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The size of these vehicles is certainly absurd, but flying packages with drones that consume most of their energy to fight gravity does not seem particularly ef
by bnegreve 3y ago
The size of these vehicles is certainly absurd, but flying packages with drones that consume most of their energy to fight gravity does not seem particularly efficient either, (e.g. compared to small road electric vehicles with the same payload, which would have its own practical problems).
- XorNot 3y agoAircraft are more energy efficient then cars[1] at scale. But even a light plane like a Cessna 172 does 13L/100KM[2] depending on flight speed. Certainly more then my Prius, but it can take a much more direct route too. There's also the simple practical issue: self-driving cars can't navigate a complex crowded environment, whereas self-flying planes navigate a much simpler environment with many more regulatory controls on behavior. [1] https://www.sustainablebusiness.com/2014/02/surprisingly-airplanes-more-energy-efficient-than-cars-52127/ https://www.sustainablebusiness.com/2014/02/surprisingly-air... [2] https://www.flyouts.com/vliegtuig/cessna-172 https://www.flyouts.com/vliegtuig/cessna-172
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cma 3y agoIf Prius was adapted to run optimally on extremely high octane leaded fuel what could it get?
- baq 3y agoThe Prius doesn’t fly, so let’s not repeat the leaded fuel mistake.
- bombcar 3y agoHigh octane does NOT increase total available power, in fact it reduces it. It enables higher compression so you can get more power per unit of engine weight, but the fuel efficiency per gallon is lower. And the lead is for the valves. You can get more efficient planes but you can’t overcome the need to fight gravity at some point.
- cma 3y agoI thought higher octane improved efficiency by avoiding premature combustion, but that may have only been relevant before electronic fuel injection.
- deely3 3y ago> Aircraft are more energy efficient then cars[1] at scale. Some aircraft and definitely not drons for now.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- madacol 3y agozipline's "platform 1" is an airplane, and "platform 2" is a quadcopter shaped like an airplane. https://www.flyzipline.com/technology https://www.flyzipline.com/technology So they should have much better efficiency than typical quadcopters
- baq 3y agoDepends on perspective. You could say it's a glider with a quadcopter bolted underneath for VTOL capabilities.
- krisoft 3y agoWhat is a drone to you? If you are only thinking about multicopters when you hear that word then yes, those are not efficient and probably never will be. But the term commonly refers to all unmanned aerial vehicles. For example a Global Hawk unmanned aircraft can fly 14,000 nautical miles and remain aloft for 42 hours. They are by definition very efficient. That is a drone. On the other end of the spectrum The Spirit of Butts' Farm crossed the atlantic with 118 US fluid ounces (3.5 L) of fuel. It was flying for ~39 hour and 1,881.6 mi (3,028.1 km). That is about 2045 mile per gallon if I count it right. That is very efficient, and of course since the aircraft was unmanned it is a drone.
- two_handfuls 3y agoI lost confidence at the very beginning of the article: > In fact, unless you drive a car that gets 33.8 gallons per mile (or carry more than one passenger), new airplanes coming off the assembly line are more fuel-efficient Cars typically get about 0.03 gallons per mile, so it’s not even close.
- crooked-v 3y agoThe actual harm from the drone's wasted energy is pretty negligible aside from the waste heat itself, though, as compared to the many, many side effects of road vehicles of any kind (for example, just starting with the air pollution from tire particles). Of course, that equation changes a bit once there are enough drones that noise pollution and collisions or other incidents become a real issue.
- algas 3y agoNoise pollution and collisions are a much, much larger problem with cars, since they're constrained to two dimensions while drones can use three. Plus, cars tend to kill people when they collide with each other (or with pedestrians), and drones would not. Hopefully they will all use engineered quiet propellers (such as Zipline uses) and electric engines (similarly).
- fragmede 3y ago> Plus, cars tend to kill people... and drones would not. I think this is an good move by the FAA, but I also think that if one of these airplanes flew right into my head at full speed, I'd die.
- bombcar 3y agoPeople are ingenious at getting killed, and birds can do it so eventually if we have enough drones someone will die to one. However, much mini deliveries could be done with vehicles smaller than a full size car - and places where it is common you see lots of mopeds and similar. People still can die to them.
- brandensilva 3y agoIt seems like a drone falling out of the sky could still kill people. It just seems less likely to us because there aren't as many right now to worry about like cars. I like these devices for use for medical supplies but do worry how polluted the skies could become when multiple companies are flying these things for standard packages.
- prawn 3y agoOK, what about if our supermarkets are actually really tall buildings, and the drones glide down from the distribution platform on the top floor...
- falcor84 3y agoThat sounds pretty much the same as existing "catolog stores"[0] like Argos[1] (although your idea is probably a bit more automated). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalog_merchant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalog_merchant [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argos_(retailer)
- concordDance 3y agoIdeally you'd use little remote controlled electric cars, but driving on the ground is a MUCH more complex problem.
- amelius 3y agoWith a sufficient number of drones in the air simultaneously, this becomes a far more difficult problem.
- heylook 3y agoOnly if you assume there is no regulator or shared protocol.
- amelius 3y agoAnyway, I guess the main problem is that most people will not want a sky full of drones just so that some random Joes can get their stuff from Amazon or AliExpress a little sooner.
- wuiheerfoj 3y agoI imagine people felt the same way when cars were popularised, but we‘ll get used to the convenience
- amelius 3y agoThis time it's different because we know where it might lead to.
- m_fayer 3y agoIf the skies fill with drones while traffic jams ease, there’s less double parking for delivery, and streets generally start looking more airy, people may make the association.
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- reacweb 3y agoThe existence of migratory birds proves that the loss of energy due to the Earth's gravitational pull is not so catastrophic. A vehicle in motion also loses energy because of the friction of the wheels. Above a certain speed, air friction becomes the most significant loss. The comparison of the energy balance of a vehicle on the road compared with a vehicle in the air is not as clear-cut. Vehicles on wheels are much heavier and require infrastructure (roads) that must be taken into account.
- abtinf 3y agoYou may have noticed that migratory birds have a somewhat different mechanism of flight than typical drones.
- singularity2001 3y agozipline has wings
- tyingq 3y agoThey do show that: https://www.flyzipline.com/technology https://www.flyzipline.com/technology (scroll down, it first shows the thing that it drops, rather than the drone itself.) Lots of CGI and notices about "simulated" though. The videos that appear to maybe be real show something that does have wings, but looks too small/light/thin to carry much around.
- Philip-J-Fry 3y agoThe ones they are currently using in Africa are normal drone planes. They drop their payload without stopping though, so the payload has to be packed securely and nothing that can break easily. So it's used for medical supplies. This what Mark Rober's video was about. If they were to create a drone that can deliver arbitrary packages, then it needs to be able to lower a package safely. That's what those renders are, they show a typical multi-rotar drone with small wings. So it can stop and lower a package. I don't think there's any real footage of these yet.
- pontusrehula 3y agoWhere I live we can get deliveries by starships https://www.starship.xyz/ https://www.starship.xyz/. The vehicles are kind of cute when you see them in action.
- stevekemp 3y agoThey do look cute, I remember being completely taken-aback the first time I saw one in the wild - I had to resist the temptation to stand in front of it, to see what would happen. Though I did wonder how they'll cope in winter-weather. I can't imagine they'd do so well on snow/ice.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoBut there are plenty of places that don't have much snow and ice where they should be perfectly practical. Ice shouldn't be a problem, they could swap to studded tyres in the winter just like we do for cars here in Norway. Snow would be a much bigger problem though I agree!
- 93po 3y agoI'd encourage you to stand in front of it. Commercializing public walkways like this is fine, I guess, but as a human walking around for non-commercial reasons, I feel like you have the right to do whatever you want (within reason) that doesn't impact other humans.
- NikolaNovak 3y agoOk that seems like far more practical idea
- throwaway94250 3y agoThey seem practical until you realize how easy it is to steal one.
- bombcar 3y agoThe starships on the road are free you can just take them I have 458 starships. Those wheels look moderately impractical- larger wheels might have more clearance. Reminds me that we had pneumatic tubes and miniature railways between buildings a century ago.
- ptman 3y agohttps://www.starship.xyz/ https://www.starship.xyz/
- bluescrn 3y agoIn a crime-free utopia, they could be useful. Or maybe within a large corporate campus type environment. But 'on the streets' in the real world, they're just targets for vandalism and theft.
- falcor84 3y agoCouldn't that be said about humans? As I understand it, once upon a time in some parts of the world, walking alone unarmed could get you abducted and sold into slavery. But then we decided as a society that we want to have this "Human Rights" thing and now most of us feel relatively safe about other people on the street not randomly abducting or assaulting us. So I'm just not getting the argument for why we can't trust humans to not vandalize or steal robots, especially internet-connected ones that constantly film their surroundings. I for one believe that just like we can learn to be civil to one another, and can also extend our civility to other species (e.g. we generally don't go around kicking dogs we see on the street), we can also be civil to robots.
- krapp 3y agoIt depends. Somewhere like Japan, with a strong cultural sense of societal cohesion and obligation, it could work. But I live in a country where "societal cohesion" and "obligations" are considered communist propaganda and our constitution gives us the right to as many guns as we want in case we decide to hunt the government for sport. I mean, this robot[0] make it all the way across the Netherlands and Germany, and only 300 miles into the US before getting beheaded. [0]https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/03/us/hitchbot-robot-beheaded-philadelphia-feat/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/03/us/hitchbot-robot-beheaded-ph...
- kwhitefoot 3y agoThey are already in use in the UK.
- jcims 3y agoSure but there's a tradeoff with ground transport. A drone can make the trip with much shorter traveled distance and potentially higher speed, resulting in higher utilization per vehicle. It also doesn't interfere with road traffic, which could have externalities in longer idle time for other vehicles at intersections and whatnot. Both are better than Garret in his 2007 Ford Explorer driving around town all day delivering timbits and tacos.
- dwighttk 3y agoGarret’ll get there in a hurricane though
- wolfram74 3y agoI was raised to consider ordering takeout in truly awful weather as pretty rude.
- randmeerkat 3y ago> I was raised to consider ordering takeout in truly awful weather as pretty rude. What’s more rude? Ordering takeout in bad weather, or not ordering takeout and indirectly punishing the delivery driver’s livelihood whenever the weather is bad..?
- crazygringo 3y agoI realize that has good intentions, but it's actually terrible advice. Delivery drivers are paid basically solely with your tips. If you don't order, they don't make any money that day. If you want to be nice, order that delivery, but tip more. Bad weather is actually their favorite because people tip more.
- philsnow 3y agoThere might be different ideas of what makes “bad” weather. Some Californians think that any weather at all is bad, and some midwesterners think “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only wrong clothing”. I wouldn’t hesitate to order delivery if it were raining or snowing, but maybe in this world there are people who would still order delivery during a tornado warning (because that way they don’t have to risk driving during a tornado).
- newsclues 3y agoBikes for local rapid delivery are hard to beat.
- bombcar 3y agoDrones schmones. Miniature zeppelins is where it’s at. Bouyancy to just below negative so very little energy needed to lift the device.
- dgacmu 3y agoIt's been studied; drones are somewhat better: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02411-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02411-5 E-bike courriers are probably better still but drones are probably faster if you can make them work. A lot depends on the delivery pattern, of course.
- myself248 3y agoNice thing about drones is they're unlikely to kill anyone if they crash, and they're not sharing the roads with cars in the first place. In some places, bikes are first-class citizens of the road, but in other places they're very much not respected and riding one is tantamount to suicide. Every single cyclist I know, when they meet another cyclist, immediately asks about gnarliest injuries and they compare scars like dogs sniffing each other's butts. And in the past 20 years I've lost more friends to cycling fatalities than any other cause of death. I'll take the drones, thankyouverymuch.