don't you just hate when you're expecting to receive your monthly shipment of toilet paper via drone and
some rope with a gun shoots it down so you're stuck using your emergency stash
of cheap scratchy single ply okay maybe this hasn't happened to you
but why hasn't it happened to you amazon has been promising us drone delivery since
all the way back in 2013 when i was but
a young graduate but here we are in 2022 when i'm old with children and the skies
don't exactly look like coruscant on episode 1.
unsurprisingly one big hurdle to mainstream drone delivery is how once
again the law isn't keeping up with advancements in technology aviation is
one of the most heavily regulated industries on the planet and to be fair
it does make sense as if we're gonna travel 500 miles per hour in a glorified
bus with wings like we do on a plane we at least want to feel fairly certain we
won't be turned into charred meatballs on landing but drones aren't exactly the
same as commercial airliners i mean they aren't carrying people
yet but it wasn't until 2016 that the
federal aviation administration in the united states passed rules specifically
for drones commonly referred to as part 107 although part 107 made the rules of
the sky more straightforward for hobbyists
it didn't do much to help businesses who wanted to deliver orders via drone
probably the most burdensome rule is that drone operators have to keep their
drones within their line of sight not exactly feasible for big companies like
amazon or uber who want to deliver lots of packages over fairly long distances
now it does turn out that you don't have to fly under part 107 rules but
unfortunately if you want to do long-range package delivery in the us
you have to get ffa approval under another set of rules called
part 135 and that's a lengthy onerous
bureaucratic kafkaesque process we'll tell you more after thanking alibaba.com
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the rules the ffa enforces are designed for traditional planes that carry
traditional people not small drones carrying burritos or whatever and new
rules have to be adopted that make more sense for delivery drones but to be fair
to our government overlords the ffa is working to streamline the drone approval
process and is also collaborating with private industry to create a dedicated
air traffic control system for unmanned drones but it could take years before
this is all developed enough to allow large fleets of delivery drones to take
to the skies of course the entire point of the rules is to ensure that aircraft
operates safely and there are questions about that as well hobby drones are
really light but package delivering drones like the 11 pounders used by
google subsidiary wing are quite a bit heavier and while you super strong
people might think that 11 pounds isn't super heavy it would certainly pose a
safety risk if something that weighs about as much as a small dumbbell
plummeted from the sky and hit you basically anywhere on your body other
delivery services will likely be using even heavier drones to deliver larger
packages and while drones may never be required to meet the one critical
incident in one billion flight hours standard of commercial airliners they'll
certainly need to meet more stringent requirements than they do now considering off-the-shelf drones can and
do fail quite frequently and it isn't just about mechanical hardiness either
there's currently not much infrastructure in place to control drone
traffic or even ensure they won't run into each other or into other objects
animal attacks on flying drones have even happened but logistics aside we
can't discount the social part of the equation either while it would
definitely be cool to have a drone bring you an emergency box of corn dogs at 3am
in a matter of minutes do we really want a bunch of drones
emitting that high-pitched buzzing noise outside of our apartment Windows just
level with your eye line at all hours of the night or day
and how about ways to discourage theft porch pirates are already a problem so
what might happen once the entire delivery process is unattended
wing has already offered assurances that their drones don't contain high-res
cameras in order to protect privacy but could this embolden would be packaged
thieves no one's watching these are questions the industry will need to find
answers to if they're going to run delivery services that both make a
profit and entice potential customers so
we're definitely not saying drone delivery will never work just give it a
few years patience is a virtue even in the age of amazon prime so thanks for
watching guys if you liked this video hit like hit subscribe if you're feeling saucy and hit us up in the comments
section for sure with your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the
future