable human driven vehicles.
The drone route regulations will be starting with routes that have no other traffic except birds and insects. The routes can be designed so that there are different levels for north, south, east, and west travel, so except at the endpoints a drone never has to worry about encountering another drone moving in a different direction. It only has to deal with drones coming up from behind or coming up on drones ahead of it.
I don't think there were that many unintended consequences from this tech. We got better traffic jam maps. And maybe a handful of criminals who forgot to leave their phone at home got caught.
I think this is one of those things that people growing up with the tech won't think anything of it (mom wants to always know your location) but old geezers will reminisce of a time where we still had to call a landline and talk a friend's parents first to see if they are home.
Honestly the last time I saw a drone, the most annoying thing about it was its noise. I can't imagine them buzzing around all the time simply because of that.
Delivery worked, but neighbors complained that the drones sounded like they were powered by the chained souls of the thousand hungry damned. They've apparently worked hard to get the sound down to a mere hundred hungry damned. ;)
You might say _impact on others_ was one of the most important things they had to address with the FAA.
The reason the guy down the street is probably loud is he is flying a race drone and hitting very high RPMs with it.
It seems that due to frangibility concerns, Project Wing uses much smaller motors and props now which requires a higher RPM to beat the air into submission.
They're also intended to do things like saving people's lives, not delivering their Amazon orders.
Obviously IAMNL, YMMV, etc., but the legal system does care about degree of normalcy.
Ps: if someone can better fill in the details I'm sure these are commonly studied cases and that I've butchered the facts. Please correct me!
https://www.appgeo.com/maps-pointers/google-now-selling-aeri...
Since around 2011 Google has been flying its own missions to collect 6 inch (15 cm) pixel imagery across the entire United States... goal is to have nationwide imagery that is no older than three years old everywhere, and to have imagery that is no older than one year in the largest metropolitan regions in the USA
Eagleview and Nearmap are other companies doing the same thing.
All well and good as long as they're criminals... But there's nothing to ensure it's used for that. Imagine Uber God mode for all vehicles.
They also need to avoid obstacles that aren't on their digital maps, like newly erected cranes, and moving things like birds, parachutists and gliders.
Of course, you could argue they don't need to store the videos they take, or transfer them off the drone, other than a last-60-seconds-flight-recorder for crash investigation.
Cameras are not being used for this job.
>They also need to avoid obstacles that aren't on their digital maps, like newly erected cranes, and moving things like birds, parachutists and gliders.
Cameras can be used for these, however it's better to use other sensors as the primary means of detection.
There are some other exceptions as well IIRC for gliders, ultra lights and some others.
Certainly not in the near future, and probably not ever for delivery drones. Such systems would require unreasonable additional payload.
Everything a drone can see is in public, same as any other camera man, airplane, helicopter, or satellite.