"The 1865 [UK] "Red Flag" act required all road locomotives, which included automobiles, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph in the country and 2 mph in towns and have a crew of three, one of whom should carry a red flag walking 60 yards ahead of each vehicle. The 1896 Act removed the need for the crew of three and raised the speed to 14 mph." [Wikipedia]
If they actually work reliably - and I guess we can assume they will get better over time - I expect people will get used to them and think they are a normal part of the urban environment. That's how people work. To my mind the really tough issue would be physics: handling the gusty turbulent airflow around buildings in any kind of wind. This might preclude them from operating on some days in some places, so you wouldn't have a reliable service. To be economically viable, a new technology has to actually replace something (or be really cool.) Developing landing and collision avoidance protocols would be relatively easy though there's sure to be some euphemisms developed for a new category of failures. As long as there isn't constant beeping as they buzz around... BTW these things wouldn't have to be fully autonomous, they could be assisted during critical phases of their flight by operators who may be geographically distant. Most likely such a service would start off doing standard runs between a set of points. A little like this, in a different age: http://londonparticulars.wordpress.com/2010/11/28/going-postal/ - Jim On 3 December 2013 13:19, Jan Whitaker <jw...@internode.on.net> wrote: > At 01:06 PM 3/12/2013, Jim Birch wrote: > > >...I refer, of course, to the type of machine suggested for short range > >urban delivery of non-lethal payloads. > > That's where the system problems come in. Cars are part of a cultural > system. Millions of them travel roads every day. There are accidents. > But people know how to behave in that cultural system, pretty much. > > UAVs are anomalies in that system. We have wires and poles and signs > and plants and all sorts of physical objects in spaces where cars > don't go. I guess you could put in some sort of avoidance sensor like > aerial rhumbas??? But what is the distinction between a porch roof > and the door step? Where is the package going to end up? What is the > rule set? The non-road spatial objects are practically infinite. > > Jan > > > > Melbourne, Victoria, Australia > jw...@janwhitaker.com > > Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how > do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your > space. > ~Margaret Atwood, writer > > _ __________________ _ > _______________________________________________ > Link mailing list > Link@mailman.anu.edu.au > http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link > _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
