Nobody talked about weather. How many days in a year one will have sufficient weather conditions for delivery?
We’ll encounter a drone flying in IMC?
Can an idea, like the news report of this appears to describe, be patented? As opposed to detailed airship and drone technology and software.
An automated aviation version of the island ferry, with vehicles picking up the goods, a system which has existed for centuries.
One patent database is here
I believe the patent in question is here
The claims are fun reading…
But it appers to be only an application, not a granted patent. You can apply for anything. In fact, in the industrial / commercial product sphere, many do – it discourages casual imitators. But also many patents are granted despite being bogus on grounds of being obvious, or having prior art. It’s a big discussion and really the patent system is mostly broken nowadays. Einstein worked in a patent office but that was a fair few years ago and he didn’t leave any known clones of himself.
The original idea behind a patent is that the inventor gets a monopoly on its commercial exploitation for x years, in return for disclosing how it works, to a degree sufficient to enable a reasonably competent person to duplicate it. That is the bargain struck with the Crown or the State. Fairly obviously that is not happening here
As if the airspace around London wasn’t crazy enough already, here’s some more fun: a drone corridor in the Reading area. Read all about it here: https://www.altitudeangel.com/news/posts/2020/september/drones-and-planes-share-same-sky-as-altitude-angel-establish-drone-zone-open-to-all/ local copy
Edited to add: there’s also an article in The Times but behind a paywall.
Did I miss the height and altitude of the corridor?
Where is it?
I read this link from elsewhere, and it appears to be a proposal for a 500mx5km slice of highly instrumented airspace just south of Reading, but is more of a “wish this could happen” article by the company rather than something that is about to become live.
I used to get worried about my Mrs ordering stuff on Amazon and parcels getting lost, now I have to worry about MAC risk as well
Rant Over
The amazon parcels get lost when the drones delivering them have a mid-air with GA?
Given the quality of Amazon customer service they will send another parcel on the spot with similar content before AAIB examination and report recovers the first lost parcel, not really sure about the GA pilot who get lost