The Future Of Cargo Shipping is Here (Delivery Drones Discussion Thread)

Drone: Flies near Louisville Mohammad Intl.
UPS MD11: Finally some good ****** food.

If you have seen this Gordon Ramsey meme then you are a G and will understand the reference

Please elaborate.

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Read the blurred text. But I have a feeling that eventually a drone is gonna get sucked into an engine of a plane if it flies too low. (Or high)

UPS: JETTISON THE DRONES!
MD11: ok releases drones
Amazon:

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This will be a year or so away forever. Plus, multicopters are inefficient at flying from A to B so this seems like a step backwards.

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Sorry sir but you are wrong. Just look at this thing.


Or this thing
image

I wasn’t counting tandem rotor helps haha. For torque mitigation everything (except one aircraft) is a multicopter

Actually, I have a drone that goes up to 32 miles per hour. It is a multi copter.

Yep and it’s still inefficient compared to fixed wing/ground transportation.

Well. To be fair, you are wrong there. Keep in mind cars are limited to streets unless they want to break the law, nature such as forests, and ability of a driver, which can take longer. While a drone or aircraft can simply fly from A to B without the need for human control. And it flies over nature. Also, what aircraft is going to land on your doorstep and drop off a package?

I’m not- if you consider kg*m/J then cars, trucks and fixed wing aircraft all outclass multicopters.

Essentially most of your thrust vector is devoted to just maintaining altitude in a multicopter. Even when you’re moving forward. This isn’t the case for fixed wing aircraft and obviously not cars or trucks.

It varies. But Amazon did make this. It has a third prop which is used for only thrust. While Eight others maintain altitude.

Notice how it’s becoming more like a fixed wing aircraft… At high speeds those 8 vertical rotors are essentially deadweight.

Actually the VTOL props actually serve to keep the aircraft alight.

Wings are the most efficient way to generate lift full stop. Rotating them just adds unnecessary entropy.

The whole point of VTOL aircraft is that they become conventional fixed wing aircraft in cruise. The only difference is that they need at least a 1:1 power to weight ratio which is unnecessary after takeoff. So you just suffer a different kind of penalty.

And I hope their props don’t set them on fire…

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Your kinda right, but also wrong, for these very short hoops the efficiency isn’t the question. Quadcopters are pretty quick, and very maneuverable, and very stable, not to mention that they can carry a great load compared to a similarly sized single rotor aircraft. I’m not surprised they are using a quadcopter, there is good reason they are very popular in consumer toys, and aerial cameras.

I’m not wrong at all and here’s why:

My initial position was that multicopters are inefficient compared with fixed wing/ground transport when going from A-B. You seem to acknowledge that.

You seem to be saying: yes they’re less efficient (which is my entire point). But I’m actually wrong because efficiency doesn’t matter in this case.

  1. That’s entirely besides the point I’m making.

  2. Efficiency does matter if you want to scale up the technology as a means of package delivery. You’re right in that efficiency doesn’t matter for toys or for carrying cameras. No one thinks DJI is sinking the polar bears. However, if you make larger multicopters a commonplace method of delivery, their energy consumption would become significant. So yes, efficiency does matter.

And even if efficiency didn’t matter, that’s not the point I’m making. I agree with you that multicopters have many advantages (stability, maneuverability, etc) but efficiency just isn’t one of them.

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Ok, touché, I think I was saying more than your point is irrelevant (sorry for being so blunt there) not wrong. There are a lot of reasons why this perfect, one of your alternatives is a fixed wing which is simply impractical here. And the being less efficient than ground transport may not be entirely true. If we just attached it to a little RC car and wheeled it across that distance it would be more efficient, but again, not very practical, and the whole truck would require many times more energy to make that same trip since it has to take a longer path, and carry all the other packages, a massive battery (since it’s electric in the video) the driver, and we’ll just the combined mass of everything else in the truck. Sure, pound for pound quadcopters May be an inferior choice, but ground transport has exponentially more pounds, and other air transport isn’t a practical solution to this problem. So I guess all along I was trying to say that while your not wrong your also not really making a relevant point. Sorry if that came off as too harsh, I was trying to be to the point, but not mean… 😁