Recently, Switzerland announced that this month drones will start carrying deliveries on its territory, without human intervention and over densely populated cities
a few weeks ago I reviewed the field of drones here, and I told about the expectations that the drones would be used to transport goods within a few minutes from destination to destination, at extremely low costs. Analysts in the United States believe that drones will be used there for orderly transportation starting in 2023, but the rest of the world is progressing at a faster pace, and as evidence - Switzerland recently announced that this month drones will begin carrying shipments on its territory, without human intervention and over densely populated cities.
The Swiss rely on the drone company from Trent (Matternet) the American, which developed networks of drones together with launch, landing and charging stations. The stations can be found on the streets or on top of houses, and are a little bigger than a home refrigerator. Any person can arrive at the station, activate it using a dedicated application, insert a package weighing up to two kilograms, and go home. Meanwhile, the package is connected by a robotic arm to a drone, and it takes off and carries the shipment for a distance of up to twenty kilometers and at a speed of 70 km/h, to another station in the city or outside it. All in all, from Trent undertakes to transport the goods within thirty minutes Or less.
MaTrent is currently focused on one specific use: transporting medical shipments. She wants to connect clinics, laboratories and hospitals, and help them transfer between them blood and tissue samples, vaccines, blood transfusions and more. But MaTrent is also in close partnership with the Swiss Post Office, and now that the first approval has been given to fly deliveries autonomously over cities, we can expect them to expand to transporting other types of packages as well. Maternet itself is already planning to place similar stations in gas stations and even in grocery stores.
Of course, all this does not mean that tomorrow morning we will see tens of thousands of drones in the skies of Switzerland. MaTrent is able to make the first autonomous deliveries simply because it is the first, and the low-brow skies are not yet crowded with competing drones. Even in this situation, MaTrent's stations are required to monitor the drones it makes while in the air and make sure they don't collide with other drones. The more drones there are in the sky, the more we will need a broader system of autonomous aerial surveillance. And such a system, as the analysts from the United States predicted, is not expected to appear on a large scale until 2023.
But in the meantime, it's worth noting two interesting implications of the technology.
First, if MaTrent succeeds in placing such a station on the roof of every hospital, laboratory and clinic, then these organizations cease to be limited by the physical distance between them. In fact, you can almost treat them as different organizations that are all under 'one roof', and can transfer equipment and supplies between them as needed without a stay. In the past, transportation between different separate organizations was done by ordering an urgent taxi, which was often delayed due to traffic jams and was subject to the whims and efficiency of the driver who arrived from outside the organization. But thanks to Ethernet, small hospitals don't have to have all possible medical equipment: they can quickly order it from larger medical centers. There is a decentralization of the medical care here, which allows the small ones to compete with the big ones in providing effective medical services quickly.
The second meaning is no less interesting. Matternet earned its name honestly: it wants to develop an "internet of matter". The initial model for its establishment was based on stations capable of automatically changing batteries for drones, so that one drone could travel hundreds of kilometers in Africa by 'jumping' from station to station and changing the battery at every step along the way. The stations in Switzerland are also equipped with the ability to change batteries automatically, so if the current experiment proves itself, we are expected to see messenger races of drones capable of bringing goods to areas outside the city quickly and efficiently. In the distant future, such drone networks will also be able to bring objects to any person with a smartphone within a convenient range of one of the stations.
Indeed, a web of matter.
You are invited to read more about drones and how they are expected to integrate into society and change it in my new book "who control the future", in the selected bookstores (and those that are just fine).
See more on the subject on the science website:
15 תגובות
Long live a stranger.
Terrorists and criminals are everywhere and at any time. The question, as before 11/9
She is, if we don't make their lives too easy. The point is that according to the proposal
The Swiss will not have to buy a drone, a license to fly, eye contact with the drone,
Building your own drone and even minimal training in flying it and there will be no supervision
On him - but on the contrary, the authorities will protect the drone and the cargo under any conditions. I have it
Looks like a personal invitation to terrorists and other trouble.
Miracles
So we return to the first respondent, the fear that a refrigerator will fall on my head. At least in this case I won't have to
go shopping. In this case I will collect the groceries from the sidewalk or the road (hopefully I won't get run over) and home.
Life
Frequencies are not the danger, think of all the millions of cell phones. There is a much more acute problem - collisions, faults, damage to electric wires and so on.
Miracles
There is another matter that requires an incandescence and that is transmission frequencies. I have little knowledge of the subject, but my impression is that there may be media chaos. Each drone is assigned a certain frequency. Imagine if thousands of drones circled over Tel Aviv for example every day, what would you do? Will it be without them wanting an overlap between transmission frequencies and then there will be collisions? Would it be desirable, for example, to limit flight hours for each drone? Landing a drone in the middle of the street is impossible. Maybe create a kind of agreed landing sites or on the roofs of houses and force exceeding them will attract fines.
Haim Mazar
Interesting document, thanks! I think the first step in the legislation should be the sorting of drones into departments. It is not simple because there are many parameters: weight, speed, height, range, type of communication and so on. You also need to differentiate between the operator's license (as in the document you linked to) and the aircraft's license.
Because Israel is preoccupied with much more serious problems (like Sarah's candles), I think it is better for a private authority to take on the task and convince someone smart in the Knesset to take the work as a basis for legislation. It seems to me an impossible task...
Legislation concerning drones
http://caa.gov.il/index.php?option=com_docman&view=download&category_slug=2015-10-13-06-38-50-7&alias=5171-remote-pilot-licence-caai-1&Itemid=669&lang=he
Miracles
There will always be criminals. They will always find ways to use any technology to achieve their goals. Here she came up with an idea on how to deal with the criminal potential, now what remains is to turn it into an article and publish it in a legal journal. Successfully.
Haim Mazar
I am in favor of legislation. What I am saying is that legislation will not prevent criminals from using drones for bad purposes.
More than that - I think the legislation should prevent any ability to fly a drone over people or in the area of an active airport.
Miracles
Even if it is possible to build a drone at home, it seems reasonable that the issue will be regulated by legislation... imagine that you are making a drone for light transport in your living room. For example, transferring a shipment weighing 50 kg. There is a malfunction and the same shipment falls on a person's head and he is killed or the same package falls on a car near its arrival at its destination and an accident occurs as a result. What happens in terms of the injured or the injured? Who compensates them for the damages? After all, whether the domestic producer wants it or not, he has a direct influence on this. Even if a person made a gun in his home and he was seen as an accomplice to the murder because of the gun he made in his home, will he not be punished? The very ability of self-production of the drone must not prevent legal evaluations of the subject.
Haim Mazar
A license will not help. See the "Gun" entry in every country in the world. And unlike a weapon, it's easy to build a drone yourself.
Benjamin May
The problems you present are indeed true, but the development of technology cannot be stopped. There will always be criminals. The solution is in corresponding legislation and possession of a drone for any purpose which will be conditional on the issuance of a license. Not everyone will be able to purchase a drone. I am calling on lawyers and the judicial system to give their opinion on this and start writing articles on the legal aspects of the subject, including insurance.
another option. Drones that will replace construction cranes
http://www.tapuz.co.il/blogs/viewentry/7389950
Beauty. And if someone straps a bomb to a drone and goes home while the package is
Explodes at any possible target using a clock, or over the city center when inside it
Chemical, biological warfare agents or a dirty bomb?
In any other shipping method, there is a limitation of the sender's control
In the timing of the bomb in the package, in the location of the package and in the option
the dispersion An explosion inside a truck or post office will not cause damage
The requested and makes it difficult to escape, kidnap or hire a helicopter
are not a simple matter and even then it is difficult to escape.
I'm afraid someone just didn't think it through when they proposed the system
which combines a robotic flight of cargo over the city that any person can
to activate it.
Beauty is not enough, we have to be careful on the road, now we will have to look up so that some refrigerator doesn't fall on us. Basa of Haim