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A comment on First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes. Parent comment

Re:First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and... by downandout on Monday December 02, 2013 @07:39PM (#6837706)
> Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the US.

Not necessarily. When a new address comes up, a human operator might takes a look at a satellite image of the address and give the drone an appropriate location to land on the property. That data would then be stored. 15 seconds with a human, one time only, is all it would take to make this easy in most neighborhoods.

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Re:First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and... by VolatileVoid on Tuesday December 03, 2013 @03:48AM (#6839299)
That's not at all the problem.

What about navigating TFRs? Class B airspace? What about failures of the rotors whilst flying over heavily populated areas? Will these things be equipped with TCAS to avoid oncoming traffic? What happens if the path-finding algorithm to get from Amazon's warehouse to your house goes batshit insane and flies it in the approach path to LAX? Who files the flight plan for each of these things?

To quote Steve Yegge, "people will die... if it's YOU... you're going to be really pissed off." [0]

[0] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/have-you-ever-lega...

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Re:First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and... by annnnd on Tuesday December 03, 2013 @07:13AM (#6839798)
Not to mention UFOs. And as someone said, the drones would make archery a very popular sport again. ;)
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Re:First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and... by silverbax88 on Tuesday December 03, 2013 @10:42AM (#6840885)
Think skeet shooting ... with a reward http://www.pvponline.com/comic/2013/12/03/last-minute-shoppi...
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Re:First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and... by danabramov on Tuesday December 03, 2013 @04:11AM (#6839350)
Thanks for the link, I re-read it with much pleasure.
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Re:First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and... by kgen on Monday December 02, 2013 @09:18PM (#6838075)
It wouldn't even need a human operator from Amazon, I would gladly put a marker on a map to show the drone exactly where to drop it if it prompted me upon adding a new address/checkout.
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Re:First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and... by Crito on Monday December 02, 2013 @11:19PM (#6838457)
This would also solve the "That nice flat spot in my backyard is where I installed a swimming pool a few months ago" problem.
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Re:First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and... by downandout on Monday December 02, 2013 @10:38PM (#6838318)
Very good point.
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