Alphabet to Launch Drone Delivery Service in Finland

AlphaAtlas

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Google's parent company, Alphabet, says they're launching a drone delivery service in Finland next year. Using drones developed in their their long running "Project Wing" experiment, Alphabet's drones will supposedly be able to autonomously deliver "food, medicine and other items just minutes after they are requested." The company has already spent 18 months trialing the service in Australia, delivering burritos at first and other items more recently.

Alphabet published a video of their Australian service, which you can see here.

Finns are internationally renowned for being early-adopters of new technologies, and we're looking forward to working with the community and local businesses to find the best way to implement our services in the Helsinki area. Based on what we know about the winter weather in Finland, we're pretty confident that if our drones can deliver here, they can deliver anywhere!
 
Supposedly people in Canberra are not very happy with the loud buzzing every few minutes as a burrito flies overhead
 
So much for peace and quiet... The noise these produce is unacceptable and I would hope in my town they wouldn't even allow it.
 
i cant imagine a whole lot of items that can fit inside that little triangle box
 
I don't get it--why use such small (read: inefficient, noisy, whiny) propellers on an aircraft that big? It seems like you could get much better efficiency and lower noise levels with larger, slower-spinning propellers.

Also, why does it need to have a separate set of propellers for each flight mode? A design similar to the Convair XFY-1 Pogo seems like a much better design.
 
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11...y-service-divides-canberra-residents/10484044

Chief Minister Andrew Barr told ABC Radio Canberra the service and the trial were not regulated by the ACT Government, but suggested any noise created by them was no different to other residential sounds such as lawnmowers.

"I would say Canberra generally leans positively towards any new technology," he said.

"If there is a view that noisy activities should be further restricted, then people won't be able to mow their lawns outside of approved hours because a lawnmower engine is as noisy and irritating to neighbours as a drone engine can be."

But according to anti-drone residents, the two were not comparable.

"I would suggest that if other residents heard 40 lawnmowers flying overhead they would be as distressed as we are about the drones," Irena said.

Robyn said she came across a World War II veteran living in Bonython who had been traumatised by the sound of a drone, which reminded him of war-time aircraft.

Another woman, she claimed, suffered from migraines and was concerned they would be worsened by the noise.

I'm always pretty sceptical over things like wind farms making people crap their pants or grow tumours. But it does sound like a poor implementation with a rather dismissive attitude towards "well what about the noise pollution".
 
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